TOM

What a great adventure you have in front of you. I thought this site might be useful to you.

Link to their Spanish page below.

http://www.verbalplanet.com/learn-spanish.asp

You can pick an online Spanish tutor and get some tuition before you get there.

Best of luck

Cheers

No worry about your spanish, you only need a bit time and any shame to speak. (Look at me, I don´t speak good english and here I am…)

Good luck and hasta luego.

Learning Spanish in 24 hours will be very very very difficult I think! You may find the following information interesting.

I just spent 3 weeks in Seville to improve my Spanish. I work in the import-export industry and we have an increasing number of Spanish clients so speaking the language is definitely a plus!

I applied through this agency called ‘estudio hispanico’ and thanks to them, I got the type of intensive course I wanted with the right amount of hours and lessons. I can assure you that my Spanish has greatly improved and I feel a lot more confident when speaking the language. The school is located right in the historic centre of Seville, just a short walk from the cathedral, in a completely refurbished yet beautifully preserved nobleman’s house.

If you have time, check the website. http://www.estudiohispanico.com.

Good luck with everything!

As soon as you get there sign up for one to one classes with a language school. Don’t waste time with night classes. Its a bit expensive but worth the money to get the basics right.

As to getting work – you’re going to find it a nightmare. The job market in Spain is a disaster. Selection companies hardly figure at all and those that exist act as if they are doing you a huge favour in answering the phone. Finding work is a case of hoping your friends and familiy keep their ears open. Firing off CVs is close to useless. I do know someone who simply walked into the offices of a few banks in madrid and managed to get work… very lucky.

Also, you’ll have to drop your salary expectations… *a lot*. A very good programmer with 10 years of experience will pull down 30k eur if they’re lucky enough to find a company willing to pay that much. Salaries in IT are generally 25-30% of what you could earn in the uk.

I´m coming late to this thread but I´ve moved to Madrid 4 years ago and I don’t miss Cork atall atall, boy.

You will have conversational Spanish in no time at all. To be another Ian Gibson takes a lot of work but Spanish has overlap with English and no case structures. You are not dealing Hungarian or Finnish (or in the case of writing with Arabic or Russian).

And with a Spanish wife, you can overcome the administrative hassles (the hard part of moving is dealing with Telefonicia, openg a bank account and getting your identity card (DNI)

Jobwise InMadrid, Madrid’s number one English-language magazine are starting up in Serville and there are probably journo opportunities to get you out of the house by day.
http://in-seville.com/

The equivalent of EI is http://www.icex.es/ and I was at an event recently whihc was really well done about learning to export.
http://www.aprendiendoaexportar.com/

There is a very interesting company called AnaFocus based in Seville which was named Finalist for Red Herring’s 100 Most Innovative Companies Award
http://www.anafocus.com

Then there is this guy; Jorge Lopez Ceballos (Seville, Spain) – The serial entrepreneur founder of Mastercom, Hergos Sistemas, Interfinancial, Interaffinity, Medianna, and Urbitas says, “I’d get bored if I weren’t starting new companies.”

I would also recommend that you start to read El Pais in English. It’s just 8 pages each day and living in a country is not just the language. You can of course read El Pais in Spanish as well.
http://www.iht.com/indexes/partners/index.php

Blogs such as Enrique Dans have been mentioned but also read Martin Varsavsky and http://meneame.net/

And then the on line stuff … http://sevilla.jobs.com/ and http://www.hays.es/

I´m on LinkedIn, if you have any ceistanna or if you come to Madrid.

Regards,
Joe

BTW Tim O´Reilly and his lawyers will find you wherever you go.

I soon set up an office using Skype to talk to clients and found them completely confortable with the idea. Once I had a couple of Russian speakers working with me (who also spoke English) we were dealing with the local companies there. Knowing the language is a huge advantage but you’re not unemployable without it.

In terms of learning Spanish… I’ve picked it up over the years (10) and found one of the most enjoyable ways to absorb it is by watching movies with subtitles: here’s a favorite: http://cineforoteorema.wordpress.com/2007/11/03/la-cienaga-nov-9/

I’ve also heard great things about the Michel Thomas CD course.

Suerte – JoC

http://www.soho-solo.com/cadiz/index.php3

I think you wouldn’t need to work too hard to be seen as a European social media guru and if I am right this area will just get hotter in 2008 onwards…

In my case I was a mono-lingual in Brussels (not proud of this by the way) and just see that the company is based here but clientele as European (UK, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Germany etc.)

All the best,
Simon

Talk soon
fergus