The Spaniards in Britain who support Brexit

Originally published by El País

“Not all countries are equal,” says Antonio Javier Saborit López, a Spanish national working in the construction sector in London, and one of a surprising number of Spaniards living in the UK who back Brexit.

At 41, Antonio says he is old enough to remember a time when wages and living standards were better. Large influxes of EU migrants to better-off countries such as the UK are to blame, he says, for worsening them. And despite having made a life in Britain for nearly four years – thanks to the very EU freedom of movement he now opposes – he says he would have voted for Brexit had he held a British passport.

“The change has been terrible,” he says. “Everything has doubled, except wages. On top of that, I think every country should have control over its borders. Freedom of movement has proven to be a disaster.”

His views are more widespread than one might think. While much has been made of British nationals on the Spanish costas counterintuitively backing Brexit, there also appears to be a small but significant minority of UK-based Spaniards in parallel situations who feel the same way.

“I saw Nigel Farage talking about the European Union and, sincerely, I liked what he had to say,” says Ana Belén Vecino, a caterer who lives in London with her husband. “[The pro-Brexit lobby] had a great campaign and fought for their objective.”

The 34-year-old Podemos supporter from Madrid believes EU-led austerity measures in many European countries, including Spain, risk “enslaving” future generations. In her opinion, the Brexit vote is a reaction to the EU’s neoliberal economic policies, and was a “slap in the face” for Brussels, while weakening the power of its policymakers.

“Here [in Britain] I have seen many people protest against the cuts to the NHS [National Health Service] and about the money they were sending to the EU. And I know people who complained because they had to follow the orders of someone in Brussels.This is the reason I am happy about Brexit, because it has been a slap in the face for the EU. The UK was a heavyweight economic power in the EU and in losing it the EU has lost power.”

Ana, who came to the UK three years ago for work, expects Britain and the country of her birth to strike a deal, meaning she and her fellow Spaniards will be able to stay, so she isn’t worried about being forced to leave London come March 2019. Construction worker Antonio agrees. He expects Britain to gain from Brexit and doesn’t believe his circumstances in the UK will materially change because of the close relationship between Spain and his adopted nation. “I think the problem is worse for Eastern European countries,” he says, highlighting the fact that fairly few Brits live in Romania and Bulgaria, while many have made their homes on the Costa del Sol.

For other pro-Brexit Spaniards, Britain’s historically detached approach toward the EU is why they would have voted to leave if they’d had the chance – despite the likely personal cost.

One London-based finance worker, who requested anonymity, says: “In my opinion the British have never fully identified with the European project, which has the ultimate objective of greater integration between states.”

The 32-year-old, originally from the Canary Islands, adds: “They have always shown attitudes at odds with the rest of the member states on issues of sovereignty and greater integration, and I sense they have always been within the union but as close to the fringes as possible.

“For this reason, there have been many projects that the EU has not been able to make progress with for decades because one negative vote paralyses everything. So I think it’s best, since the British have never felt 100% part of the project, that they are out of it.”

He adds that he expects Brexit to impact negatively on him through possible changes to healthcare and rights to work, especially if Britain pursues a so-called “hard Brexit,” but insists this won’t change his opinion.

Many UK-based Spaniards emphasize that the pro-Brexit stance of some of their compatriots represents a minority. Interestingly, however, a few also stress that although they do not support Brexit, they can see advantages to it.

Some echo the concerns outlined above about Britain never really feeling like it was part of the EU, while others point out that leaving may put the brakes on the neoliberal momentum of the union. Several mainstream commentators, for example, believed the collapse of talks last year over the TTIP trade agreement between the EU and the US was in part a response to the shock of Brexit. The controversial Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership deal, which critics said meant scrapping regulation to meet the demands of big business, appeared to be dead in the water last August – less than two months after the pro-isolationist Brexit vote.

London bus driver Ginés Martínez, who goes by the name “Guinness” in the UK, says some EU immigrants to Britain abuse freedom of movement in order to claim benefits – even though they have no interest in staying in the long term.

Though he wouldn’t have voted for Brexit, he says: “I think Brexit is good for people like me who come to make lives for ourselves instead of taking advantage of the system.”

The 34-year-old adds: “If people who abuse the system are not in the system, I think it would benefit those who use the system legally, no? Brexit turns off the tap to those who use freedom of movement to do what they want on a whim.”

Even some of those vehemently opposed to Britain’s EU exit see a silver lining. One woman, who works in finance for a US company based in London, says she welcomes the fact her firm will probably move most of its staff to a major EU city where living costs are likely to be cheaper.

The 34-year-old, who asked to remain anonymous, says: “It would benefit us a lot to move to almost any other European city, where with the same salary we would have a better quality of life.”

“Many people want to move to other countries so they can live better and save some money – something that in London right now is impossible. It’s a shame because it is a great city, but it has no quality of life.”

It may or may not be true that, as Antonio puts it, “not all countries are equal.” Yet in UK cities as well as on the Spanish costas, there are clearly people in favor of something that risks significantly disrupting their lives. Britain and Spain, it seems, are equal in this respect at least.

Why is Catalonia the Spanish region pressing hardest for independence?

Originally published by El País

In a small northern corner of Spain, millions speak a language few people off the Iberian Peninsula will ever have heard of. Like Spanish but noticeably distinctive, it’s taught in schools and features in newspapers as well as on road signs and radio shows. What’s more, it underpins a strong regional identity that means many people in the region don’t feel the least bit Spanish.

The place is Galicia, one of Spain’s many provinces with a unique personality in the country’s diverse mix of regional identities. With 95% of residents speaking the local lingo, Galicia joins the Basque Country and Catalonia as one of the most prominent parts of Spain to consider itself a little different. Yet for some reason, right now, just one of these big three is threatening to tear away.

Support for independence in Catalonia has trebled in the past 12 years, growing from around 13% in 2005 to as much as 44% now, according to opinion polls. This dramatic shift is partly a consequence of economic turmoil in the wake of the 2007 financial crisis, coupled with a sense that wealthy Catalonia, responsible for a fifth of Spain’s gross domestic product, bankrolls poorer parts of the country.

It also speaks to the success of a concerted effort on the part of regional leaders to use the tools of government to nudge people in their favored direction. The culmination of all this is a promised referendum slated for October 1 this year, which has deepened tensions with Madrid where the central government has declared the poll unconstitutional. It also comes three years after another unofficial referendum left then-leader Artur Mas fined and barred from public office for two years.

Galicia is causing the Spanish government no such trouble, and it’s partly thanks to history. Today only about one in five Galicians, or gallegos, supports independence, even though nearly all speak the regional language. According to Dr Alejandro Quiroga, an expert on Spanish history at Newcastle University, this is partly because the region has historically been poorer than Catalonia, meaning it is far more common for Galicians to leave their native land for work. And so a more sympathetic attitude toward immigration – be that from inside Spain or abroad – has been embedded in the regional psyche.

Dr Quiroga says: “It’s about the society that is created out of the lack of industry and in many ways the relationship the society has with immigrants. And in this case, Galicians are immigrants themselves so they don’t have the figure of the national other in the same way that you have in the Basque Country or Catalonia.”

The Basque Country, like Catalonia, has also historically been richer than Galicia, and nowhere is this more obvious than in the region’s largest city, Bilbao. A short walk from the world-famous Guggenheim Museum – designed by architect Frank Gehry in a nod to Bilbao’s successful industrial past – is the towering headquarters of Spanish energy giant Iberdrola. Together these buildings speak of an economic dominance that has been central to constructing Basque regional identity. And in many ways the resulting drive for independence has been a similar story to Catalonia’s, but with one crucial difference: ETA. In their militant nationalist campaign against the Spanish state, the armed Basque separatists killed hundreds of people from the mid-20th century until the group declared a ceasefire in 2011. Since then, says Dr Quiroga, support for independence has been steadily growing. “In many ways we could say that ETA was hampering the pro-independence movement because many people were against violence,” he says.

The notoriously difficult Basque language – which, unlike Catalan and Galician, has no linguistic relationship at all to Castilian Spanish – may also have held things back. London School of Economics lecturer Dr Jose Javier Olivas Osuna says that while language in Catalonia has been key to a “process of Catalanisation,” for Basque supporters of independence there is a risk of “alienating” people by using it in the same way – because far fewer people speak it. Catalan leaders, by contrast, have invested heavily in their language over recent years, at the expense of Castilian Spanish. Now in many of the region’s schools, children receive as little as two or three hours of Spanish teaching, while mainstream subjects are taught entirely in Catalan.

Many Catalans also feel hard done by because they believe the Basque Country gets better treatment from Madrid, with a more preferential fiscal deal that effectively means less of the region’s income is redistributed around Spain. According to Dr Olivas, this perceived unfairness initially played a role when Catalonia’s former premier Artur Mas assumed power back in 2010. “When he became the premier of the Generalitat [as the Catalan government is known], he didn’t call for independence, he wanted a fiscal deal like the Basque one,” Dr Olivas says. But as a far larger region of some 7.5 million people, more than three times the size of the Basque Country, Catalonia was unable to persuade Madrid to make the substantial concessions.

Above all else, the story of Catalonia’s vociferous drive for independence mirrors one that has played out worldwide since the 2007 financial crisis. In the US, disillusionment with ruling elites put Donald Trump in the White House, and in Britain it produced Brexit. For Catalonia, independence from Spain is the alternative. One thing is for certain though: if the region leaves it will be disastrous for Spain, costing the country one fifth of its GDP and 16% of its population. What’s more it may not be the end of the nation’s woes.

Pro-independence Catalan leaders have used aggressive strategies in their bid for sovereignty and it’s meant they’ve made great strides. But it remains to be seen whether they’ll achieve their goals. As Dr Olivas says: “I think the Basque nationalists may have realized that this is the wrong strategy and that the Catalans are going to hit a wall very soon. So they are just waiting and seeing what the Catalans are doing, but saying, ‘We don’t want to be part of this experiment’.”

If the Catalan strategy turns out to have been right all along, Basque leaders could start to think again. In Spain’s patchwork quilt of robust regional identities, Catalonia may not be the last of Madrid’s worries.

Can Ceuta teach Brexit Britain lessons about ‘taking back control’?

A beach in Ceuta, with the enclave’s six-metre EU border fence in the distance

Originally published by El País

“Take back control” is widely held to be the slogan that won the UK’s referendum on EU membership last year, and sent Britain charging toward the exit door. Formal negotiations have now begun, and there is one thing Britain is keen to get its hands on more than anything else: control of immigration. With those three vague yet evocative words, campaigners helped to create the perception of a naive EU, unequivocally pro-immigration and unwilling to keep member states’ borders in check.

The briefest of glances to Spain would have debunked this myth. In its Moroccan enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, “control” means massive barbed-wire fences, diplomatic tensions and misery for the increasing numbers of migrants who seek a better life in Europe. Backed and funded by the EU, these fortress territories demonstrate clearly that the bloc knows what taking back control looks like – and it’s not pretty.

In Ceuta, migrants in limbo describe the place as a “mental prison.” Often basically penniless, they live in increasingly crowded temporary accommodation while they wait to find out whether they can stay in Europe or if their arduous journeys from sub-Saharan Africa have been totally in vain.

Yet these are the lucky ones: they’ve managed to scale the dangerous six-meter-high fence. They’ve also survived the months of brutal Moroccan police tactics in the forest a stone’s throw from their destination, waiting for an opportunity to make a break for a better life.

Samyong Hilaire, left, with friends Manny Armand, 37, and Fotso Andex, 24

Samyong Hilaire left Cameroon last summer, and spent the winter in woods on the Moroccan side of the frontier. The 23-year-old was one of hundreds of migrants to finally make it to Ceuta in one of the greatest single influxes in recent times back in February.
He said: “In the forest we lived with many brothers among the trees. It’s not easy to live there, because we spent a lot of time without toilets, and we ate just once a day at 11am. Every day Moroccan police came to move us on. We hid on the top of the hills and in the rocks. It’s very difficult living in the forest. But we had a dream, we knew what we were searching for, and that’s why we lived like this, sleeping outside during the winter.”

Ulrich Cabrel, 21, arrived on the same day – after climbing the fence in the dead of night in his second attempt to reach Ceuta.

“The conditions in the forest are very difficult,” he said. “There’s no food, and often the Moroccan Auxiliary Forces enter the forest and set fire to your belongings and the small tents we slept in. In Cameroon, I have a baccalaureate qualification but my parents didn’t have the money for me to continue my education. In sub-Saharan Africa, if you don’t know someone who works for the government, you can’t get a job. If your auntie, or your father, or someone in your family doesn’t have a good job, it’s impossible. Ceuta is a mental prison. Here, you can’t work, you just eat and sleep. It’s exhausting.”

After making it to Ceuta, both Ulrich and Samyong went straight for the city’s temporary stay center for immigrants, known by the acronym CETI. They are among hundreds living there. But the center, with a capacity of 500, is rammed. Last year saw the number of migrants entering Ceuta rise 14% to 2,578, placing a strain on the enclave’s limited resources. Since Christmas, more than a thousand others are believed to have arrived.
Some speculate that recently heightened security in Spain’s other Moroccan enclave of Melilla could be a factor in this change. The coastal city, some 380 kilometers east of Ceuta, has historically been more of a flashpoint on the migrant trail, but the route appears to be shifting.

Another possible reason is Morocco – which Spain and the EU lean on to provide security at the border – often using fairly brutal methods. Observers say these include the rounding up of migrants before dumping them in the middle of the desert and telling them to be on their way. Ulrich’s story suggests this is no myth. He eventually made it into Ceuta, but says during one earlier failed attempt he was captured by Moroccan security forces and taken “far away” from the forest before having to make his way back again.

The Moroccans use this unsavory role as a bargaining chip in negotiations with Europe, and the country’s government is often said to relax or ramp up security efforts in accordance with political expediency. The EU plays this grubby game, where hundreds of human lives are currency in a diplomatic tug-of-war.

Spain is not Britain, but Ceuta represents something that’s conspicuously absent from debate about the EU in the UK. The notion of control may win referendum votes, but it may also mean walled frontiers, human suffering and disconcerting diplomacy. On immigration, the EU is far from the shrinking violet some would have people believe.

Evening Standard UK general election coverage

I was recently back in the UK as Britain did its best impression of Spain circa 2015-16 and held the latest in a string of public votes. This time it was a snap general election called by PM Theresa May. I helped cover the fallout from her spectacular political miscalculation for the London Evening Standard.

www.standard.co.uk/author/sebastian-mann
www.standard.co.uk/topic/general-election

Madrid’s residents are being forced out of the city centre. Blame Airbnb

Originally published by CityMetric

Central Madrid is not going to “become a theme park like Barcelona, Rome or Venice”, the city’s urban development boss José Manuel Calvo pledged recently. Hundreds of thousands more tourists descended on the capital last year, adding to rental pressures that have forced 10 per cent of locals from the city centre in the past decade. And wildly increasing numbers of people are using tourist accommodation platforms like Airbnb. In the view of Madrid’s left-wing leadership, the problem is critical – and the required solutions are bold.

In many ways, Madrid is a success story. Last year some 680,000 more tourists visited the Community of Madrid, a region of 6.5m people, of whom half live in the city of Madrid. The rise represented a 13.5 per cent increase on 2015 which left Barcelona, although still more popular overall, in the shade. For a country struggling with high unemployment, especially among young people, this was good news. But there are losers.

To some the cause of the exodus seems obvious. Population in central Madrid has plunged in the past ten years, but in the last two, tourist accommodation has grown by 50 per cent. According to a study by the Madrid Higher Technical School of Engineering, the number of properties available on various platforms rose from about 4,000 to 6,000 from 2015 to 2017.

And while much media focus has been on Barcelona, Airbnb has emerged as a major force in Madrid’s tourist economy, with rentals in the city as a whole doubling to 650,000 last year. It means the Spanish capital now has more Airbnb lets per visitor than any other Spanish destination.

This meteoric growth has sparked urgent calls for action. Rents in Madrid have risen by 14.6 per cent in one year, according to recent Bank of Spain figures. And so the city is looking to policy to reduce the undeniable incentives for landlords to use Airbnb, as well as other similar platforms, to profit from their property and indirectly push up rents even further.

As it stands, pokey one bed attic flats easily command about €60 a night on Airbnb, meaning owners can pocket up to €1,800 a month. The same flat will be lucky to fetch €1,000 on the rental market – and that’s with the rapidly inflating prices partly caused by pressure from Airbnb.

Add to this the comparative freedom property owners have compared with Madrid’s well-regulated rental market (flexibility to up prices at will, for example), and converting your pad into holiday accommodation seems like a shrewd business proposition.

Madrid’s City Hall has recently laid out a three-pronged effort to curb the popularity of home-sharing platforms. The first measure would ensure that only someone living in a property could let it out as tourist accommodation. Speaking to EuropaPress, José Manuel Calvo said the move would be necessary “so that we don’t have intermediaries or anyone buying 17 homes in order to put them up as tourist properties”.

More interestingly, the leadership also wants to limit the numbers of days in a year for which a property can be leased out. Slightly radically, Calvo has suggested that 60 days “seems right”. But given that he plans to agree the cap with platforms like Airbnb, this seems ambitious.

Finally, Mr Calvo says, the plan would mean “part of the economic return obtained by the property owner would go to City Hall” – which is an innovatively indirect way of explaining a tax.

The central area of Madrid to be affected by these policies is often called the almendra – or almond – but so far it is proving a tough nut to crack. City Hall itself has limited power to take action. Most of that lies with the regional government of the Community of Madrid – which is in the hands of City Hall’s political opponents. And recently Carlos Chaguaceda, director of tourism for the province, suggested a national solution was necessary, while stressing the importance of not demonising Airbnb and other platforms.

Airbnb, for its part, has said it wants to be a “good partner” with the city and regional government to help “local families” who want to share their homes. But in Barcelona it is currently at loggerheads with a city hall that is breathing down its neck.

Nestled on the outskirts of Madrid is a monstrous amusement park packed with rollercoasters. Adventurous tourists who strike out into the city’s expansive Casa de Campo park occasionally have their genteel strolls interrupted by screams from the rides.

For most, though, the disturbance is a distant hum. With their efforts to prevent the city centre becoming a theme park itself, Madrid’s policymakers are keen to keep it that way. But it seems they will have their work cut out.

Does Brexit spell trouble for Brits and Madrid’s pioneering bilingual schools scheme?

Originally published on El País’s Trans-Iberian blog

It sometimes feels as though Britain’s only export to Spain is the English language. Visit a bar in central Madrid and you’re as likely to hear an English voice as you are to be given tapas. Pick up a menu and you’ll probably be able to order Spanish omelette as well as tortilla española. Walk past certain public schools in the capital and you’ll notice a feature of its signage is the Union Flag.

This is because the Comunidad de Madrid is home to a pioneering bilingual school system. It’s a huge employer of native English speakers in teaching assistant, or auxiliar roles, and a demonstration of confidence by policymakers in a future where freedom of movement between Spain and Britain was probably foreseen.

But this bilingual programme – which uses English to teach Spanish schoolchildren subjects as diverse as Biology and Music – is among the many things Brexit has cast into doubt. Its overall existence is almost certainly safe. Britons, after all, aren’t the world’s only native English speakers. But Britain’s impending divorce from Europe may threaten the involvement of Spain’s nearest Anglophone neighbour in the scheme.

British Prime Minister Theresa May triggered Article 50 yesterday. With it she began a two-year process of negotiation during which nearly everything is on the table – including free movement of labour. If that goes, so does a massive advantage of the programme for Britons: the ease of applying.

Language assistant Rajini Vimalanathan Oliver, 40, works in a bilingual primary school in the north of Madrid. The married mother-of-two, originally from London, said she would “definitely” have thought twice about applying had the process been more difficult.

“I’ve been here nine years and nothing is easy, there’s a lot of bureaucracy,” she said.
“It’s difficult to do the simplest things. I got this job literally by applying to an advert on [mobile app] lingo bingo. I wouldn’t have applied if I had to do far more paperwork.”
Briton Katie Spoor, 24, works at a nearby bilingual secondary as an auxiliar and says she was nearly turned down for another job in an academy “because the owner thought I wasn’t an EU citizen anymore”.

She agrees more paperwork could put Britons off.

“I’m not sure if it would have stopped me but I would have thought twice for sure,” she said.

“[In Britain] we’re so used to the EU and not having to get visas to come work in the EU, perhaps if it becomes more difficult it would put people off.”

Carmen Morán is the co-ordinator of the bilingual programme at IES San Juan Bautista, one of Madrid’s first ever bilingual schools.

She urges the British government and negotiators not to thrash out a deal that erects barriers for Brits wanting to take part in the scheme.

“We should push and pressure so that things don’t change,” she said.

“Normally, when they hire English people they tend to say it’s much easier than with American people. I think it’s much easier with passports and permission et cetera when they are living in Europe. So it might be more difficult in comparison with Irish people, for example.”

She added: “We’re not so happy with having so many Americans. Students are more exposed to that accent through culture and media et cetera.

“They need also to be exposed to the British accent. It would be a shame if they were to lose that.”

Madrid’s mayor is determined to clean up its air – by pedestrianising its biggest shopping street

Originally published by CityMetric

This month, a fairly innocuous A-road in south London breached a 2017 pollution limit just five days into the year. On the same day, Madrid’s left-wing mayor pledged to ban cars from a massive six-lane highway through the heart of the Spanish capital. If Manuela Carmena gets her way, Gran Vía, one of Madrid’s busiest roads but also a major shopping hub like Oxford Street, will be almost completely pedestrianised by 2019.

Her plans are part of a bold green vision that includes banning cars from the city centre, and even stretches to installing gardens on top of buses and bus shelters. They also represent the latest skirmish between the city and the private vehicle in the battle to make major metropolises somewhere it’s actually safe to live.

The proposals, which were tested out over the Christmas period, transform nearly half the road into pedestrianised zones, allowing shoppers to spill safely off narrow pavements while the rest of the street is left to public transport and the odd resident’s car. Importantly, other major roads in the area also face stringent traffic limits, making it devilishly difficult to dodge the restrictions with rat-runs through the centre. Officials are now analysing the temporary experiment ahead of implementing a permanent ban – but Carmena has confirmed she has every intention of carrying it out before her term ends in 2019.

Carmena, who leads the Ahora Madrid coalition backed by left-wing populists Podemos, appears to be moved by aesthetic as well as environmental concerns. Outlining her plans in a 4 January interview with Spanish radio station Cadena SER, she described the model for Gran Vía’s car ban – the street of the same name in Bilbao 0 as “deliciously pedestrianised”. Other city officials have also been quoted saying the broad aim is to make the place “well, just nicer”.

But the green case is uncontroversial and urgent. Campaigners estimate traffic fumes in Madrid kill as many as 2,000 people each year – something attributable to a toxic cocktail of over-reliance on the car and a natural atmospheric phenomenon that traps pollution in the city. Madrid has one car for every two of its 3.2m inhabitants, and its position on a plateau means that, in winter months, smog often grips the city literally in a choke-hold. Locals call it La Boina, or “The Beret”, because of the way the fumes sit like a hat above the city centre.

Environmental activist Simon Birkett, who runs the Clean Air in London campaign group, believes Madrid’s efforts demonstrate a “wonderful competition”, driving attempts from city mayors across Europe to out-do each other. The Spanish capital’s measures, he says, send a message to London to “get on with pedestrianising Oxford Street”.

However, he urges caution over implementation. “It’s similar in a way to the Oxford Street issue,” he says. “The risk is that you shut off that road and you get people driving around the side streets. What I would say is you have to combine this with the halving of traffic in the whole area.”

His warning is not wide of the mark. When Gran Vía’s temporary car ban was put in place over Christmas, it initially led to bottlenecks at key junctions while motorists came to terms with the restrictions.

But Madrid is also behind a greater assault on the private vehicle. On 29 December, half of all cars were banned from the centre on the (fairly arbitrary) basis of their number plates. It was an unprecedented response to spiking NO2 levels, and seemed like a radical statement of intent in the battle to make the city more liveable.

Other policies take a more softly, softly approach – such as the polite messages on the Metro that thank passengers for choosing public transport on particularly polluted days. What’s more, city transport bosses are trying to get their own house in order by completely replacing dirty, inefficient diesel buses with a 2,000-strong fleet of greener electric vehicles by 2025. In the meantime, officials want to plant gardens on top of buses and bus stops in an effort to soak up CO2 emissions, with shrubs being dug into turf aboard the vehicles at a cost of €2,500 a pop.

When Gran Vía was built at the beginning of the 20th century, it was considered an axe blow through the heart of Madrid. The bold project to effectively construct a Spanish Broadway – part arterial traffic link, part entertainment hub lined with theatres, restaurants and bars – led to disruption and meant the demolition of dozens of buildings.

Some one hundred years on, the theatres have been replaced by shops, and the street is again the focal point of an inevitably disruptive plan. But now, as then, the bold steps are necessary if Madrid wants to remain a modern and bustling yet liveable city. The current administration, it seems, is willing to drive the change.

Language lessons

I owe an apology to the English-speaking world. Four more people now know the most horrible sounding noun in our language – and it’s all my fault.

It happened, appropriately enough, in a Spanish class I’m taking. As I sat there with my Italian, German, Greek and Thai classmates, the blurted words I initially regretted were: ‘In the UK we have one outrageously offensive swear-word that people rarely use because it’s so much worse than the rest.’ Apparently in German, I had been told, there are lots of terms of offence but none that really stand out.

And so I boasted: ‘In English, we have “c*nt”.’

It was the utterance of this foul word that ended up giving the greatest cause for regret. And once it was out there bouncing around the classroom as my classmates obliviously consolidated their new vocabulary, its plosive sound regained the intense awfulness lost in my three years working for newspapers and over-watching The Thick Of It.

So, consider this short but not very sweet blog an apology – for playing so fast and loose with a short and utterly horrible word that now I almost wish I had never been taught.

The first trip home

Many things about my personal Brexit* have been unexpected. I didn’t think I’d settle so quickly in Spain, enjoy learning the language so much, or lug a bed a mile across Madrid. I certainly didn’t think I’d witness the sight of two sweaty buskers with guitars, wireless microphones and an implausible level of self-confidence playing When The Saints Go Marching In on a packed Metro carriage.

But an even more unexpected surprise came on my first visit back to the UK last weekend – in the form of a discovery there are odd things I have sort of missed about home.

I have little nostalgic affection for the British pub. A pint is obviously too much liquid to consume in one go and I’ve never mastered the peculiarly un-English system of getting served at a bar. But what it’s taken till now for me to properly realise is that sharing a common language with the average pub employee is brilliant. No-one else in England on Saturday night was as proud as I was to be able to order drinks in fluent sentences.

In Madrid, similar situations have included: answering ‘yes’ to the question ‘what kind of gin would you like?’; inadvertently ordering the most expensive gin because I was so proud to have understood the question; and thinking two gin and tonics cost an inconceivable €10.80 because I misheard ‘dieciocho’ (eighteen).

Gin. Just gin.

There’s also something else about the UK you don’t notice until you leave and come back and that’s the smell, a soggy grey scent that somehow manages to overpower even jet engine fumes on the tarmac at London Luton. It’s nothing particularly remarkable, but then perhaps that’s why it felt so British.

The UK’s most misleadingly named airport also produced another observation thanks to these fancy surveillance gadgets…

I restrained myself from filming the things that were filming me because I’m too much of a cliché already, but in the pic what you can see are LED lights that swirl playfully around the lenses like lasers in a budget noughties club. Their real purpose, presumably, is to draw attention to the fact you’re being watched. A nice little reminder I don’t miss everything about the UK.

*I owe Ramzy Alwakeel for this little gem

Springing into action

Fewer people stare at two idiots lugging a double mattress through the streets of Madrid than you might think. They look, for sure, but they’re not really interested. You’re just another twenty-something who (almost by accident) moved into an unfurnished flat in a completely new city after realising he was running out of time to live out his quarter-life crisis. Possibly, they’re also distracted by the other bloke with a mattress but who – incredibly – also has a skateboard which means he can literally ride his bed to its new home.

Among the stresses and strains of moving 1,000 miles from London, dragging a bed bought for €50 from a random man on the internet actually ranks fairly low. The self-inflicted language barrier is what sees you nodding along obliviously while the pleasant Spanish couple explain they will be taking all the furniture with them when they leave their beautiful flat.

Spanish bureaucracy also takes a toll. It’s not just the frustration and the never-ending process of photocopying your passport, it’s the despair that your distant and probably racist relative may have been right when they said things move slower in Spain.

But the hassle and anxiety are worth it. My meagre savings are being savaged by Brexit as the pound plunges in value against the euro – but a spacious flat with a picturesque view over the city (above) costs less than half what it would in London. And the 16-hour working week in a bilingual school, which incredibly still pays just about enough to live on, leaves so much free time that the expression ‘work-life balance’ seems ridiculous because ‘life’ so dramatically outweighs ‘work’.

That work, too, is surprisingly rewarding – even for someone with no teaching experience and who generally avoids public speaking. So far it has included being asked to improvise a 50-minute presentation about my life and – more terrifying still – declaring to a class I support Atlético over Real Madrid without the faintest clue what I’m talking about. I was already regretting my answer by the time one 13-year-old leapt from his seat, pointed angrily towards the door and boisterously demanded I use it to exit the classroom and presumably also the country.

Things were fairly set back in the UK. Here, every day is an impossible and sometimes hilarious challenge. I’m just clinging desperately to the hope that in 10 months’ time I’ll be the one riding mattresses through Madrid on a skateboard.