If you are either already living in Spain and want to compare you own experience with mine - or you are thinking of moving here - you might enjoy reading the following. Please note that these are not to be taken too seriously. If you disagree strongly [or even weakly] with what I have written, feel free to tell me so on colindavies@terra.es
After I had been in Spain only a few months, I recorded my initial observations. This is the link to them. If you are Spanish and sensitive, please note the caveats I make in the introduction.... Initial Observations on Spain
If you feel that these are insufficiently positive, then I offer, firstly, my own list of Spain's positives and, secondly, this article by John Carlin in recompense..... Spain - The Place to Live
And here is something else offered in compensation, written after I had been reproached [by Spaniards] for depreciating Spain....Spain v. The Rest of the World
Here, in like vein, is a page of quotations on Spain and the Spanish..... The Spanish - Selected quotes from domestic and foreign observers
Since mid November 2003, my observations on life here have been published on the
following blog site:- Thoughts
from Galicia
Unless you live on the Costa del Sol - or have taken the decision to move there - you may find my somewhat jaundiced view of that coast of some interest.... The Costa del Sol
Here's a little bit about George Barrow....... According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, he was born in 1803, in Norfolk, England and died in 1881, in Oulton Broad, wherever that is. He was, in short, an "English traveller, linguist, and one of the most imaginative prose writers of the 19th century." In more detail... "Borrow was the son of a professional soldier and led a wandering childhood as his father's regiment was moved around the British Isles; these peregrinations inspired memorable passages in his masterpiece, Lavengro (1851). Between 1815 and 1818 he attended grammar school at Norwich, and it was here that he began to acquire a smattering of many languages. An attempt to apprentice him to the law proved unsuccessful, and early in 1824 he decided to try his luck in London. There he remained for about a year. At length his health collapsed, and he went on a long bohemian pilgrimage through rural England. His adventures, including many contacts with Gypsies, provided some of the background for Lavengro and The Romany Rye (1857). He strayed back again, however, to Norwich, where he completed Romantic Ballads, translated from the Danish (1826). In Spain, while working for a Bible society, he found his literary homeland, whence came the raw materials for The Zincali: An Account of the Gypsies in Spain (1841) and for his brilliantly picturesque, yet highly informative, travel book The Bible in Spain (1842). Its success was “instantaneous and overwhelming.”
By his own admission, George wasn’t terribly successful at pushing Bibles in Spain. But he did have a great time, falling in love with the country and its people in the process. “She is”, he wrote, “the most magnificent country in the world. And I have found much that is noble and to be admired amongst the Spanish people, who have always treated me with kindness and courtesy”.
The Bible is hard to get hold of in book form but you can download the text from:-
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=415
Talking of writers, here's a list of Spanish authors cited by Michael Jacobs in his entertaining book, "Between Hopes and Memories: A Spanish Journey"