I’ve seen it at UK based debates re. the ban – people showing precisely why the ban was necessary, when addicted smokers are so irrational, selfish and stupid (“there’s no evidence to show” blah blah blah besides which the STINK of smoking is reason enough to object to it).

The 60% decrease in heart attacks after smoking bans should be enough in any rational society.

The “go home” way of ending arguments tends to be the ultimate sore loser here in Europe, so I don’t take it too seriously.

Regarding the right to complaint, well. I nagged about the London underground from day one! Hell yeah. And I nag about stuff in Spain too. I also praise whatever I like about each city I’ve lived in. Who can tell you you’ve “earned” the right to have an opinion? You might not be elegible to vote, but that doesn’t mean you can’t speak your mind. As long as you’re respectful and fair, of course, but that really is common sense and applies to complaining about your city, the government, another person, etc. Otherwise you’re just bigoted, narrow-minded or just an idiot. And again, who can stop you from being just that. At the end of the day both the UK and Spain are democracies and we have -thankfully- freedom of speech. So let’s all debate and speak our minds. Worst case scenario, it is healthier than not doing it, even if we end up hating each other’s guts like in those smokers vs non-smokers forums!

And, Richard, I have to say Poss got it wrong. Spain doesn’t smell of garlic. Sadly it stinks of second hand smoke. Sorry to destroy your romantic view of anything-goes-movida-Madrid, we’ve had enough of that sorry excuse being used to justify the huge damage being made to public health by a minority’s vice and their habit of not caring about the consequences for those around them.

Having lived in Madrid for 3 and a half years i can honestly say that, aside from a slight tongue in cheek jibe i felt, since day one, completely accepted within its society. Not to say that i did not experience cultural differences but these things soon grew to become the things that i actually miss now. So in that sense i can accept that Madrid, thus Spain, has been a little slow on the implementation of a totalitarian non smoking ban. Compared with some its neighbouring countries this just goes hand in hand with the liberalness of the country and especially the attitude and spirit of the Madreleños. We are talking here about a city which only in recent history was ruled under a strict dictatorship which could have understandably stripped away at the rich personality yet it has prevailed. I believe this can only be accounted for by the unique pueblo like feel you have in a city of 3.2 million that has since fuelled ¨la movida¨ in every form of is interpretation and understanding. From the blur of honking traffic in gran via, the large botellones in la Latina, perpetual drum banging in Retiro, the sometimes almost derelict hidden bars in Lavapiés, the dragging coats of fur and mustard trousers in Salamanca, make the backdrop for all of these amazing and interesting people that you meet all over the city. Right or Wrong, indifferent, this is what i came to know and love as Madrid.

Its almost the same way i feel of London, but i think the attributes lie differently, perhaps more for professional opportunity and a sense of being in the centre of it all but certainly not because i am English, what ever that word means these days anyway. Up until the recession we have seen the good old BRITS go over in their droves to get a second home in Spain, typically down south and learn (literally) a couple of words, get sun burnt, drink sangria, eat chips in pubs called the Red Lion run by people called Roy and Val and then what else… oh yeah that’s right, complain about the Spanish. Lazy, organised, slow, behind the times, too laid back, cowboys or even as Victoria Beckham ridiculously said, smelling of Garlic! Now stupidity enjoys its own company and such dense remarks can only incite the blatant reply of questioning why not return promptly to whence they came. I mean would we be as tolerant in England as the Spanish are to us? In the same vein, knowing of how wildly Spanish is spoken, being the 3rd most used language in the word, yet i wonder how many Spaniards have felt they could rock up in Englands fine shores with limited knowledge of English. Believing they can just bumble through or if all else fails by just resort to shouting DOS CERVEZAS AMIGO in the knowledge that the wide language must be understood everywhere when yelled slowly. Can you imagine what would be done in England if that happened, the Sun would drive a hate campaign while more “high brow” papers would put out over the top moral pieces on how we have let our rich history slip away as we merge into a faceless Europe.

Madrid though is different, this is not somewhere to come and hide you have to be seen and heard or else you just will not get what its all about. You are joining part of a great rich community that has a big impact on your life. Its exactly the reason why so many people go there and just fall in love with it enough to want to stay just one more year or to be inspired enough to feel the need to share it through many of the modern Internet networking forms. Since leaving i sincerely miss the place and not because its in Spain, but because it is Madrid. Its the people that make the place not the other way round, so i include and mean just that and i have far too many beautiful memories there to cheapen it with Mr EXpat views. Its the people who live there from whatever country, los madrileños, that are in this amazing environment thus being at their most creative, ambitious, confident, focused, whatever, this is for me the heart of Madrid and when you feel that you belong to it. So as soon as you are registered and empadronado you have a voice to change things as democracy and even in this case there are heaps of restaurants to go in Madrid where smoke will not be an issue. I really don’t know what run of bad luck this woman was having over there but really, jámas, nunca have i seen a taxi driver or bus driver!!!! light up a fag on the job. Pure drivel.

This article is heavily biased with a slanted view at a topic that will always provoke a heated split reaction. It was met with exactly that with people expressing their opinions on the boring mañana digs at the Spanish masked within a warped view of a pregnant woman’s misery in a non smokers hell of Madrid. Its the same banal crap that’s main object is probably so everyone in blighty can give them a jolly good old slap on the back and aren´t the Spanish so dirty and disgusting and aren´t we great living here and getting all the smokers outside so quick. If you really feel above the so called Daily Mail readers is this really your ¨high brow¨ article to show your superiority of them? This is exactly the shoddy kind of journalism that gives such false impressions and probably goes just that bit further to dent the already heavily damaged spanish tourism with the wide audience that it serves. I mean there are a few stereotypical remarks but that’s understandable with the undertone being almost borderline belligerent so it ruffled the feathers it wanted to with its comparison of ¨Vickie Pollard¨ charectors and blase attitudes to polite requests. Also the majority, if not all, of the go home comments were made and stated clearly by Brits of which i see as being completely different as if they were from Spanairds.
There is a saying that i have grown to like in my short time in OZ and thats “never let the truth get in way of a good yarn” and i think with that piece the shoe definitely fits. I was in Mexico City the day the Swine Flu epidemic exploded with a Mexican and Two Spanish people and the world wide pandemonium that was caused through in factual information and blatant lies reflected nothing of what was happening in the city. Nor of general public opinion only fueling some very distressing phone calls home and kicking a country that is already down even further.

The media is so polluted these days its hard to fathom the facts from the sensational half truths. I think this is why blogs are so popular. They inject a much needed truth, or sense of realism back into our lives, however this can become be done badly and be just too mundane for some and that is why only the well written and formulated blogs, such as this one, are eagerly followed. The ones that start and remain a labour of love often develop to reward as i truly believe that one cannot forge true passion as it is infectious. I for one have found great delight in listening to the podcasts and reading the opinions of a fellow Madrileno in these delicate times with la crisis back home (as Madrid is both where my home and heart remain) and am interested in even the slightest development however trivial. So i think that you should perhaps present a more balanced view of what are the actual possibilities of dining in a smoke free environment because that sounds like a very different Madrid to the one that left 8 months ago.

I personally don’t think there is are any more xenophobes in Madrid, nor Spain for that matter, as there are in the rest of the world. It just depends what you class yourself as, an Expat or a Madrieño and that is a fundamental difference. So in answer to your question, who has the right to complain. Everyone. Who has the right to slag off a system or society offering no form of solution or rectification. Again everyone, but if you do it as an Expat, write in English and have it published in a British focused website. Really what do you expect?

Also i suppose then you have to ask yourself not only when do you deserve the right to complain but when should you exercise the right to defend.

Keep up the good work, i really do enjoy your blog.