If you are travelling to Spain in the near future the chances are that you will want to keep in touch by making sure you have access to the Internet.
Ease of communication is also part of the reason why so many British and Northern Europeans are moving to Spain. There has been a huge reduction in cost of international phone calls thanks to the liberalisation of the European telecoms market, mobile phones are available to everyone, innovative call redirection plans mean your friends wouldn't know that you were on the beach if you didn't tell them. Not forgetting free internet to boot.
Back in the mid nineties when commercial internet was just taking hold, Telefonica the hated incumbent operator did something good. They set up Infovia, a local call internet access network to connect you to your chosen Internet Service provider (ISP). Suddenly Spain was a level playing field and big and small ISP's were all able to compete for customers with local call telephone connections. There are plenty of ISP's to choose from at reasonable monthly fees. Later the newer competing telephone companies (Retevision, Uni2, JazzTell, BT) set up their own parallel internet access networks and gave them similar names such as Interpista.
When Freeserve broke the mould in the UK. The Spanish telephone companies followed suit set up their own parallel networks in order to prevent (commercially) other smaller companies from doing so.
This means that if you want a free Internet Connection (no monthly charge and calls at local rates) you should do it with one of the portals owned by one of the telephone companies. If you want a better level of customer service and a more personal help, perhaps in English in setting up your connection contact a local ISP.
ISP's in Spain don't tend to give out auto install CD Roms. You either register on line or over the phone giving your details including NIE or passport number and you will be given all the data to set up a connection yourself This is User Name, Password, Phone Number to Dial, and DNS settings.
For a free connection use Wanadoo connection by Uni2 (see below), or Arrakis (www.arrakis.es or 902 020100) for a economic paid connection or Metro Red Online (www.metrored-online.com or 0034 952 880032) or Mercury (www.mercuryin.es or 0034 952 837575) for their tremendous patience in English in helping you set up and establish a connection.
For Wanadoo free connection, go to www.wanadoo.es and click on the button 'Conecion Gratis' It is only in Spanish.
Those addicted to the net will be pleased to hear that the telephone companies have special discount plans to save your phone bill from heavy internet usage. These are called 'tarifa plana' and in essence offer a flat cost irrespective of usage. The best value ones apply naturally to evenings and weekends use and cost typically 20 Euro a month, Twenty four hour ones cost 60 Euro a month.
If you are travelling with a laptop don't forget you will need a European/American telephone jack socket and a power socket adaptor. The mains voltage is about 230 volts 50Hz in Spain, same as UK. Universal Power Supply units are highly recommended especially for use in the winter or in rural areas.
Assuming you are happily connected to the net you will want to send and receive emails. This can be done from any web browser to your yahoo or hotmail account. If you want to be more in line try setting up a spain.com email at www.spain.com If you need to check your emails waiting to be downloaded from your UK service provider then www.mail2web.com is an excellent free browser based facility that does not require any set up or fiddling with someone else's outlook express. Take a note of your user name, password and POP mail server name before you leave home.
Most of us use Outlook Express for sending and receiving emails. Don't forget you can set up a second account and download your emails from your English and Spanish ISP's POP account at the same time regardless of which country you are in. Remember however you must send all emails through the mail (SMTP) server of the ISP with whom you actually connect to the net with. Having an ISP in both countries avoids the need for making international calls in this respect.
The much talked about ADSL Broadband is more popular in Spain than in the UK as a result of a better pricing model. It costs about 180 Euro to install including free modem and about 35 Euro a month line rental for the standard 256k bandwidth. Telefonica offer the best coverage and the worst customer service. You may need some form of technical assistance to get everything working again (particularly email and networked computers) after the installation. Contact a computer company in Spain.
Fortec, an English speaking BT agent on +34 952 880056 can organise telephone line instalation for ADLS Internet Connections. .
Regards