Welcome to the latest edition of La Comunidad’s Spainfographics - frequent servings of interesting, relevant, quirky infographics that help explain where Spain is today, and where it’s heading.

More importantly, these are the kind of facts that inform my reporting and opinions.

I hope you find these informative - the floor is open (in the comments section) to give your two cents. What surprised you? What trends do you think will soon change? Have your say below.

But before we get into it, I have a La Comunidad Mailbag special coming up - this is your chance to ask anything about Spain (it can be anything). You can ask me here.

You can check out the last Mailbag special here. And as always, paid La Comunidad subscribers get priority.

Housekeeping done, here’s Spainfographics 12.

Stagnant salaries

Headline: A gross salary of €52,000 puts you in Spain's top 10% of earners - €97,500 puts you in the top 1%.

Eclipse economics

Headline: During the recent historic solar eclipse, foreign visitor spending sky-rocketed in provinces and regions along the path of totality. Compared to the same week in 2025, Soria recorded a 220% increase, followed by La Rioja (106%), Asturias (89%), Segovia (83%), Teruel (79%), León (78%), and Zaragoza (78%).

Damn tax-paying immigrants

Headline: One in four workers in the Balearic Islands is foreign, compared with just 6% in Extremadura.

Heat vs sleep

Headline: Over the past 15 years, Cádiz has endured the highest number of “tropical nights” (20°C or above) on the Spanish mainland, averaging 103 a year, compared with just 1 in Santiago de Compostela.

Getaways are a luxury

Headline: In 2025, almost one in three people in Spain were unable to afford a one-week vacation.

Extremadura pet friendly

Headline: Spain was home to 7.6 million dogs and 5.6 million cats in 2025, with Extremadura leading per capita in both - 21.4 dogs and 13.9 cats per 100 people.

Until next time amigos,

Brendan

***You can support the research, translation, writing, editing, and newspaper subscriptions behind this content with a one-time contribution - gracias!***

Buy me a café con leche

Photo of the week: Back in Spain after summer vacation back in Ireland.

- Captain, it’s the first week of August.

After Spain’s World Cup glory came destruction and despair. The fourth (!) heatwave of the summer arrived before we said goodbye to July, posing a huge threat to the multiple ongoing brutal wildfires.

Ávila suffered the worst wildfire in the country’s history, with more than 50,000 hectares burned in just five days.

The map below shows the multiple wildfires Spain had to battle at once. In the area west of Madrid alone, close to 60,000 people had to be evacuated from their homes.

As Spain got the flames under control, it had a different kind of fire to put out.

More than 70,000 Moroccan migrants crossed into Ceuta, the Spanish exclave in northern Africa.

According to Cadena Ser, at least 141 people died.

The pile-on from the vast majority of EU countries on Spain was astounding, with the likes of Merz and Meloni jumping to conclusions that perfectly suited their political positions.

22 of the EU’s 27 member states signed a joint letter to Brussels linking the crisis to Spain’s decree to regularise half a million undocumented migrants, a scheme that ended up drawing 1.2 million applications. France, Ireland, Luxembourg and Portugal did not sign the letter.

Italy, meanwhile, suspended the EU's border-free Schengen arrangements with Spain.

Who needs enemies and all that.

, Professor of EU Law at HEC Paris Business School, wrote on X:

“Like many Europeans, I felt deep unease, not only at the deaths in Ceuta, but at Europe’s dehumanised response. EU leaders fell into the trap of treating the crisis as an invasion…By embracing this dystopian narrative, they turned desperate people into invaders, abandoned European solidarity and helped create the image Europe’s worst enemies want: a frightened, divided continent betraying its own values under pressure.

Ceuta did not threaten Europe. Europe’s response did.”

The Financial Times, on the other hand, took a different angle. They argued that the migration crisis at Spain's borders was proof that Morocco's King Mohammed VI could "outfox" Pedro Sánchez.

What a take for a tragedy in which 141 people died. What a way to dehumanise the dead.

The great Spain summer survey

After weeks of rolling crises, Spaniards could be forgiven for counting down the seconds to their holidays with more fidgety eagerness than usual.

In Ireland, where I currently am, August is one long Sunday night.

The dread of the post-summer routine hangs over the country, and there's a melancholy as we lament the evenings drawing in. That feeling has been more acute on recent summer visits home, after the GAA moved the All-Ireland hurling and football finals from September to July.

August in Spain, however, is peak summer, and the post-vacation blues don't hit for real until about the second Sunday of September.

“Guess what! The city is dead,” wrote in guide to activities in Madrid this week. “Everyone’s gone until September.”

This week I came across El Mundo's summer survey and wanted to share some of the highlights.

The results show how Spaniards like to spend their summer vacation - and how those habits can vary across the political spectrum.

Here’s what stood out:

Money and timing

1. Spaniards will spend an average of €1,500 on their summer holiday this year.

2. September is the most preferred holiday month (31%), ahead of August (26%) - largely down to the cooler temperatures. That preference doesn’t translate into behaviour, though: most people who take summer holidays still take them in July or August, when schools are out and the rest of the country is off too.

3. 38% say price is the most important factor when choosing a destination (which rules out San Sebastián for most). Climate comes second, at 23%.

4. 67% choose a domestic holiday over travelling abroad.

5. 75% travel by their own car, 25% use public transport.

Politics on holiday

6. Looking at the political spectrum, far-left leaning Sumar voters lead the way in preferring the north, at 63%, followed by centre-left PSOE voters at 55%. On the other side, far-right Vox voters prefer the south (53%), and centre-right PP voters lean slightly the same way (51%).

7. Asked which politician they’d like to go on holiday with, 50% said none. PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo narrowly led the rest at 6.7%, just ahead of Pedro Sánchez at 6%.

8. 30% of PSOE voters say they have more sex during the summer - nearly 10 points higher than Vox voters.

Beach, food, and drink

9. 63% prefer the beach over the swimming pool.

10. 62% prefer the Mediterranean coast over the Atlantic.

11. 61% prefer gazpacho over salmorejo.

12. Ice cream preference splits the country almost exactly down the middle - cone (50.3%) versus tub and spoon (49.7%). Younger generations lean cone, older generations lean tub.

13. 62% prefer a hotel over an apartment for their stay.

14. 62% choose beer over tinto de verano.

15. When it comes to bull-related festivities during local fiestas, most Spaniards sit them out: 55% don’t participate at all, while just 9% get actively involved. Another 16% watch as spectators, and 18% say their town doesn’t hold them.

Downtime and disconnecting

16. 34% say they spend part of the summer in their pueblo - the family’s ancestral village, often where parents or grandparents are from. A common pattern is a week at the beach followed by a week in the pueblo, often timed to coincide with the local fiesta.

17. 42% say they read more than usual on holiday (and Spaniards are big readers).

18. 42% say they wouldn’t take a call from their boss during their holiday.

19. 61.5% say they’d rather live permanently at zero degrees than permanently at 40 degrees, chosen by the remaining 38.5%.

20. Rafa Nadal is the only sports star to pass 10% as a preferred holiday companion.

Photo of the week

Greetings from our family holiday back home in County Kerry, Ireland!

***You can support the research, translation, writing, editing, and newspaper subscriptions behind this content with a one-time contribution - gracias!***

Buy me a café con leche

Last call for next La Comunidad Mailbag: Settling in Spain

Have a question for the next Settling in Spain Mailbag? Submit your question(s) below and I’ll answer as many as I can.

Ask your questions

Until next time amigos,

Brendan

A few weeks back I joined James Blick on Green Spain to chat about life in Galicia.

Many of you have reached out with questions (great to meet you all!), so I’ve put together this mailbag special for my Settling in Spain series.

Settling in Spain is for paid subscribers - regular articles remain free as always.

Got questions of your own? Submit them here

The first 90 days

Looking back, what’s the one thing you’d have done differently in the first 90 days?

Honestly, I don’t think I’d have done anything differently myself, but there’s one pattern I’ve seen with so many people who move here: they put “learn Spanish” on a someday to-do list instead of diving in from day one.

There’s also a temptation to seek solace in the familiar - sticking to places like Starbucks or the local Irish bar, or prioritising friendships with fellow English speakers.

Speaking the language is still the single biggest factor in whether you can truly make the most of life here.

I got lucky in that sense - the first Spanish city I lived in was Alcalá de Henares, where nobody spoke English and the cafes, bars, and restaurants were overwhelmingly local. It forced me to learn fast.

You don’t need to be fluent - for the first year or so, you just need enough Spanish to make an effort. You can get by in the big cities with a few words, sure, but making real friends and actually becoming part of a community requires the language. And beyond the practical side, it’s an incredibly rewarding thing to do in itself.

Having made the decision to move to Spain and followed through on it, you’ve already done the hard part. Don’t hold yourself back by sticking to what you know.

You’re already out of your comfort zone - that’s exactly where all the good stuff is waiting!!

Paperwork

How long did NIE/residency approval actually take once you were on the ground?

September will be my 10th anniversary in Spain, so my memory of the exact timeline is a bit hazy.

What I do remember is that getting the appointment - the cita - is often the most time-consuming part. Once you’re actually sitting in front of someone, it’s pretty straightforward.

And a decade later, I still have the same flimsy green piece of paper to show for it. No photo, nothing. It’s an impressively useless document.

Please note that this was my experience as an EU citizen, so if you’re coming from outside the EU, the process will be different.

If anyone has gone through the process more recently than me, let me know how long it took in the comments - I’ll round up other readers’ experiences to share.

Reading recommendations

We’re moving to Madrid in September. What books would you recommend reading before arriving in Spain?

I read Ghosts of Spain by Giles Tremlett before moving to Spain in 2016, and it was brilliant preparation for life in Spain. I still regularly leaf through it when writing about this wonderful land.

I have just finished Madrid: A new biography by Luke Stegemann. It is an outstanding journey through the history of the city. I’ve interviewed Luke twice for the La Comunidad podcast.

You can listen here.

Other books I enjoyed:

Read more

For a man who adores a TV spectacle, Donald Trump was having a suspiciously quiet World Cup - the biggest sporting TV spectacle of them all.

But then Trump lobbied Fifa to lift Folarin Balogun’s suspension for the USA’s game v Belgium, in the process shredding any of FIFA’s remaining paper-thin credibilit…

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For many in Spain, summer doesn't start until Estrella Damm releases its annual advert.

They're usually full of beautiful people celebrating those dreamy Mediterranean days: long, languid lunches on sultry Sundays, the pulsating buzz of cicadas, tan lines and waters an impossible tone of turquoise.

This year’s…

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As mentioned last week, La Comunidad Summer Postcard posts are for paid subscribers.

When my wife and I swapped Madrid for Galicia, we were willing to suffer the long, damp and blustery Galician winter to savour its glorious summer. But since the arrival of our daughter in 2022, most of our summers have been spent visiting grandparents and in-laws in Ireland and Brazil. So I’ve been increasingly questioning my life choices.

But not this week.

Read more

Spain is one of the most underwhelming countries in the world to live a World Cup.

You could go the entire tournament without knowing it was on - until Spain make the semi finals.

During my first World Cup in Spain in 2018, I couldn’t believe how indifferent this football-mad nation was to the tournament. No flags, no bunting, nothing - and in some instan…

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Spaniards are the great space optimisers and social improvisers. In a country where most people live crammed into small apartments and the working day often drags beyond 8pm, they’ve no other choice.

Every second of free time counts.

A land of social chameleons, they’re masters of moving from fiesta back to business as usual in the time it takes northern…

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Welcome to the latest edition of La Comunidad’s Spainfographics - frequent servings of interesting, relevant, quirky infographics that help explain where Spain is today, and where it’s heading.

More importantly, these are the kind of facts that inform my reporting and opinions.

I hope you find these informative - the floor…

Read more

Real Madrid are embroiled in institutional chaos - infighting, a player hospitalised, a president shouting conspiracy theories into the wind like King Lear. If you were going to predict which club in the…

Read more

La Comunidad readers already know that the northern Spain secret is out - more visitors visiting and more investors investing.

Readers ask me all the time about moving to this part of the world, so I reached out to someone who could help.

Grace Kiernan - from Tullamore, Ireland - met a Santander man in Sydney …

Read more

Bullfighting stories usually only reach me through the anglophone media.

These outlets fixate on Franco and salivate over the RISE OF THE FAR RIGHT. With exaggerated coverage of corruption cases and matador matters, they paint a distorted picture of Spain that bears little resemblance to the modern, European, democratic…

Read more

If standing up to a bully gave Pedro Sánchez a Trump bump in recent polls, this week it's electricity prices giving Spain's prime minister another boost.

Writing in the Irish Times, Naomi O'Leary detailed how the oil and gas shock triggered by the US-Israeli attack on Iran and Tehran's closure of the Strait of Ho…

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In a country famously divided by everything from sport to politics, only two men at the peak of their powers currently unite public opinion in Spain

One is the king of the court. The other acts like he is.

As Carlos Alcaraz prepares to again show his greatness on clay, people in Spain are aghast at how Donald Trump has d…

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I recently had to buy a new TV, and through some technological miracle I’m afraid to question or tinker with, we now have Canal Sur for the first time.

Over the past five years TV Galicia has been the backing track of daily life in our living room: the musical lilt of Galego, the bagpipes. This week it was the …

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Happiness is 1pm in Spain on Sundays.

That moment of relaxed giddiness in the local bar or terraza when everybody grabs a quick beer, vermut or wine before a long lunch.

By then, after a week of thinking and reading and translating and writing, I’m holding a cold Estrella Galicia poured straight from its A Coruña source.

I get to think about nothing - not …

Read more

Welcome to the latest edition of La Comunidad’s Spainfographics - frequent servings of interesting, relevant, quirky infographics that help explain where Spain is today, and where it’s heading.

More importantly, these are the kind of facts that inform my reporting and opinions.

I hope you find these informative - the floor…

Read more

Launched in 2023 by its regional tourism board, the Andalusian Crush campaign was lauded a marketing masterpiece.

Its latest campaign is better.

Where Andalusian Crush focused on luring visitors to a place that didn’t need any helping in luring, The Andalusian Deal looks at both sides of the tourism coin, capturing a tension…

Read more

Note: Settling in Spain is a series for anyone planning to move to Spain or for those who want to feel more “at home” when visiting. As mentioned in the first post, these are available exclusively to paid subscribers - regular La Comunidad posts remain free.

In September, I’ll celebrate my 10-year Spainniversary.

A lot has happened since that sweltering Saturday night in 2016 when I touched down in Madrid - a city I had never visited before but was about to call home.

The Catalan independence crisis. Three general elections. A global pandemic. Storm Filomena. The La Palma volcano. Heatwaves and wildfires. The Valencia floods. The blackout. A train disaster in Andalusia.

These are just the first things that came to mind. Then there were the shockwaves of Putin's invasion and Trump's tariffs - all playing out against a housing crisis so prolonged and so structural that crisis is no longer the right word. Reality is.

Despite this incessant cycle of macro shocks, my fondness for “home” has grown because of the micro moments of daily life in Spain.

Like its terrible torrefacto coffee, this country is anything but bland. There are very few things about Spain that will make you feel indifferent.

Making the most of life in Spain means balancing the trade-offs.

So I've put together a list of things I still ask myself almost a decade in - 25 questions that you too might find yourself asking when living in Spain.

If you're already here, or thinking about making the move, this is so you know it's not just you. It’s Spain - all of it.

The 25 things you will ask yourself when living in Spain

1. How did I ever live without the menú del día? (Starter, main course, dessert, coffee, and beer/wine for €10-15)

   

   
   

2. Why am I not much more tanned than when I arrived? (Because if you live like a local, you don't sit out sunbathing at midday. You avoid the very heat that everybody else visits here for.)

3. Why do I have to pay the landlord’s rent guarantee insurance? (It’s increasingly common in Spain, probably of dubious legality, but in a housing crisis, it’s a landlord’s market.)

4. Why are Spanish apartments so cold in winter?

   

   
   

5. How are Spaniards so coherent and civil at 9am on a Sunday morning in the local café bar as they finish up their Saturday night?

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With more land area dedicated to grapes than any other country, Spain is the largest vineyard in the world.

In 2024, it was the second-largest producer of wine in the EU (and the world).

Read more