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Catalonia is the triangular, Maryland-sized “autonomous community” that defines mainland Spain’s northeast corner. Its capital, Barcelona, attracts visitors from around the globe. Girona, Figueres, Lérida and other Catalonia urbs get less international attention. Catalans speak Spanish, even if some wish they didn’t, and a language of their own: Catalan, the mother tongue of roughly a…
Madrid’s subway is now sometimes crowded. Not as crowded as before the pandemic, true; I haven’t wriggled aboard a stuffed-to-the-stanchions car since early 2020, never now see riders forced to disembark to allow others to get off, as described in my first pandemic post. Official stats claim only 61.2% of pre-pandemic ridership. But, sometimes, crowded.…
(First, huge thanks to fellow expat Jim Forbes for passing along this information. I had given up hope.) Comunidad.Madrid now permits elderly vaccine seekers to book appointments online! Here’s how: (♦) Go to https://www.comunidad.madrid/covid-19 (♦) Scroll past the likely-familiar text on this page until you discover an unfamiliar gray rectangular box: (Para colectivos especificos means ‘for…
One unheralded day in 1992, among the young pines on the southern banks of Spain’s Buendía reservoir, Madrileños Eulogio Reguillo and Jorge Maldonado hoisted chisels to sandstone to commence the sculpture shown above. La Monja, they called it; they started a second sculpture, and a third. Twenty sculptures and bas-reliefs now grace the woodsy, 1.5…
5/4/2021: Please see the unhappy update at post end. I’ll update again if I learn more. 5/27/2021: I have an appointment! Please see: https://transitophile.com/chango/covid-19-vaccine-for-expats-in-madrid/ I write to share the little I know. Or think I know. Will your embassy help? Mine won’t. Neither will the UK, Australia or New Zealand embassies, if it’s any consolation.…
… before climbing aboard my L.A.-to-Madrid one way flight in 2016. Fourteen out of many, many more. I launched my personal vocabulary list in my Tracy hotel room on the day I learned that I’d qualified for a Spain visa. The list is now seventy-two pages long, regularly updated, includes about 3,500 entries. Of those…
“My God, these people are speaking Gallego!” These were the thoughts that ran through this not-entirely-acculturated Yankee’s noggin while waiting my turn at the Día Basquiños supermarket in Santiago de Compostela. I hadn’t eaten since morning, had wandered far from the tourist quarter in search of a vendor that would sell staples to lug back…
Ironically, the Madrid Metro I ride during the pandemic is the best I have used since my move here in 2016. Some travelers fear the subway now, have sought alternatives. Public transit ridership in Spain fell forty percent this summer; sales of polluting old cars rose. I reap a dividend: the commuter now gridlocked on…
Three days, 9/29 – 10/1, from Madrid to Jerez de la Frontera, Cádiz, Marbella, Almería, Cartagena, Alicante, Valencia, then back to Madrid. All behind the wheel of a rental car. “But why didn’t you take the AVE train for part of the trip?” Spaniards may wonder. “It goes to Sevilla and Valencia. 300 km/h!” Good…
Thanks to Covid-19, the in-person language exchange I last hosted at Madrid’s VIPs Velásquez has become a not-in-person international event online, with regular log-ins from three continents. Every weekend I greet familiar faces signing in from Madrid, Barcelona, London, Toronto, New York, Santiago, Buenos Aires, Houston, Chicago, Mexico City, Los Angeles. One faithful user joins…