Mistakes expats make in Spain

Our early mistakes were mainly linguistic.  Many years ago when we were struggling to learning Spanish, we were invited to visit the home of some new friends.  They served some excellent local cheese and my wife asked what it was.  They explained it was from a local cooperative called Coinga.  She decided to buy some and the next day at the supermarket cheese counter, struggling to remember what it was called, my wife asked for "Una medio kilo de conya."   This was much to the amusement of the lady behind the counter who politely advised her of the error. 
However, our biggest mistake was to get involved in the hospitality industry.  We were trying somewhat unsuccessfully to make a living as artists.  It was a struggle so when we were asked if we would like to take over a large bar/restaurant with free accommodation above, we ignored the fact that we had no experience whatsoever in catering or running a bar, we rashly said yes.  The bar was run down with hardly any passing trade and just a handful of locals, so we had our work cut out to get it off the ground.  We used every trick in the book with party nights, gourmet evenings, quiz nights, and a monthly car boot sale in the very large car park. Two years later the place was buzzing and was considered a fun place to be.  But on the down side, my wife and I were totally burnt out.  The hours were incredibly long and all we wanted to do was sleep.   We eventually  recognised that if we continued to work this hard, our marriage was doomed, so we sadly decided to hand it over to others.  We eventually moved to France only returning  to Menorca after a gap of 20 years.  Today we have the greatest respect for people running bars and restaurants and are now able to avoid the most embarrassing linguistic bear traps.

The list is probably too long for a single post  but just one, about builders. Don't believe any single person about how good builders are especially if that person has used the builder in question.

So, if an architect or a technical architect or a plumber tells you that such and such builder is OK they may be. Or it may be that it's their brother in law, best friend or whatever.

If someone has used a builder and the job was terrible most people won't say so. After all if they chose someone who was awful they're going to look like a right fathead if they paid out good money to someone who was useless and then tell you. So they'll say the builder was fine.

So if you want to find a decent builder ask as many people as you can and go on the average.

Actually, when I think about it you probably shouldn't believe much that other expats tell you about any Spanish processes. I've heard so much nonsense about paying taxes and driving licences for instance that it would fill a very long post.

Ask as many people as you can, try to find something official and recent and then take a best guess as to who knows what they are talking about. And, bear in mind, that if you live in Spain then you live in Spain. Most of the processes that you have to go throiugh will be the same as for a Spaniard so there shouldn't be very much you do via a country 2,000 kilometres away

You cannot judge the climate properly from websites. 

Spain is hugely colder and damper in winter than we expected, especially as the great majority of houses are neither designed for cold nor retro fitted to heat them efficiently.  And we are south of the middle line, near the coast.  We did expect some chill, but not for the 'feel factor' to be so low. We should have packed more winter clothes!

We located ourselves for sunshine and didn't consider wind. So on lovely sunny days we sit inside, with the heating on, looking out, because the wind is too brisk and cold.

We didn't look into the official aspects, eg NIE etc, early enough. If we had we could have started the ball rolling sooner on some.  Things can take ages here. We knew that and didn't allow enough for it. 

We made the mistake of assuming Spain would be at the same level as northern Europe with internet. Maybe in the cities it is.

We didn't anticipate just how built up the coast is with high rise blocks, we thought it was only places like Benidorm.