For those keen Inspired Spanish learners amongst you, I just wanted to let you know that a big project I’ve been working on with a friend of Marina’s is finally ready!

Full details on the Notes in Spanish blog

Saludos from Madrid,

Ben

I’ll have to turn my oh so critical eye away from Spain for a few days to work hard on a project for Notesinspanish.com, so things might be quiet here on the blog.

Suddenly I’m feeling a bit overloaded!! Even when we get to bed at 10.30 I don’t seem to get up before 8.30! In the meantime, don’t forget the wonderful forum is still as busy as every, do check in there.

Finally, if you are learning Spanish and can help us out with the new project by taking a super-quick survey, please read this post here. Thanks! Back soon!

Update: While I’m busy, check out Ivan’s blog enthused with all the wonderful energy of a new life in a new place in Spain…

I’ve known Ryan and Gabriella from Catavino.net for, what, 3 years? 4? Their story is uncommonly inspiring compared to most non-EU visitors to Spain, who often find it hard to find a way to stay in Spain long-term. But these guys have not only stuck around, but they’ve also started a Spanish-wine-watching on-line empire, and built a company around it to boot.

You can read their great story on their about page, but more importantly, they are running a competition right now to win a very beautiful wine/art prize… and all you have to do is ask a question! Please do take part! Click here…

We were in our favourite local (smoke free ) bar today, when the waitress came round with a tray of tasty looking jamon Iberico rolls announcing ‘Pulgas de la crisis a 80 centimos’ (“Crisis ham rolls for 80 cents”).

This is a very good deal, but I’ve got a feeling it’s more a product of an enterprising bar owner than anything else.

There is evidence of ‘la crisis’ in some sectors clearly (over 30% of Spain’s GNP is based directly or indirectly on the totally-ruined construction business), but in other apparently troubled sectors, such as the media, it seems that some canny CEO’s may just be using ‘La Crisis’ as an excuse to kick out a percentage of their less than productive staff members.

Still, harsh realities aside (and I don’t want to mock those horribly effected by this economic downturn that looks set to last at least another year in Spain), you can’t beat cheap ham sandwiches, especially when it’s Jamon Iberico! Looking forward to ‘Crisis Vino Tinto a 50 centimos’ next…

My recent comments about smoking in Spanish bars and restaurants received the usual amount of moody replies, many of the more offensive ones deleted. There are two possible reasons for this: 1. Smokers hate criticism, 2. Negative blog posts lead to angry replies. The latter is certainly true.

I don’t like being critical of Spain, but as the years go by it seems that one finds more to be critical about. The other day whilst walking around the Retiro park, I tried to work out why, and came to the conclusion that it is simply the product of living somewhere for a very long time.

After the honeymood period wears off, one starts to see the chinks in the armour. But what made me fall in love with Spain in the first place?

The new-found freedom you get when you escape abroad, wild escapades with friends to different fieasta-ful corners of an undiscovered country, stunning fresh landscapes to look at, wander through, and photograph, a beautiful new language to learn, new people to interact with, a wonderful, rich, new culture to get to grips with, new food, the Spanish love of outdoor life, Spanish film (not TV!), fine wine, fine ham, beautiful people, a passion for valuing tradition… the list is long.

But then you live here for five, eight, ten years and you start seeing beyond all of that to the workaday country beneath. A country with the same problems as the one you came from, with it’s own silly annoyances that you realise do come to infringe on your everyday life (like the smoking thing).

You start moaning about the same things the locals do, but when you do it, there is a real danger that, as one commenter put it a few months ago, you just become “yet another foreigner sticking his nose into complicated issues and drawing the same old negative conclusions about Spain”.

The same conclusions a Spaniard will draw, but as a foreigner, woe betide you if you mention these things in public!

Anyway, what am I on about? I knew long ago that Spain would be a ‘life-partner’, like a great wife (like mine) that you know you plan to keep forever (hope Marina reads this, few bonus points here for the taking perhaps?!)

And just as we go might go through rough patches with a husband/wife/boy-girlfriend, in the end the best thing to do is to find a perfect middle ground where we live happily together, in love with each others’ virtues, and putting up with the foibles.

So my plan is to get my head out of my office, and start enjoying those virtues again, keeping everything positive (as is my wont), and putting up with the day-to-day annoyances that probably crop up wherever you live. I mean, if I still lived in the UK, I know I’d be moaning a hell of a lot more. (Then again when I phoned my great uncle recently, and he immediately commented on the weather, I felt deep pangs for such wonderful Englishness!)

Have you ever fallen in and out of love with somewhere you’ve lived for a long time?

It’s quiz time again! Once more I’m looking for those that really know the country inside-out. Can you name the eleven places pictured below?

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

¡Suerte!

Aplogies for the complete lack of blog posting this week. Call myself a blogger? It’s a disgrace!

Part of the reason for the silence has been due to working a little on our wonderful Spain and Spanish forums.

When I started the forums, the aim was to build the best Spain and Spanish speaking forums on the net, a goal I think in many ways we have reached, and I still stick to 100%.

With that in mind, this week we arranged for one of our great friends, Isabel, to start coming in for an hour a day to help out with people’s Spanish.

We’re going to try this out for a couple of weeks, and hopefully continue afterwards if people enjoy having a Spanish ‘profe’ around.

So far results have been great. In the last two days we have had nearly 200 new members, and Isabel’s first ‘Hola’ post has, right now, 87 replies. The forum is buzzing with all the new faces, which is wonderful news.

So, I’d just like to invite everyone again to register and use the friendliest forum on the net. Whenever you have ANY questions about living or travelling in Spain, or learning Spanish, you know where to go to get a host of great answers. Do register if you haven’t yet, and say hi!

And if anyone has any suggestions on how to improve the forum further, do let me know.

Saludos from Madrid,

Ben

No money changed hands prior to the making of this video! In fact, I’ve never met John Stanbridge, but discovered his “10 Good Things About 2008″ video via a google alert I have set up to track mentions of notesinspanish.com on the net.

His ‘number 4′ has made us as happy as he was for winning the prize mentioned in his ‘number 3′!

So I suppose the question is, what are my 10 good things about 2008? Here we go:

Anyone want to join in and share theirs? Make a video and post the link below!

That’s what it says on my Twitter page, so it must be true!

IMPORTANT! If you want to:

- be the first to find out when it’s done
- help me choose a name for the book and suggest contents
- find out about special limited bonuses coming out when it’s released

… then make sure you are on the all new Notes from Spain email newsletter list. To join, just sign up via the form at the top of the right hand column of this page, where it says “HEY! Sign Up For Our Newsletter!”. Sign up now!

Last week we mentioned that we were hoping to raise 1,000 Euros for Unicef’s campaign to help children affected by the Cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe.

For those interested in the final total, check out this post at the notesinspanish.com blog.

As mentioned there, we intend to give 5% of all profits from Notes from Spain S.L. to charity in 2009 (and beyond).

I recently read that “…if you help others with some of your success, you’ll grow old and be happy.”

Sounds good. That’ll be one of my plans for 2009, to be more helpful. If there’s any way we/this blog can help you, let me know in the comments below…