* The fact it's riven with deep-seated regional hatreds and that no-one considers themselves Spanish, or speaks the goddamn language.

heh, you should go to manchester or liverpool sometime.

Girona Airport, which makes it so easy to go to southern France

Hi chasbo - good to welcome a new sevillista! I was a season ticket holder at the Sanchez Pizjuan for a few years either side of their last promotion, and indeed it was a great place to watch football. The Sevilla-Betis derbies in particular were electric stuff ... Enjoy the following: El himno delcentenario ... the hated Don Manuel, something a bit more mellow, the traditional anthem and remembering Antonio Puerta ...

Thanks for the links - the traditional anthem is a jaunty little number! Must confess i am a bit of a La Liga tart. My affections are shared between Atletico and Sevilla plus a few longing looks towards Bilbao.

The Pizjuan looks to be a magical place to watch football, a far cry from the sterile Premier league experience. A lusty rendition of vamos mi sevilla is probably one of the best chants you can hear

Sorry, Spain lovers, but all of the good stuff is washed away by that balding bastard who flogs holiday homes in that bloody awful advert they always run on Sky, leering at us from a backdrop of swimming pools, golf courses and huge villa complexes. Git.

" The fact it's riven with deep-seated regional hatreds and that no-one considers themselves Spanish, or speaks the goddamn language."

um... Liq... you might want to think a bit about the country you're shortly to be moving to, in this regard?

The trouble with Spain

It's boiling bastard hot
They have no concept of vegetarianism

It's a shame cos so many bits of it look so pretty, but I couldn't exist in those temperatures.

You could try Galicia or the Basque Country for the heat (assuming you don't mind rain).

You don't eat cheese, do you? That's a rather more serious problem.

PS to Spangles: thanks for telling him; I couldn't bring myself to do so.

Lyra wrote:

QUOTE:
It's boiling bastard hot.

Not for most of the year. In fact, the middle bit gets well brass-monkeys in the winter.

True about the vegetarian thing, though. Ad hoc's lived there, and he must have coped--though he was in Valencia, I think, where at least they do eat a lot of (very good) veg, and can probably leave the meat out if you ask nicely.

Other bits of Spain: not so good. Andalucians are only interested in veg they can put in cold soup, and as for Castilians, they seem to occasionally use them to add flavour to their beloved roast tiny-baby-animal limbs, but otherwise not really bother.

It always vaguely mystifies me when people go on about the temperature in places as a reason not to live there ... I'm sure others can top this, but my personal extremes are (1) 47C in a Seville summer - solution = walk slowly in the shade and shower a couple more times a day ... (2) -30C in a Lodz winter - solution = wrap up well and don't leave any food near the window ... No problem ...

Why wouldn't you leave food near the window when it's really cold?

It freezes

What are polish windows made of? How many sheets of glass? I didn't conduct exhaustive testing when it was that cold here, but it didn't feel like anywhere inside the flat was below freezing.

Not to interfere with a football-related post, but do any of our resident Spaniards have some background on Bojan's apparent request to Aragones that he not be included in the Euro squad for "personal reasons"?

Has Raul paid him off?

Apparently, they are reporting that Bojan asked not to be selected, alleging personal problems, ie anxiety attacks. Curious that it should happen to him and also Jesus Navas. The other thing with Bojan is that I think he's still eligible for Serbia ...

The latter is what I was wondering about.

Bojan has played several times for Spain U-21, but never been in a full Spanish squad (and, I think, is therefore eligible to switch countries). Aragones called him up once, but he was injured at the time.

There's definitely something going on here.