Thanks everyone for your kind help. When I'm a little closer to making the move I'll start my own thread on the topic as I didn't mean to take this topic off thread (I genuinely thought the responses would be of use to the original poster).

For what its worth zola365 was being an arse, we can see where you are coming from and your post was on topic, (not that going off topic is such a major crime that zola365 reply was necessary in any way.

Good luck with it.

When you're not going off on your "Americans" obsession, you make some excellent points.
The effect you have described could be even more marked were Spain to decide to revert back to an independent currency. This point may be sooner than we perhaps realise.
Which way will Rajoy go? He must know that if Spain stays in the Euro yet asks for a full bailout, his credibility (already low) will be blasted out of the water and his politicial career will be over in weeks, if not days. Yet taking Spain out of the Euro carries a lot of implications and needs a lot of bottle, and many doubt he has it.
He may yet be saved by the lower value of the Euro, which is helping Spanish exports and trade generally, but this may have come a shade too late.

Thanks for that, Stevie,

but I would expect even you would realise that the "american" obsession is only a ploy to bait certain individuals to stumble all over themselves to continue to make up ridiculous "facts" about them, something which I have made no attempt to hide my personal joy in watching him make a complete fool of himself in the process.