Living in Spain

towns hold animal processions and fairs featuring livestock and pets. Photo credit: OSCAR GONZALEZ FUENTES/Shutterstock Madrid is preparing for one of its most beloved winter traditions: the Festividad de San Antón, dedicated to San Antonio Abad, the patron saint of animals. This year the celebrations will take place from January 13-18, with the main events centred on the weekend of  …

A massive fireball lit up the sky over west London on Sunday evening, January 11, after a fierce blaze broke out at a recycling centre on Johnson Street in Southall. The dramatic incident sent thick plumes of smoke billowing across the area, triggering widespread travel chaos, particularly on rail services linking central London to Heathrow Airport. The London Fire Brigade …

The Fehmarnbelt Fixed Link, one of Europe’s most ambitious infrastructure projects, is steadily taking shape beneath the Baltic Sea, promising to revolutionise travel between Denmark and Germany. The 18-kilometre immersed tube tunnel will connect Rødbyhavn on Denmark’s Lolland Island with Puttgarden on Germany’s Fehmarn Island. Unlike bored tunnels such as the Channel Tunnel, this structure is assembled from massive prefabricated …

Sierra Nevada isn’t just about snow and slopes, the region is also a rich natural habitat. Photo credit: Molly Grace If you’re dreaming of a snowy Christmas ambiance this year, Sierra Nevada offers the perfect escape for families seeking that magical winter feeling. Even if the snow isn’t fully settled by December, the resort village of Pradollano comes alive with …

One of the biggest surprises was how accessible many Spanish camps are. Photo credit: Morgan Michelle Santana Interest among American families in culturally immersive summer camps in Spain is growing, driven by rising costs in the United States, a desire for meaningful language exposure and the power of social media to surface alternative education pathways. What was once a niche …

Severe weather from Storm Emilia created the journey from hell for passengers and their cars on a ferry between Algeciras in the south of Spain and Ceuta, the Spanish enclave on the north coast of Africa. The journey only usually takes one hour, but the sea in the Strait of Gibraltar tossed the 3,500-tonne ferry around like an inflatable dinghy. …

Torremolinos, Costa del Sol. Credit: Chris Dorney – Shutterstock We don’t define language ourselves. We use it to communicate. “The sky is blue”, for example, is universally considered the truth (at least on the Costa del Sol).  We need to use these general terms we all understand in order to be understood in any conversation. “The sky is purple”, for …

Image may exaggerate what really happened. Photo credit: Molly Grace’s wild imagination Cádiz staged Spain’s largest-ever tsunami drill on November 20, sending a mass emergency alert to thousands of mobile phones along Spain’s Atlantic ‘Costa de la Luz’. As part of Respuesta 25, the regional government simulated a 7.6-magnitude earthquake similar to the 1755 Lisbon event. More than 20,000 people …

The figures represent a major boost for a country that has been contending with prolonged drought. Photo credit: Juan Enrique del Barrio/Shutterstock Spain’s water reserves have experienced their most significant recovery in months after the passage of Storm Claudia, which brought widespread rainfall across virtually the entire country last week. According to the latest weekly update from the Ministry for …

The leader of Spain’s conservative Popular Party (PP), Alberto Nuñez Feijoo, has recently promoted a comprehensive, harder-line immigration plan that could fundamentally dismantle the current path to legal residency for long-term undocumented immigrants.  Central to his proposal is a drastic tightening of the “Arraigo” (residency by roots) system, with the idea of making it strictly conditional on having regular work …