I wonder if anyone else has experienced what we have here.

We live inland from Costa Blanca / Gandia and, therefore, our expat community is reasonably small. It seems here that there is a lot of back-stabbing, name-calling, general gossiping amonst the british with very few having a good word to say about their fellow countrymen.

Is this a general situation for expats in Spain? or is it just parculiar to here?

Also, I'm beginning to think that it takes a particular 'type' of person to be an expat in Spain - do we all need to be misfits and is that why we don't seem to integrate well?

I think also, it may be my paranoia kicking in but perhaps I'm one of these misfits as well - or is it just everyone else?

Thoughts please.

I don't think it is general but I do think it happens, I also think there are several types of people who are ex pats and one lot don't like t'other much. A type of snobbery I suppose.

Probably not the norm.
There are those ,as in the UK, who are obsessed with one-upmanship,....better house,better,car,better everything right down to a bottle of wine,and whatever posh restaurant they were in for their last meal...........whilst there are others who are happy with whatever they have,....rich or poor,....and just get on making the best of their everyday life without giving too much thought to such things.

Fortunately almost all the ones I have met have been in the latter group.
Seems you have been very unlucky with your vecinos.
Around my way good neighbours are even advertised as a plus point with the properties, but I can only say they have all been fantastic,.....the Spanish,who almost look on neighbours as family and a few Brits scattered a distance away, but also salt of the earth, friendly and helpful.
I reckon its difficult to put a true value on good neighbours but I count myself very fortunate and consider them worth their weight in gold.

... and people ask me why I came back from a country I love to death.

I've met quite a few of that mentality in Denia. Some of them seem to follow each other around the world and have met previously in Africa and Hong Kong.

Not a good advert for your community
I certainly wont drop my clogs there.
Lets face it most of us come to espana to get away from keep up with the Jones.

Oy!!!!! Dont bring me into it!!!

Theres a lesson to be learned. When I lived in England I picked my friends carefully. Some people I just wasnt interested in befriending. Some poeple were a pain, and some (as mentioned above) were backstabbers etc.

So why when I come to Spain would I want to change things. I pick my friends carefully here and only mix with people I like.

Though to be honest I dont see much of what the OP mentioned around here, and we're not far from Gandia either

Well, ...tell us why?
Because you ended up in a situation as in post no.1,...?
...in which case there were surely other alternatives.
Would be genuinely interested to hear your views.

We thought we had chosen our friends carefully, but clearly not!

It's not really a big issue, we'll just stick more with our Spanish friends rather than expats - no bad thing really.

It's just such a shame to see a community in such turmoil "who said what about whom and why ...".


Ah well, head down time.

there's a lot of it around here too - they say if you donn't know someone then you know someone who does!!

we've been on the receiving end of totally untrue gossip & have heard dreadful things that we know to be untrue about people we know

a lot of the gossip mongers have packed up & gone though in recent months

a lot of the gossip mongers have packed up & gone though in recent months[/QUOTE]

Good riddence to them I say.

Good riddence to them I say.[/QUOTE]

you said it

no, youre not alone. i have found it too in a small expat community. the problem here has petered out somewhat as many have left. it all boiled down to the same thing here - work. if you could be directly termed as competition in any way, you were stabbed in the back. happened to me, over something i'm not even involved with work wise. but i also knew 2 friends, who both got slated really badly by others in the same line of work, and once the chinese whispers start.... everyone started panicking for the small ammount of work around, and the bitchiness came out.
we stopped going to any of the places frequented by this twots
DD

No you wouldn't but I will tell you anyway.

One of the things that amazed me about Spain and compared to other countries I have lived in it happened a proportionately higher amount of time there, was that for a country that was supposed to be a better life, a better place to be, their new beginning, there are a lot of very unhappy, miserable, depressed, nasty, snide, two faced expats.

Just saying like. Once I moved away from the Urb Ghettos life improved exponentially, but while there it was living hell.

I think it boils down to "fish & ponds"
In the U.K. little fish big pond, when they get here they think
they are big fish in a little pond,full of their own self importance