prepaid phone in spain

Is your phone unlocked?... if so, simply buy a SIM card (ie. tuenti.com, yoigo.com or lowi.es) in any store phone. It's the easiest and most convenient way. Otherwise, try in one of the Middle Eastern telephone stores near/around Lavapies, they'll have cheap phones there.

Thank you but I am not sure that this advice is good. Verizon my Carrier has told me that swapping SIM cards can result in lost memory when the original card is replaced... not worth it in my case! A friend who often receives guests from Argentina has a spare phone to leND. Hopefully that will solve the issue.

Don't want to intrude... but "lost memory" because you swap SIM???... that sounds to me like a lot of c**p from your phone company to prevent you from using another carrier. I do travel quite a lot, and using local SIMs has become second-nature for all the smartphones I've had, from Samsung to little-known Chinese brands... never have had a problem!

Anyhow, drop by an independent phone shop where you live and ask them... you'll see they give you similar advise to mine.

There is no way "lose memory" by swapping SIM cards. That's just Verizon's feeble attempt at getting your international plan business (expensive). I am a Verizon customer, too, and I know their games.

The only thing you will lose when you swap SIM cards is stuff stored on the SIM itself. It is possible to store phone numbers on the phone or on the SIM; if they're on the Verizon SIM, you won't have access to them when you put in a non-Verizon one.

There's an easy way to tell where a number is stored (besides looking for a symbol of a SIM card vs the symbol of a phone). SIM cards can only store a name and one number. If your entry has anything else (an address, an e-mail, more than one number per name, etc), or if you can edit it to put in any of these things, it's not on the SIM, and you won't "lose" it. If a number you want is on the SIM, go into the menu, and you can copy it to the phone. (If all your numbers are stored on the SIM - much more common with "dumbphones" than smartphones - you can ask it to copy all numbers from the SIM to the phone).

Otherwise, things (music, pictures, etc) can be stored on the phone itself, or on a memory card (micro-SD). These will not be affected by changing SIM cards.

Thank you very much for this info... it confirms suspicions. Though I understand and believe what you say, I am still not yet comfortable about removing the existing SIM, because right now, there is not a memory card in the phone, so nothing is stored there. (I have Verizon Cloud backup, but haven't tested it to see how well it functions. ) Time is short... but tomorrow I will visit a Verizon store and hopefully get a new memory card installed and save my contacts (the most crucial) to that. Am concerned about data theft.. aware that phones are easily stolen from jet lagged older ladies traveling alone in in Madrid, and aware that Verizon's Cloud can't be accessed from Europe!