Villajoyosa: Jewel of Spain’s Costa Blanca
Road-tripping in Spain is always a journey of discovery. You might stumble upon the ruins of a Roman domus, almost forgotten by the roadside, or a string of 1,000-year-old Moorish castles on hills above the freeway. Spain is a country where Roman aqueducts dot the countryside, some just a few miles from seaside tourist hotspots where pale British visitors sip even paler beer and feast on English breakfasts of Heinz beans and sausages.
This is the contrast you'll find when you discover Villajoyosa—"The City of Joy" on the Costa Blanca. It’s close enough to Benidorm that the local tram connects them, yet worlds apart in culture, history, and architecture.
Valencia Floods: We’re All Valencians Now
I'm standing on the beach, but the beach is gone. Instead of miles of white sand and clear blue Mediterranean waters, there are now massive piles of debris stretching along the coast, fading into the horizon.
The debris is stacked high in mounds, separated by lower stretches of rubble. It looks like the city bulldozers, usually here at dawn to smooth the sand, came early to build a grim mountain range of broken things.
I walk up to the first pile, hardly believing it.
Spain Real Estate Tips: How to Find Your Beach Community!
Spain Real Estate Tips: How to Find Your Beach Community!
By Max Milano (Travel Writer)
A lot of new expats in Spain, particularly Americans, are finding themselves taken advantage of by landlords in the major cities along the Mediterranean coast. Horror stories about the rental market in Barcelona, Valencia, and Malaga abound, with tales of endless paperwork and landlords who either refuse to rent to American expats or treat them like walking ATMs, squeezing double the rent they could get from locals. That’s likely why we get so many requests for real estate tips at GuiriGuru headquarters! For all our fellow American expats struggling to find a decent rental in Spain’s bustling coastal cities, I have one major piece of advice: Head to a beach community!
Buying Property in Spain: A Real Estate Lawyer Shares Top Tips for Expats
You’ve worked hard for this, and now your dream of owning a property in Spain is close. You just need to find a good real estate agency in the area you're interested in, view some properties, and make an offer on your ideal Spanish home. After all, you’ve purchased property in your home country before, and the process—at least in America—is managed by a well-oiled, efficient machine of real estate agents with slick brochures and anonymous escrow companies that take care of all the pesky details like distributing payments to mortgage companies and sellers. They’ll even send a notary to your home or office so you can sign the paperwork in privacy and comfort, and all of this happens without you ever knowing who the previous homeowner was or who bought your old house.
Well, let’s just say—you’re not in Kansas anymore. You’re in Spain now, so buckle up, because buying a home here is a bit of a bumpy ride.
Why Costa Blanca Businesses Should Work with a Local Digital Marketing Agency
We live in a world where customers rely on online searches and social media to find local services and products. This is why businesses in Spain’s Costa Blanca must maintain a robust digital presence. However, not all digital marketing strategies are created equal; that’s why working with a local digital marketing agency like WhaleSocial, which specializes in helping Costa Blanca businesses, can provide unique benefits that agencies located further afield can’t match.
Let’s explore why partnering with a local digital marketing agency will give your Costa Blanca business a competitive edge over those relying on agencies from other regions or countries.
Spain Roadtrip: Zaragoza to Teruel on the Mudejar Highway
Aragon is a high, arid desert stretching from the Pyrenees in Northern Spain to the Ebro Valley and southward to Teruel and the Valencia border. It's hot in summer and cold in winter, when its red desert land is coated with snow. George Orwell served in Aragon’s badlands during the Spanish Civil War and wrote about how the machine gun nests on the hills looked almost beautiful in the winter snow.
It’s summer now, and we walk along a dusty dirt track surrounding the ruins of Belchite. I pause to examine an old Mudejar-style church, scarred by bullet holes and mortar blasts. Across the street lies a destroyed village—a vortex of torn bricks, adobe, and plaster piled behind barely standing facades. Empty balconies open to nothing but destruction. I snap a few shots with a 22-millimeter lens, wishing I had my zoom lens, but it’s back in the car.
Despite its ruin, the church retains a certain dignity and exoticism, especially in the intricate Mudejar decorations on its minaret-like tower. Arabesque designs in red plaster, stars, and geometric figures adorn the tower—once, these skills decorated mosques. In Aragon, history lives in buildings and landscapes, and nothing tells the history of this land better than this ruined church and the town Franco destroyed during the Spanish Civil War in 1937.
L'Albufera: Birthplace of Valencian Paella
A green sea of rice sways in the wind, stretching as far as my eyes can see. It's a magic carpet of green waves shimmering under the bright Valencian sun. Just weeks ago, this was all water—a vast lagoon, an inland sea divided by dirt roads extending for miles. But today, all you see are green waves with golden flashes as the rice stalks dance in the breeze, dotted with white sparks from the stork-like birds that wade through the muck, poking the soft earth with their beaks in search of fish or crabs.
We're in the heart of L'Albufera de València, a sprawling lagoon and wetland just south of the city of Valencia.
Roman Valencia
In the quiet suburb of Lliria, just outside Valencia, Spain, I find myself standing beneath an apartment building, where a grand subterranean space was once meant to be a parking lot for the luxury apartments above. But a builder's shovel struck more than just rock; it hit a Roman tombstone. The city's swift intervention preserved the site, at the cost of the building losing its underground parking.
This is a familiar tale in Spain, a country where Roman ruins are as common as their fiestas. Lliria's ground regularly gives up its ancient secrets: a nymphaeum's stone tablet found in a nearby pond, a cache of freshly minted Roman denarii unearthed under a house, the base of a Roman triumphal arch standing quietly on a sidewalk, and most spectacularly, a magnificent mosaic floor depicting the 12 Labors of Hercules, part of the ruins of a Roman villa buried beneath the modern town.
Digital Marketing Tips for Long-Term Rental Car Agencies in Spain
Spain’s charm, sunny climate, and vibrant culture make it a magnet for tourists and expats alike. The current visitor surge has led to a booming car rental market for short-term tourists, new expats, and long-term digital nomads.
However, moving to Spain can be stressful for new expats and digital nomads, particularly during the planning stages. Sorting out the immigration paperwork, long-term accommodation, and transportation for when they first arrive and for the long term can be a real challenge.
What if you are a car rental company specializing in long-term rentals? You have the perfect solution to these expats’ woes. But how do you present yourself as the solution to their transportation needs at the right time? I.e., during the planning stage, when customers are more likely to need crucial information about long-term car rentals in Spain.
Cartagena Roman Spain: Carthage vs Rome
I'm deep inside the ruins of the Roman Forum in Cartagena, Spain. This was New Carthage (Carthago Nova). The sight of 2000-year-old amphorae, mosaics, and Corinthian columns is mind-blowing. Ancient lewd graffiti on the walls reflects the phallocratic obsessions of the average classical Roman. Two stories above us, in the modern city, a Spanish waiter yells at someone in an even lewder tone, invoking the same phalluses that the classical Romans scratched in stone 2000 years ago. The more time changes, the more it stays the same.