I think you are quite right about the useage of Ud. I hear it all the time round here.

For god's sake don't start on apostrophes, grammar and punctuation as well, or we'll be here all night.

I can only but agree.

Glass houses....... and stones eh?

This raises another issue - the Usted form may not be so common now in Spain (I heard it occasionally in Madrid but not frequently) but is it not the case it's used a lot more in other Spanish speaking countries (when they're not adding another form - Vos - into the equation)? I suspect Google uses the world Spanish translation and has to take into account Latin American influence.

Do spanish language courses in the UK still concentrate on the "usted" form like they did years ago? Nearly all the old text books scarcely used the "tu" form at all.

The Beeb site/books used to give equal attention to peninsular Spanish, and the international version.

Incidentally, anyone learning Spanish in night classes in the UK really should take a course in Spain (or another Spanish speaking country) if at all possible - you learn more in 3 weeks than 10 months at home. Having said that, the internet (podcasts, forums etc) do make it a lot easier to study from home.

You don't have to be dead to be a pathologist

I have a very red face and can't even blame it on a typing error. I'm catching the virus by association.

When we moved to Spain some eight years ago,my two boys(11 and 13 years)were enrolled in the school in Mojacar,near the new supermercadona. Neither of them spoke Spanish,like the majority of the English students that attended. They struggled during classes and found the lunch breaks outside in the grounds pretty scary. The foreigners stuck together in one group,the Spanish in another,and the gypsies in their own clique.
My youngest had a bit of bother with some Spanish kids who were bullying the English,but a young gypsy girl took to him and put her arms around his shoulders and said that he was one of them(the gypsies). My boy didn't appreciate what a favour she had done for him for some time,but he certainly appreciated the fact that he was one of the only foreigners in the school who wasn't involved in any fights or scrapes.
Incidentally,both of them finished their schooling,passing all their exams(in Spanish!!) and their teachers were always asking about them after they had left. Seems they were some sort of success story in that school.

Is this message in code or am I dumber than usual today?

If half of Spain levitated towards the UK every year, got pissed up, insulted the locals, demanded their own culture be brought with them en masse and destroyed a fair amount of British heritage sites then I'm pretty sure the British wouldn't like the Spanish. A lot of British don't even like the poles and the number of Eastern Europeans living in the UK is a tiny percentage of the number of Brits resident in Spain.

It's possibly true that some Spanish may hate the British, but then again, can you blame them?

I have seen similar incidents, they gypsies would rather make friends with an "outsider" than with the locals, and vice versa.

Both groups (Spanish and gypsies) are told from an early age not to mix in the majority of cases, it may seem harsh to mention it, but it is true.

If for you to say the truth it means to be racist, you can call me a racist. However, you are a stupid lit

Possibly! I live in what has become a very popular tourist area in UK, and I have very little time for the tourists TBH, mainly because I don't make a penny out of them, I just see the downside. Full shops, carparks, beaches etc, screaming kids, litter dumped everywhere. However, if I had a business, making good money out of them, it might change my opinion a bit. Loads of Spanish are making a good living on the back of Brit tourists, but true, they don't have to like them. Plus of course, not everyone that goes to Spain behaves in the manner you describe, it's easy to avoid the awful costas, there are thousands of us that behave quite reasonably. A good Spanish friend of ours rents out quality holiday lets, and his favourite customers are Brits, but then they aren't the Torremolinos/Fuengirola type clients.

you imagines that people of a place of the world arrived 400 years ago to the UK. From then on, they are not integrated. They don't accept the rules of the society, only yours (weddings, laws, etc). They are generally conflicting people, in proportion to their population. But the worst thing, that however, they want to benefit of the system of well-being that doesn't correspond them in theory, because they in nothing has contributed to the society, and then, when you reproach them something, very happily they take out the banner with the word " racist " (because is the new fashion)...then, I ask to you, what you would think of this people?