After last year’s highly informative seminar in Málaga, during which friends and colleagues not only exchanged information but also had lots of fun, we had high expectations of the WABAS 2014 meet-up in Granada.

We hadn’t been to this historic gem of a city for many years, and you know, it was even nicer than I remembered. The grand historic buildings and monuments looked as good as ever, the streets even livelier and the number of restaurants, cafés and bars seems to have mushroomed apace with Granada’s reputation as a university city. It is now the biggest Erasmus university in Europe, drawing thousands of especially language students to its lecture halls and exchange programmes. (more…)

Cat Gaa and Hayley Salvo met in Spain, having left the United States to embark upon new lives in the country. They found they had a great deal in common, amongst others just how complicated and challenging it was to tackle the paperwork, bureaucracy and the official documentation before they could relax into the laidback Spanish way of life. To help others avoid the same pitfalls, they decided to work together and compare an e-book guide to moving to Spain. (more…)

Do Sphinx-like monuments and water irrigation systems point to the existence of an ancient civilisation on Mars? Among a great many other conspiracies, NASA is being accused of ‘covering up’ what it really knows about the red planet, reports Michel Cruz.

In July 1976 NASA’s Viking 1 spacecraft was put into orbit around Mars, on a seemingly standard mission to look for suitable landing sites for the impending Viking 2 mission. As its cameras scanned the red planet’s surface, however, they suddenly came across a feature so incredible that it would not only spark off a sensation, but also a legion of fanciful hypotheses about life on Mars. The images beamed back to earth by Viking Orbiter 1 were of a land form that so strongly resembled a human face, complete with eyes cast in shadows, a narrow nose and frowning mouth, that to many it had the unmistakable appearance of an Egyptian Pharaoh. And so the mysterious ‘Face on Mars’ was born, capturing the attention of millions across the world and completely overshadowing what had started as a scientific probe into the mysteries of our nearest planetary neighbour. (more…)

If modern life and its pace, demands and stresses is getting on top of you a Tarifa Escape may be just what you need. Picture this – a comfortable Spanish villa set against a gently sloping hill covered in beautiful umbrella pine trees looking straight out over untouched beaches and across the Atlantic to Cape Spartel in Morocco.

Just around the corner are the cool beach clubs and seaside restaurants of Tarifa, with the trendy little town down the road and Valdevaqueros Beach – Europe’s top kite-surfing spot – a kilometre or two the other way. Here, ensconced within a lush canopy of greenery you are surrounded by two things: nature and views. (more…)

By guest blogger Ash Bolton

I arrived in the small Spanish village of Roncesvalles in the north east of Spain late on a rather depressing looking Saturday evening in September, just as the skies turned dark with rain and released a torrential downpour.

Sprinting off the bus with a heavy backpack weighing me down, I ran to the municipal albergue (subsidised shelters along the Pilgrimage route) but got soaked to the bone within a minute and was already questioning whether this adventure was such a good idea. The plan had been to catch a taxi over the Pyrenees and into France, to reach the traditional starting point of the Camino Francés, Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, but a quick look for said taxi proved fruitless, so I took this as a welcome sign that fate was telling me to start here. (more…)