It's true that a good internet connection is more readily available in Spain... but when you live in a town surrounded by mountains, you never really get the speed or the bandwidth that the internet providers promise you. And, it turns out, it's still a fact of life that strong winds or heavy rains can leave you without internet for a whole day or more (not to mention without electricity either!) Perhaps the biggest challenge, however, is that a good internet connection can still be pretty expensive: you need a rental contract for a landline phone (which comes with unlimited free calls within Spain) and then you add the internet contract on top of that. But if you're not really calling landlines within Spain, and all your outgoing calls are to people's cellphones, you'll probably end up paying more than €80 per month for your phone and internet.
That's roughly what we were paying in 2009, so when my flatmate returned to England that year and I had no one else to share my internet costs, I decided to switch to a mobile phone instead, and to try out a cellphone internet service that depended on plugging a sim card into your computer. Well, this turned out to be disastrous! It might have been true to say that it was "better than nothing," but the truth of the matter was that it often ended up being more of a frustration than a blessing. I ended up spending many of my days in the public library, where the free internet service was considerably superior to the connection I had at home.
However, you can't speak in the library. It was great for downloading and answering emails, but it wasn't any help when it came to the coaching sessions I was having with people in places like England, Holland and Tanzania. My coachees were very patient last winter with my somewhat erratic and fluctuating Skype connection. When LDC ended this summer and I took on more coachees from places like Thailand, Cambodia and Australia, having a reliable internet connection became even more of a priority, and I was faced with the prospect of having to pay a large amount of money for a landline phone and a more dependable broadband connection.
Then something surprising happened: the "ayuntamiento" (town hall) in my town announced that they were extending their free internet service to several other public buildings, as well as the library. To my amazement, one of these buildings turned out to be the "polideportivo" - the sports complex that is across the road from my house. As no one takes their computer with them when they go to play sports, the service is used mainly by passers-by checking emails on their smart phones. I discovered that I could set up a deckchair in the street, in the shade of a tree if necessary, and could easily conduct my coaching sessions with people on the other side of the world. It's true that I get one or two strange looks from passers by (they don't see my earphones and so they wonder if I'm speaking to myself!) and I'm also gradually getting to know all the dog walkers of the neighbourhood. I guess I won't be sitting there in the street in my deckchair when our winter rains start up.... but I'm expecting that I can park my car next to the sports centre and carry out my coaching sessions from there. This internet connection has been a huge blessing from a very unexpected source.
