Communication

Newspapers, magazines and books

If you are planning to relocate to Spain and your daily fix of an English newspaper is important, you will have no problems whatsoever. Modern technology has resulted in the fact that all the popular UK newspapers are now published in Spain and are available from the newsagent first thing in the morning. Whatever paper you buy it will be identical to the one you would buy in the UK apart from a few adverts, which are local to Spain, and the weather forecast which shows the Iberian peninsula rather than the British Isles. The paper is obviously sent electronically to the Spanish publisher every day. The only negative is that your daily newspaper will cost considerably more than it would back in the UK and the Sunday papers do not have all the supplements (or the free CDs or DVDs).

There are also many English language newspapers and magazines produced locally. The main newspapers are Sur in English and the Town Crier, both published weekly on the Costa del Sol. Added to these are the magazines printed on a monthly or quarterly basis in many of the towns along the coast. Some of these are very glossy indeed and they are all free since their existence depends on the many businesses who buy advertising in their pages because they want to sell to the expatriate community.

Books are another matter. If you are an avid reader you could find the Costa del Sol frustrating. There is an English language section in the book departments of the major department store, El Corte Ingles, but it is not as extensive as you might wish. For the most part it will stock the titles that are currently best-sellers in the UK but it may not provide you with the opportunity to simply browse with a view to buying. There are also many English bookshops along the coast. They are very good and often have a good selection but once more the simple laws of business dictate that they basically stock the few titles which are currently bestsellers or they offer a very good selection of guide books, recipe books and tourist oriented titles. Where they can be very useful is that many do buy unwanted paperbacks and resell them.

Ultimately if you are an avid reader it would be better to have a computer and buy your books online from suppliers such as Amazon. We use them all the time and deliveries are usually within a week but it is not quite the same as browsing in a bookshop.

There are more limited selections of English language books available in branches of El Corte Ingles or FNAC.

Television

This is the one area in which communication has changed dramatically over the last few years. Television and radio today is almost totally digital and armed with the appropriate satellite receiving dish you can live here and enjoy all the programmes you might want to view or the radio stations you want to listen to no matter which country you originally come from. All you need is the appropriate viewing card to decode the signal. The various companies who supply viewing cards cannot supply them to a Spanish address but they can to a UK address. So you should maintain an official address in the UK until such time that the EU laws change to accommodate this new technology and allow free access to viewing cards whatever your address.

Radio

There are English language radio stations that broadcast on the coast but if you have a satellite dish you will also have access to all the UK radio stations.

Where I do have to ring warning bells is to advise anyone who comes to live here not to be ripped off by fellow Brits who run satellite installation services and who will install a satellite dish and charge you hundreds of pounds to provide a viewing card. So long as you have an address in the UK the appropriate card can be sent to that address – it may even be a free to view card – and if plugged into your decoder in Spain it should work perfectly at the moment. In fact now that many British television stations have been switched onto the Astra satellite, even a viewing card is not necessary – your satellite dish will pick up the signal. You should also avoid buying a card for your decoder locally. It could cost you a lot of money for something which is available to your UK address for very little and the chances are that the card is pirated anyway.

The other point which needs to be made is that in some new developments there will be television points in the main rooms but these will only be capable of receiving the stations which the urbanization has agreed to provide to its residents. There may be a total ban on the installation of your own, private satellite dish which would allow you to receive the stations you want to either watch or listen to should you have the appropriate viewing card. If you are buying new and television is important to you in your new life you must investigate what stations you might be able to receive. Ask the questions before you buy the property.

The whole question of satellite television reception is one which needs to be clarified by the various national authorities in the future. For the moment if you live here, satellite television is a reality. Continued access to the stations you watched back home is possible. It need not cost you a fortune but be careful about those who try to charge you a large amount of money for something you could have for a lot less or indeed something which might cost you nothing each month. Your only cost would then be the initial installation of the dish.

Telephone and mail

In this area you will be totally dependent on the services provided by your Spanish hosts on the Costa del Sol.

Telephone

The Spanish national telephone system, Telefonica, is excellent (most of the time). The actual service provided is the equal of if not better than the similar service provided by BT in the UK although there can be individual line problems. We were surprised by the fact that our normal telephone line in Spain has an automatic telephone answering service, which allowed us to reprogramme the message to incoming callers into an English language message. On the Costa del Sol you do not need a telephone answering machine. When there is a problem and that is infrequent, there is no problem in ringing Telefonica in order to speak to an English language operator.

There are also a number of telephone service providers who offer cheap rate calls between Spain and the rest of the world. These companies are worth contacting since they could save you money when you call your friends and family but it is not my place in this book to provide advertising material for them. Suffice to say, they exist and they are not difficult to find once you live here.

Spanish mobile services are excellent and offer all the facilities you might have expected in the UK whether you choose a monthly contract or a pay-as-you-go telephone. The one point worth repeating here is that it is not difficult to get a replacement chip for your existing phone in order to switch to the Spanish system. You do not need to buy a new telephone.

The postal system

The postal system is a different matter. In the UK, we have been spoiled by a world-class postal delivery service, which despite problems in recent years is still the service by which the rest of the world judges postal services.

This is not the case in Spain. The local post offices are geared to the official local population and where we live the queues in the post office can be very irritating – particularly in the lead up to Christmas. Letters are delivered to your home if you live in town but if you live in an area which is classified as being in the country the letters will only be delivered to one collection point and you then have to collect your mail from this point. There may not even be a collection point in which case you will need to have a post box address although these can be difficult to organise and in some areas there is a long waiting list. There is very little security at these communal collection points and therefore you can have the constant worry that someone may intercept your mail. If you know that mail is expected you look carefully for each delivery. If you do not expect mail you will never know whether it was delivered or not.

My answer to this has been very simple. I use e-mail whenever possible. In doing this I bypass the services of the post office and I know instantly whether or not my message has been received. I would encourage anyone who relocates here to have a computer and to use e-mail as their preferred means of communication.

Computers

There are very few of us who could survive in the modern world without computers. They provide access to our friends and to the outside world. They provide access to the Internet. When you live in Spain you really do need to have a computer that still talks in your language – a UK computer. The software will be in English. Access to the Internet will be in English and in real terms it will be no different from accessing your e-mail or going on the Internet in the UK – such is the wonder of modern communication. However, if you buy a computer here the software will almost certainly be in Spanish. The keyboard will be slightly different because Spanish is a language with accents over some letters and this has to be accommodated on the keyboard. You might have problems.

Therefore, when it comes to computer services, you need to find a computer expert locally who sorts out your problems, provides new software and organises e-mail or Internet access in English. Find the right person and you will have no problems in contact with the outside world in the long term. This person will be your lifeline on occasions.