Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Easy to be disillusioned

I don't know what others expected when they moved to Spain. It was easy to be swayed by the promises that the salespeople made on our inspection trips. They would have us believe that Spain was a form of paradise. In order to sell houses, salespeople propagated the myth that this is a land of plenty where the sun shines every day; a place where crime is so low, it is insignificant and that we will be eternally happy living here.

Of course the reality is somewhat different to that which the salespeople described. In truth, Spain is no different to any other country. It doesn't escape economic crisis, nor are its people blessed with a sanctity any different to that of other nationalities. Of course there is crime, the cost of living goes up and - yes it does rain.

Having been here for a few years, it is easy to understand why some people might feel that they were sold short. Take the example of our urbanisation. We were told that the builder finished his devel0pments to a high standard. The reality is that parts of the estate are still like a building site. We were told that we would have telephones - we waited three years for those. Some are still living with cracked walls, gates that won't close and terraces that look like skateboard parks.

Life at Villas Andrea isn't quite what we expected nor is it what we were sold. However, from what I read in the papers, we are a lot better off than other urbanisations that don't even have a proper supply of electricity and water. Perhaps we are being ungrateful. Perhaps we were expecting too much.

The cutting off of Telmicro hasn't helped. People feel that they were conned into paying for a system that was illegal and therefore was always under threat of closing down. Months later and many still have no television to watch.

Neither have the series of break-ins to people's houses helped. Naturally, we are all nervous now about leaving our properties for fear of what we might return to. When burglars start pulling your house to pieces to break in and then trash the place to steal a few euros and some jewellery, you despair. Just what steps do we need to take to secure our homes?

As hard as it may be, we need to try and put these negative aspects to one side and look to the positive benefits of our move to Spain and I don't just mean the sun. There are lots of things to celebrate about our new lives in Bigastro. We shouldn't loose sight of those and become so disillusioned that we begin to regret living here.

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