Hello. This is my first blog post of 2011. Happy New Year, I hope you had a wonderful Christmas with family and friends, whether in Andalucia, the UK or elsewhere. I was fortunate enough to avoid the snow and ice travel chaos when I flew to England before Christmas by the skin of my teeth, arriving…

This is my last post until Christmas, and until after the New Year too, as the nice folk here at andalucia.com have given me next week off. I'm going back to the UK for a few weeks, so a very Happy Christmas to all Spain-dwellers who are enjoying a sunny Andalucian Christmas, and who will be…

Hi, Sarah here again. I’m back on the blog to comment on something which has affected me over my time here, much more than I had anticipated. I arrived in Andalucia, as you may remember from my blog photo, with bright blonde hair and blue eyes. I stood out like a sore thumb in contrast to the dark…

My first blog of this year was about the weather, so it's kind of appropriate that one of my last is too. Sarah will be blogging again this Monday - if you're female, have blonde hair, and/or have ever suffered comments from Spanish men, then don't miss it - and then there'll be a final 2010 post…

Drinks at weekly organic market in the Alameda, Sevilla Today I'm going to talk about food, which is an obsession in Andalucia, in case you didn't know. And more specifically, food markets. Farmer's markets and organic produce are both part of life in the UK and US, and have been for some years now…

It's been an amazing week or so for news, wherever you live in the world, and even more so for those of us who call Spain our home. Julian Assange was arrested in London, refused bail and put in prison, after his company, Wikileaks, released 250,000 classified documents sent by US diplomats which…

A few years ago I was sent to El Vacie, a notorious chabola (shanty town) in the north of Sevilla, to research a news story. It was about a gitana (gypsy woman) who claimed to be the oldest woman in Spain - she had just celebrated her 116th birthday. Several friends warned me strongly against going…

Ask for a bail-out, that is. Zapatero is full of the "We're fine, thank you very much", while Economy Minister Elena Salgado tells us the banks' improved transparency, as insisted by the Bank of Spain, is working (and soon they'll have to spill the beans on how up to their necks in unpaid property…

Unless you're fluent in Spanish when you come here to Andalucia - whether to live, or to have a holiday or extended stay (to write that novel, for example) - speaking the lingo is one of the biggest challenges, but also one of the most essential skills for starting a new life, making friends, and…

Few characters are as closely associated with Seville as Carmen. The Town Hall has been holding a programme of events dedicated to famous (fictional) local personajes, entitled Mitos de Sevilla, of which the much-loved gitana is the first; next year it's Don Juan's turn. One of these events is…