Hello From Spain

Vanity ^ | 4/17/2017 | Oshkalaboomboom

[grey_whiskers]

From our terrace we can see the Mediterranean, the Sierra Nevada mountains and the whitewashed town.

Did you really mean to say Sierra Nevada?

Sounds like the title of a Clint Eastwood flick...

[onedoug]

Thanks so much for such an enjoyable a educational thread.

[Oshkalaboomboom]

What did I say wrong?

Sierra Nevada

[Cementjungle]

When I was a kid, my family lived in southern France (near Bordeaux) and one of my sisters has lived in England for the past 40 years. Never been to Spain though, but it sounds intriguing!

[Oshkalaboomboom]

Mexicans are nothing like Spaniards.

A Spaniard, Sergio Garcia, won the Masters last week. Rafael Nadal is one of the most successful tennis players in the world. Antonio Banderas, Penelope Cruz and Pedro Almodóvar are Hollywood power players. Cervantes wrote what is considered to be the first novel. Picasso and Dali are among the most recognized artists in history. Isabella financed the explorations that discovered the Americas. What is Mexico known for besides drugs and cheap labor?

[Oshkalaboomboom]

I am currently reading “The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise” to help get some of the historical facts ans rid myself of the propaganda I have been fed for 80 years, but mainly in the last eight.

Omeya Abd ar-Rahman I of Damascus, the founder of the Emirate of Cordoba, arrived in Almunecar from North Africa 15 August 755 to establish his Moorish kingdom. If you look closely at the first picture I posted you can see a cross on top of the first of 3 rocks sticking out into the sea. That was put up to commemorate the defeat of the Arabs, their surrender at Almuñécar and the beginning of Christian rule in 1489.

[Oshkalaboomboom]

If they had said at some random point they were withdrawing their troops, I could have accepted that. The fact that they completely bent to the will of the terrorists and did exactly what they were aiming for was inexcusable.

The bombings happened 3 days before national elections and the incompetent way the ruling party handled the bombings turned the tide towards the party that had been opposed to having troops from the start. I remember seeing video after video of charred and disfigured bodies, videos that got leaked and infuriated the people who ended up punishing the ruling party. Once they were turned out of office the winners just did what they said they would do before any troops were sent in.

[Oshkalaboomboom]

When traveling to the big cities, beware the pick pockets. They are everywhere.

Barcelona is recognized as the pickpocket capital of Europe and thanks to the relaxed travel standards of the EU thieves come there from all over to make their fortunes.

[Oshkalaboomboom]

On American politics and society...what a mess with his woman. She thinks she knows everything about America (we are inferior in every way) and Trump is the devil. She thinks Europe is Utopia. I am a RACIST I learned because I’m not crazy about Islam and they have muslim friends! I’m stupid because I believe in God. We have too much free thought and speech. My cooking and diet are incorrect. Talk about being buttonholed...It was terrible and rather shocking, too. It was downright disrespectful. I felt like I had been subjected to a re-education camp.

He could have found a girl who thinks all of that and more by visiting any American college campus and saved himself the money for a flight.

[Yardstick]

Wow, I gotta say, that sounds really nice. Did I read right that you can get private health insurance there? Are there plenty of private hospitals and doctors with private practices? Or do the same doctors and hospitals serve both the private and public markets...in other words all that changes is who’s paying? How does quality of care compare between the private and public systems? How does quality of care compare to our system?

I hate to say it but sometimes I think the Europeans may have figured out a pretty decent approach to healthcare. You don’t do a dysfunctional mishmash of public and private where you get the worst aspects of both, as in Obamacare. You also don’t do draconian single payer with no private alternative as in the other Anglophone countries. Instead you have parallel public and private systems that stay in their own lanes and play to their strengths in their different roles.

[cynwoody]

We have our own ‘Spain’ here. Hopefully the wall will come up soon and hold back the invading ‘Spaniards’.

The Spanish did a lot of damage to the New World before TR finally kicked them out in 1898.

Spanish culture is why Latin America is a mess.

[cynwoody]

He likes to play in traffic

She must be really hot!

[grey_whiskers]

Wow. Must’ve been the Nevada part that got me. :-)

[Oshkalaboomboom]

I personally haven’t been to a doctor for anything other than routine visits in many years but my wife, who has experienced the NHS, 10 years of American doctors and now the Spanish system says that her private doctor is paid by our insurance while tests she gets through her S1 get her sent to the local clinic. So far she has been happy. The only glitch was that when we first moved here she wanted a mammogram and they told her she had to be a paying customer for six months first. Since then everything has been fine. She pays less money for her prescriptions here than she did in the States, even counting the cheap stuff you can get from Walmart, Kroger, etc.

[rlmorel]

I know...for me, a difference without a distinction.

[MomwithHope]

How I would have loved to walk the camino!

[Oshkalaboomboom]

A real beach... with sand? Is it really possible to enter the water, swim out a little way, come back, and then sunbath on the delicious sand for a few hours - maybe while enjoying an ice cream purchased from the nearby kiosk?

When we went out shopping this morning I stopped along the road and took a picture of the beach so you could get an idea what it is like.

The large rock in a straight line with the house with the red ductwork on top is the first of those 3 rocks you can see from our terrace. You can see another rocky outcrop directly in front of the house. Just on the other side of those rocks is where we go and the distance from where we lay out to the large rock is 1 kilometer. You can see there are hotels, apartments, shops and restaurants all along the beach area. There are also several more kilometers of beach on the other side of the large rock. None of those beaches are the one we go to when the pictured beach gets crowded. That one is in the other direction.

[Oshkalaboomboom]

It’s good that you stay out of politics, though. In some there is a mixture of jealousy and hatred for America.

Not all of the locals dislike America or DJT

[Oshkalaboomboom]

Wow. Must’ve been the Nevada part that got me. :-)

Sounds like the title of a Clint Eastwood flick...

Sergio Leone shot 5 spaghetti westerns in Spain including Eastwood's Fistful of Dollars, For A Few Dollars More and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. The town he built for TGTB&TU is still there and they put on reenactments for tourists.

[Comment Not Approved]

You know what you are talking about. I’ve got some stories to tell. Even a wallet in your front pocket is not deterrent enough. I used Travel Smith clothing with hidden pockets and a neck wallet.