The quality of Spanish meat is excellent and the prices are less than you would expect to pay in the UK. Bread is more expensive and should only be bought for consumption on the day of purchase. Spanish bread does not keep. Even if frozen, it still ends up stale. Spaniards buy bread for consumption within a few hours.

Spanish bread is similar, if not identical to French bread but the large presence of foreigners ensures that a wide selection is always available. Some of the larger UK bakeries allow bread to be produced under licence in Spain which means that UK type bread is available but you will pay almost twice the UK price.

It has been suggested that the reason most fruit will not keep in Spain is less to do with the heat than the fact that most is refrigerated prior to and during delivery which shortens the keeping time. However, the writer has no knowledge regarding the fact of the matter.

When it comes to living costs in Spain, there can be no doubt that things are far cheaper than is the case in the UK. May this well be the case, it would seem that spending habits are hard to break as many report spending as much in Spain as they did in the UK. Significantly, most claim a far higher standard of living!