Spain Communications

Communication plays a vital role in understanding how and by what medium can a person communicate back to his/her family while in a foreign land. So you surely would want to know which communication channels you can choose to use while at Spain.

When we talk of communication the first thing which strikes our mind is a Phone. Is that not so?

While spending your holidays in Spain, you would notice that the public telephones in Spain are either coin or card (tarjetas telefónicas) operated. You can easily purchase these telephone cards from post offices, newsagents and kiosks or tobacco stores (estancos).Though you can use phones which take Euro currency however it is advisable to buy a phone card of €6 or €12. Also the call times in Spain are cheaper after 6pm daily and on all weekend for metropolitan and inter-provincial calls. In case you have to make frequent international calls you can use pre-paid cards which cost significantly less than using coins. Even the International rates are slightly cheaper between midnight till 8am and on all Saturdays and Sundays. The international access code for Spain is +34 and the outgoing code is 00 followed by the relevant country code (e.g. 0044 for the United Kingdom).

Public phones: The public phones in Spain are handled by state-owned Telefónica, using these phones you would have to pay the due amount to the attendant at the end of your call. These public phones work well and even have instructions in English Cell Phones: While in Spain you can use GSM 900/1800 mobile phones (teléfono movil) a system which is compatible with the rest of Europe.

However if you are looking for the most economical mode of communication you should use emails. All you need to do is to sign up for a free internet email address that can be accessed from anywhere. You can open an account on any of the email providers like Gmail (www.gmail.com), YahooMail (mail.yahoo.com) or Hotmail (www.hotmail.com). Once the account is setup and activated you can freely roam around in Spain and can access your email account from any place which offers internet access. Emails can be accessed easily from internet cafes (more commonly referred to as cibercafés in Spanish) in most towns and resorts. These places offer internet facility at very reasonable prices which might be close to €1.80- €6 per hour. The average Internet speed in Spain is 1024/300 kbps, costing €20 to €39 per month for an unmetered line; you can even get a faster connection (up to 8 Mbps) at a higher price up to €150. Nowadays some companies like Jazztel, Wanadoo or Ya.com are offering packs including Television+Phone calls+ADS (up to 20 Mb) at a reasonable rate of 20€-30€ a month.

Now you surely might be wondering about the media in Spain. You might be surprised to know that the readership of newspapers in Spain has traditionally been among the lowest in Europe. Spaniards till today prefer radio/TV as a medium for news broadcast over print media.

If you are a diehard newspaper fan you surely would be interested in knowing the best newspapers available in Spain, You can check out the centre-left El País and the centre-right El Mundo, both of which offer an amazing read.