My wife and I are thinking about moving house (as we seem to do about every few years. We have been in Spain for nearly 17 years now. We are near Gandia, Valencia, at the moment and are wondering about moving to Ontinyent (or maybe even Bocairent). I just wondered if anyone on this Forum lives there (or has lived there) and what their opinion of the Town is.

why not rent for a year first ?

There are people on this forum from both those areas.

Im sure they will have some advice.

If we do move to Ontinyent the house will be No. 7 we have lived in. Don`t want to rent and anyway we have two cats which complicate things.

What I am really after are people`s feelings about the town, night-life, Bars & Restaurants etc. Is there an Papershop where we could get English-language newspapers? Is there a Bookshop or something similar? How many foreign residents are there roughly. (Don`t want too many). Is there by any chance a Theatre group or Amateur Dramatics Society?

I live in Ontinyent. It's a small(ish) town but is still lively and vibrant. The town really comes alive after 8 pm when everyone goes out for a stroll or a meal. There are cinemas, night-clubs, lots of restaurants and bars ...

I think there might be a kiosk that sells English papers but I'm not sure.

There is an English-run rastro at the top of town - people there organise various events so it would be an obvious starting point.

All-in-all, I'm glad we chose to come and live here - best of luck to you.

Thanks for the info Snikpoh (love the pseudonym by the way)! Ontinyent sounds very much like what we are after. We go out every night and where we are is a bit restrictive. Its the same old faces night after night and it gets booooring!

Also it would appear that a large proportion of the people of La Font Den Carros are actually doolally. And I say this as one who has lived in three other parts of Spain. I have never seen so many nutters gathered in one place - they even have their own Bus Service!

Its worse than Whitley Bay

While I am on the subject: Does anyone know if there is a bookshop that sells English language books? Or a theatre group of any kind?

I wandered lonely as a cow,
De-dum-de-dum...............

there are a few English language bookshops in Javea if that's not too far


& loads of theatre groups all over the place


have a look in the RTN

http://www.roundtownnews.co.uk/index...203&Itemid=274

Hi ..

I live in Bocairent, well 9km from there in the mountain, there are a few english 20+ and we often get together on Sunday in one of the bars, but it is a quiet village, not a lot happens, guess its ok if your older and a couple but for a single person like me, then it can be boring...

Im moving to Banyeres in the next month, but im thinking of moving more up your way in the future...

Where you will find a number of stalls manned by some right robbing Shites who will attempt to sell you some old tat they found somewhere, not all of course, but some.
As soon as you enter a person trying to sell you a raffle ticket for a meat raffle (of all things) will spot you coming from a 100 meters away.
A bookstall for secondhand books that cost twice what you will pay anywhere else.

Hmmmmm. No one forces you to buy, of course!

The meat raffle, by-the-way, is in support of animal rescue!

Ive got a pitch down there at the moment, as im moving to a smaller house, so im selling a lot of stuff.... but it is equally as bad for us.. people offering you peanuts for decent stuff... example, I took a small genorator down there yesterday, new price is 90€ I was asking 45, which is fair, but I got some guy offering 30!! but like snikpoh says, no one forces you to buy,

I though the book stall was cheap, most of the books are 2€ (for a paperback) and you can get 1/2 back if you take it back for another...

and lets face it, non of us are a charity, and are there to make some cash...

No of course not, but they are attempting to sell things to other ex-pats so you would expect that they would you a degree of honesty should you be tempted to take up the offer to buy.

Anyway I will start another thread about Charity's as we are going off topic.

The temp stalls like yourself are indeed often good value & I have on occasion bought some good bits on some temp stalls. (Temp stall as opposed to permanent)
If I need a Genny and ask you is it OK I would expect you to give me an honest answer (as I guess you would)