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A Few Random Spain Observations

Posted by (SoCal) on

  1. Business is booming in Spain. As someone who remembers the manufacturing powerhouse that the USA once was, it's great to see so many factories here, all of which seem to enjoy full production. No dark industrial real estate here. They're making stuff!

  2. Lots of construction evident in Valencia and Murcia, which seems to typify cities here. Lots of apparent residential construction.

  3. Prices here are still a bit lower than France overall, but the gap is narrowing.

  4. The population here is more conscious of environmental protection than Americans, but less attentive perhaps than Europeans farther north.

  5. In general, Spain seems more prosperous today than France, quite a change from just a few years ago.

Honestly, I think I'm going to ask our money manager to restructure our portfolio to include more Spanish investment. It's a very vibrant economy here right now.

ETA: I'm finding the beef and pork here in Spain to be really delicious and tender; though I try to go easy on red meat, it's proving to be difficult for me to do so.

Posted by
1849 posts

The Spanish economy is indeed booming. Growth is outpacing its European rivals, many of which have actually flatlined. A large part of the reason for this is large scale immigration from South America which has been less contentious than immigration programmes in other countries due to established language and cultural links. Currently 20% of the Spanish population were born outside of the country.

Posted by
1973 posts

One of my highlights from years ago visiting Barcelona was seeing the Clipper lighter factory on the outskirts of town, passing on a bus to Girona. The Clipper is a cultural icon amongst my generation of tokers here in the UK and it was a big deal for me. They're still made in Spain, not China.

On a similarly related, extremely boring anecdote note, a picture I took of a Clipper lighter I bought in a Barcelona grocers' went viral many years ago. Hundreds of thousands of views, and this was about 20 years ago. It was a lighter with a royalty free image printed on it of the BSD Devil and Linux Penguin, the respective mascots for each OS. BoingBoing blogged it, back when Cory Doctrow was editor and it was a big deal in internet culture at that time. I'd titled the photo "BSD F-cks Linux" rather catchily, so you can guess the illustration.

Also yes, South American immigrants. It surprised me how many Colombians I met when I was in Barcelona out on the squat / party scene, and that was years ago. Argentinians too. Good old life on offer if you play your cards right coming from South America to Spain I'd imagine.

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