The most important thing you can give a child is a good education, but what do you do when the public system is letting kids down?

As in the UK, and probably in other countries as well, middle-class parents in Spain who consider themselves to be "progressive" are being faced with a dilemma: their principles tell them their children should be educated in the public system, but with the public system in such a mess, they are being forced (though of course its their choice) to pay for a private education.

Spain magazine and Linguaphone are offering three lucky Spain magazine readers the chance to win the very latest audio only course to teach you to spaeak Sapnish.
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Can Spanish mainstream successes like Volver and Pan’s Labyrinth save Spain’s struggling film industry?

Madrid must be one of the best places in Europe to see films. A stroll down the Gran Vía, the city centre's equivalent of Oxford Street, takes you past at least ten imposing cinemas, some of which until recently still used those wonderful old hand-painted advertising hoardings where the picture of Nicole Kidman might not actually have looked too much like her - in fact it looked more like Ronnie Corbett - but it didn't matter.

Low wages make Spanish civil servants grumpy; a job for life means they can take it out on the public as much as they like.

Anyone who has strolled around a city centre in the last few years is familiar with living statues – those hardy souls who stand stock still sometimes for hours at a time. There is a Spanish joke: "Why is a funcionario like a moving statue?" "Because it only moves when you give it money". Funcionarios – government employees - are a major subject of debate in Spain, and many ascribe to them the ills of the country. If you've ever had to queue for hours in Spain only to be told when you arrive at the desk that you don't have the right documents with you, it's probably a funcionario giving you the bad news. If you've ever been treated rudely by anyone in a public building, that's probably a funcionario too. They have a reputation for doing poor work: a recent study estimates that their low productivity costs the country about €32m each year, lowering GDP by 5.7%.

Many Spanish people would love to learn English, but the current system means that only those that can afford it have the chance.

The fact that my four year-old son seems to be turning out bilingual (a far from automatic process, by the way, when your parents have two different nationalities) is a source of amazement and envy to the Spanish people we know. Some of them, half-jokingly I hope, remind us how much money we'll save in English classes later on.
  

The assumption is that if they're to have any chance of success in life, everyone has to speak English – something that is perhaps debatable, but which Spaniards wholeheartedly believe. In the 90s, dozens of dodgy English-language schools were set up throughout Spain and duly ripped off the locals, though thankfully the industry is now more regulated.
  

 Friends of ours send their children off to English-speaking countries for months at a time, fearful that otherwise the kids will be left behind in life; others struggle to put them through bilingual schools; Madrid's local government has recently set up a system of so-called "bilingual" state schools, which people are desperate to have their kids go to, even though in many cases the "bilingual" teacher is actually a fifty-year old Spaniard who's done a one-month refresher course. "Bilingual" is the buzzword. But, for many historical and social reasons, it's not working yet, and it's likely to be a long time before Spain is producing bilingual people with the same efficiency as, say, Germany, the Netherlands or the Scandinavian countries.
 

It’s a tough assignment; find something new to discover about one of Britain’s favourite holiday spots. Matthew Barnett proves he’s up to the challenge.

Diving into what must be one of Europe’s number one tourist destinations with the object of reporting back on somewhere different and relatively unexplored is a task that might tax the most hardened SAS veteran. I could almost sense an army Colonel bearing down on me with beetled brows, arms behind back and cane tapping irritably against leather boots as he growled menacingly,  “now look here Barnett, you’d better deliver. We have readers whose Hispanic sensibilities entirely depend upon the outcome of this mission! Failure is simply not an option …”

Learning a language such as Spanish is not simply a question of learning words, it’s also a question of how to use those words appropriately.

Even the smallest, most common words have their time and place, which is something that the tidy little lists in phrase books will rarely tell you. Yes, “buenas tardes” does mean “good afternoon”, but when exactly does the afternoon begin in Spain? At 12 o'clock? That would be too logical: it’s probably safest to start saying it after you’ve eaten lunch, which for most Spaniards would be between two and three o’clock.

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