Hi, we bought a house in Villanueva de Tapia in May this year. We’re using it as a holiday home just now and plan to retire there in 2022. Until we retire, we’re trying to get over as much as we can (we both work full-time in the UK so are limited by annual leave).

It’s such a beautiful area of the country and the locals have welcomed us with open arms. We’re going on Sunday to spend our first New Year there and can’t wait.

My Spanish was fairly basic in May but it’s amazing how having to use a language makes you improve, and I’m now at the stage where I walk into the village shop with a certain swagger when buying my “leche entera” before asking “¿cuánto es?” and saying “hasta luego” 😁. Nick’s Spanish was non-existent and is now almost non-existent, so a step in the right direction....... bizarrely, he knows “destornillador” for screwdriver but wouldn’t know how to ask for a small one!!

We’d be interested in making contact with any British people who currently live in and around the area or who know it well. It’d be great to get some information on basic domestic stuff and also a few pointers on other things.

Any advice/help would be most appreciated and, if you’re in the Vva de Tapia area, a few glasses of wine may even enter the equation!

Thanks, Caroline.

Thanks for your reply. We arrived at the house in Villanueva de Tapia this evening and are looking forward to tomorrow night - apparently all the single folk in the village read out poems to each other, full of plays on words so a 5% chance at best we’ll understand any of it. We will, of course, comer las uvas and laugh as if we understand. If we learn one word, then that’s more than we know tonight.

Feliz año nuevo y esperamos que te traiga todo que quiere......... ¡y un poco más! (If that makes sense).

Caroline and Nick.