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Irritating little things about living in Spain

30K views 251 replies 45 participants last post by  tonysbs 
#1 ·
Ok I give in lets start a doom and gloom list

Things I DONT like about Spain

I will start , Again !

Spanish paper work -- hate it always something missing !!

Next please

Cheers Tony
 
#53 ·
I think they're slowly getting less willing to put up with it. We were in the bank a few months ago when there were long queues and a Spanish lady stormed into the Manager's office and gave him a real earful, after which he emerged rather red faced, took his jacket off and went behind the counter and started serving customers. Wonderful to watch!:D
 
#57 ·
Santander and BBVA both have machines where one can pay utility bills and various others automatically without standing in the queues. Natch, they give a receipt and change.
Now that is a good idea. I suppose there could still be some people who don't like to use machines (my 90 year old aunt won't even use the cash machine but gets one of us to draw her money out for her).
 
#58 ·
Maybe, just maybe utility companies can broaden their horizons slightly and allow online payments and banks can actually let you do some banking.
No doubt there will always be some who oppose such a thing but I don't see any reasonable excuse not to be able to pay your bills, fines etc... online.
Seems to work elsewhere.
 
#62 ·
I pay everything online, been years since I went inside a bank, I remember while living in the UK I had to spend my lunch hour queueing at the bank or Post Office to pay bills, so decided to do it all online, I don't know the queues in Spanish banks as I never go to any.

I miss the 'cash-back' facility in Spain.. Pah!
 
#64 ·
You do, but I like the facility there is here whereby if you notify the bank within 2 weeks that a direct debit has been taken from your account which you did not want to pay, they will take the money back and recredit it to your account. I did that when an insurance company took the annual premium from my account after I'd sent them the required 2 months' notice in writing that I didn't want to renew the policy, and it worked well. I don't know if that also applies to the utility companies or not.
 
#68 ·
I've just read through ALL the posts on this thread. What a miserable moaning lot you are!

Bank queues - what queues? maybe one or two in front of you with whom you haven't had a chat for ages.
Can't pay this or that in the bank? - no problems, can pay anything and have DDs with no difficulty.
Speed bumps? - no problem provided you reduce your speed, which is what they are there for.
Vehicles double 'parking' while the driver has a chat? - you can't meet up with everybody in the bank or at the health centre.
Customer service? - no problems, we always get good service, even in the post-office now (but there is a secret!)

Relax, don't be in such a hurry, life is too short to be forever rushing about and getting yourself all worked up. One of the reasons we moved here was to get rid of stress.

:D :cool: :relax:
 
#75 ·
Irritating things?

Newspapers that insist on publishing stories about Spain that have little or no truth in order to boost demand for their rag, be it to boost sales revenue or, in the case of freebies, advertising revenue. They have no thought for the impact such stories have on the gullible public who then do not travel or change their travel plans so that businesses, and the people they employ, who depend on tourists for their livelihood are left struggling.

People who pick up on those stories and believe them hook line and sinker, retell them and even adapt them to include themselves as victims (Munchausen's syndrome).
 
#82 ·
My gripe is the staff at my local Mercadona. It is not unusual for the person serving me to talk loudly to another cashier, nonstop, while processing my shopping and my payment as though I'm invisible and then do exactly the same with the next customer. At the Consum supermarket on an English urbanisation, the staff are completely different and smile, say hello, good morning or whatever and then thank you as you go.
 
#89 ·
What drives me nuts here in Jaca is the tourists in August who constantly blow through the zebra crossings with blinders on. I often look to see if they are looking in their rear view mirror when I flip them off or if they have their window down hen I call them a gilipollas.
 
#91 ·
It is where we live. The weekenders here have little respect for anything but the locals are very respectful. Jaca, normally 12000, swells to 40,000 in August but it is only for one month. A friend owns a frutería and complains constantly about customers not respecting the (do not handle the fruit ) signs or sampling the fruit. This place is a madhouse in August with all the second home people. The rest of the year makes up for it though. For 11 months we have very few vecinos.
 
#95 ·
I'm hoping that Spanish drivers are warned when they go to the UK that pedestrians have right of way on crossings - they don't appear to in Spain.

Also, like roundabouts, crossings are seen as a handy place to park.

And the pavement just by the crossings is just the right place for the old boys to stand and chat and smoke - looking for all the world like they are about to cross - but they're not.
 
#99 ·
Keeping with the driving theme...

Having to look through your sun roof or peer at a 90' angle through your steering wheel to see when the lights have changed.

Driving through the town centre with your eyes peeled so that you don't mow down the young pedestrian lemmings. These town dwelling creatures spend most of their time hanging around lorries that are parked either side of a crossing. As you approach they march straight out in front of you and give you the stern "hey, I'm crossing here!" look as you screech to a stop.

Then there are the sloth crosses. These are a cousin of the lemmings in that they also tend to be young but this bread are hypnotised by the small flat shiny object that they hold in front of their face. They shuffle across the road at an average speed of 2 miles a day and any attempt to communicate with them through waving, shaking of the head or throwing your arms up in the air will be futile as is any form of verbal communication as they have their ears plugged to negate this very possibility.
 
#102 · (Edited)
Ok, can’t shop in the afternoon, meh, queuing at the bank, sigh, having to take time off to see the guy at the town hall that is only there for half an hour a week, yawn…..I think you guys haven’t fully grasped what is REALLY annoying about life in Spain….the TV adverts!!!

In the UK I got pretty good at guessing how long the ad break would be and could channel hop until my internal clock said “your 3 minutes are up, time to go back” and sure enough, I’d hit the sweet spot where they were just about to fade back in. But seriously, who in the name of the Lord is in charge of the adverts in Spain? I’ve noticed on one channel that there are two lengths to the ad breaks, 6 minutes (which they will happily tell you) and 15 minutes (which they don’t). They clearly have never heard of the fade button and I used to think this was a deliberate ploy to keep you tuned. They would go to the adverts half way through a sentence, something like “So in light of all the evidence it is my conclusion that the murderer is….merca-dooooona, merca-dona!” aaahhhh!! The problem was, after 15 minutes of ads the program would restart so abruptly that you would miss what he said. But that’s not the most annoying thing, oh no!

Having come back from the adverts I spotted how long the program was on for before going back to the ads. “Can you believe it, that was maybe 4 minutes of program?”, then it was two minutes and then we had the “one program break to rule them all!”…..5 seconds!!!!! So having waited 15 minutes for the program to restart, there were 5 seconds of show and then another 15 minutes of ads…..ahhhhhhhhh!!!!

It was then that I came to the only logical conclusion which was that the person in charge of when the advert breaks started and finished was in fact a cat, walking across a keyboard. No human would have 5 seconds of show sandwiched between 30 minutes of adverts and as lovable as they are, they make rubbish TV controllers.
 
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