Smoking

In Spain, the non-smoking ban forbids lighting up in most public places, like offices and restaurants. However, restaurants and bars occupying 100 square meters or less (about 1100 square feet....most of the restaurants or bars) can decide whether to go smoking or non-smoking. Signs are posted outside. If you sit at an outdoor cafe, smoking is allowed, even if it's forbidden inside. Larger restaurants and bars can put up hermetically-sealed smoking rooms, but I've never seen any...at least, to this point. In Portugal, their new law, effective 1 Jan, carries the same regulations.

A question for Norm...and others who may know.

Regarding Spain and Portugal, as a practical matter, is it difficult to find restaurants and/or bars that are actually non-smoking? Thanks.

I can only speak for southern Spain but I am yet to go into a bar or restaurant where people were not smoking. Perhaps the very high end restaurants enforce it but the Spanish are not that good at obeying these sorts of laws so if your friend is seriously bothered by smoking perhaps check places first.

I agree with Liz...you'll have to check them out first. I have noticed more and more of the non-smoking places being smoke-free, so it is getting easier. There seem to be more of them in Madrid...maybe since it's a good "civil service" town!

Guys - we all make typos from time to time. The original poster can go in and edit his post to fix any of these. I always re-read my post and do this.
But if you are not a great speller, I think you should still be able to get a friendly answer here.

Thanks to Norm and Liz - your advice is appreciated.

Non-smoking restaurants in Barcelona are also few and far between, although that seems to be changing slowly. Following the rules has never been one of Seville's strong points.

We just got back from Portugal a couple of weeks ago...and it was a few weeks too early. We were on the southern beaches, in Lisbon, and up north in Porto.

Like Spain, this January they enacted a new law outlawing smoking in public places; restaurants, hotels, etc.

I don't know how effective it will be, but the Portugese people as a whole are extremely friendly and are willing to please.

While we were there, we never had a problem finding a bar or resturant that did not have an area with "no smoking". In some cases, we had to search, but we always found something that we liked.

I can't wait to see how nice it will be with the new law.

I guess Spain is a different problem....the people don't want to follow their new law:

http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article336649.ece