jim,
nice to see you back. hope you are well.
i think all the resorts are a bit quieter than they were even 3 years ago.
a combination of more AI hotels, the credit crunch, bar closures and an increase in prices has not helped. i have noticed however that over the last 9 months a number of established bars have held, and even sometimes dropped, prices as people are just not spending.
ryanair cutting large numbers of routes from girona has not helped either.
there is a thread further down about the decline of calella.
although i go to a different part of the costa brava, really costa maresme, i have noticed an increase in the numbers of russians and estonians at the expense of brits and dutch.
this forum has been quiet for a while, which i put down to most of the people going, especially with the likes of ferris etc are all repeat customers and so have fewer questions they need answering

hi CDM....I was a Salou regular..costa delarado....but the resort changed...went down...I used to coach with siesta... and they no longer had vans on the site I liked there...so I found a lovely little bolt hole Callela de parafrugel on the costa brava...lovey little coastal village....coach with siesta again....and the site was lovely....but after a few years...on the outside the effect of the uncontroled youth was showing......so had also been going to pefkos in Rhodes....and am back there july and sept this year to my new little bolt hole...

Salou only good for a long weekend now if cheap flight....to take kids port adventura ...and a night in my favorite Irish bar ...while the lads go next door to the clubby one....tweetie

Jim,
Nice to be back ... yeah, you are probably right, if it's regulars then you won't get the same traffic in the forum, just shows you that it is dying down though

Tweets,
CDP? Really? I'm sad to think that resort has gone downhill, beautiful wee place it was

To be honest, i think Spain in general deserved a lot of this. I can remember feeling welcome years ago, it was starting to get to the point where it wasn't such a welcoming place in recent years. Maybe an economic humbling will bring that back, who knows!

hi CDM....yes CDP....the siesta site is fine....no real change there....but I used to love walking along the main road to the big super market...nice big bushes to shade you...last time I went they had ripped loads of them out....and it was a long hot walk...

The coastal path over to Llfranc used to be lovely with bushes ect...and loads of lizards and dragon flies....same story there...all the bushes and plants were gone...and dry baron ground from the wall towards the sea....the trelis covered seat that we used to chill out on half way used to be covered with climbing plants...and was a lovely place to cool off a bit...it was bare...all the plants gone....there was grafiti on the walls...and I didnt see a single lizard or dragon fly....

I think there has been problems with teenagers and drink and drugs...or other things...and places to hide have been got rid of.

The little village on the way to the beach is the same...but there were gangs of youths hanging out of a night on the beach...some looking for trouble...I know because my lad and his friend went for a walk down there and were chased by a gang...they would have been beaten up had they not made it back to the camp in time.....

There had been problems with cars getting damaged at night...my lads were seen running....cars had been damaged...and I had the police at the camp ...and my lad got charged ...long story ....but a few days later they were back wanting to check all the shoes....seems the same thing had happened the night before ( after what happened none of lads had been off the site) ....and this time they had 5 sets of foot prints....and the same description for one of the lads as they had been given before when they accused my son...none of them matched any of our shoes....and the police stated it wasnt our lads who had done it...I expected they would then believe my lad was innocent...but they didnt drop the original charges....and I got a date for the court instead...the solicitor had told them when the coach home was....and the date and time was for the exact time we were due to leave on the coach...I was in a mess...I had my autistic son with me and my husband has had brain hemoarage and cant cope with a lot of stuff...and we were with another family...I wouldnt have a clue how to get to the courts in Girona ...or how to get home if I missed the coach...I tried everything to get them to bring it forward...there was a number to phone on the papers if you couldnt turn up...and one of the girls in the reception did her best to help me...but every time she phoned a number they said nothing to do with them and gave her another number...in the end someone told her to tell me I had no choice but to get on the coach ....So I decided to do as advised....

The morning we were leaving we were informed the coach time had changed and was 3hrs earlier...and we got on it...when the police first came on the site luckily our passports had been locked in a safety deposit box ...and was locked till the next morning...and I'd given them the copies I always keep on me...I decided to sort it all out from home ...

I wanted him to attend the court...the solicitor said they had no evidence...and he thought the cars had been damaged by the lads who had chased them from the beach...and I was lucky not to have had 2 lads in hospital..I was told there had been a problem with cars being damaged for a while....long before my lad had arrived ...and it was obviously still going on when my lad was safe in our site...and others too

It ruined my holiday....and I just wanted to come home...it was embarassing people thinking my lads were vandals and police coming to the camp ...

I tried to sort it when I got home...but got nowhere...I have a stressful job and a stressful life...and I needed a chill out holiday to unwind ...I landed up ill because of it....so Im in no hurry to go back to spain...thats why I wasnt on here for ages afterwards and wrote no reviews ect...I just couldnt face it...tweetie

Oh Tweetie that is such a sad story. Also the Spanish Police must have known that if it had been going on for ages before you turned up & no doubt carried on long after you left, it wasn't holidaymakers. Holiday makers in general go away for one week or two if they are lucky. That's the kind of account that really puts you off of going to places

No wonder you didn't have the stomach for a holiday forum afterwards, I wouldn't have either, and you may have got a few thoughtless comments as well, which I have noticed on another forum when things like this happened.

I expect you could still do with a few over this.

xxxx

thanks Doe....I really needed for that holiday to be a peaceful one....I was already at the end of my tether due to a bad year in work anf family stuff...instead it was a nerve racking one.

I go nice peaceful out of the way places...the last time we went there was 2yrs before...it was perfect...no graffiti ect...and no gangs of lads on the beach....and the lad had gone for the same walk with his older brother most nights....he doesnt look for trouble...he is a champion kick boxer...and cant fight incase he hurts someone...he could loose his licence too...so he ran...police werent interested about why he ran...double standards or what..

Now he cant come to Spain with us as he didnt show up for court...so we wont go either....Salou was a brilliant place for years..but went down hill...and CDP is being spoilt by ignorant youths...who dont realise their parents need tourists to feel safe ...see beauty and come back...and thats where their clothes food and spends are being earned ...and where their future jobs will probably come from...and their childrens

I just couldnt bring myself to write a review...I was so sad and upset about it all....or post about it...I became deeply depressed...and my health suffered badly...and I had problems in work too...I thought Id never be the OK again....and its only recently I have been getting back to my old self.

Im off to Pefkos X 2 this year and plans for turkey in 2013....I had a bond in a way with Spain and would have felt a little disloyal going to places new...but now Im happily spreading my wings...and mainland Spain has lost a good customer....tweetie

Oh Tweets, that was an awful experience, thanks for sharing that with us on here.

I think your experience sums up and confirms what i was saying, Spain doesn't deserve the custom anymore. Their police will have been having lots of problems with the local youth no doubt (their economy is gubbed, much worse than ours) and saw a nice little opportunity to blame things on the foreigners!! What you did is exactly what i would have done too, so it's Spain's loss

I can remember my first trip to Spain, you almost felt sorry for some of the people ... long hours, putting up with tourists, Spain in the mid 80's wasn't a prosperous nation, it had only recovered from it's dictator past!! In latter years they were swanning about in the big cars looking down their nose at Johnny Tourist, prices rocketed, and it was just pure greed, and to me, they've just paid the price now. I think Spain will start to resemble the place i remembered in the mid 80's very shortly, they might be begging for increased tourism

I just spent a week (in 27C temps, ok that doesn't happen often!) down at our caravan at Wemyss Bay on the west coast of Scotland, and i must admit that i didn't miss Spain one single iota!!!!

Sad storys

I also have a loyalty to Spain, but it has been tested over the years and of course the world of travel opened up to ordinary folk. Mum and Dad had a tiny little one bed apartment in a place called Salobrena for a few years in the mid 70 ties. Totally unspoilt at that time, just a Spanish white village, so beautiful.

I went to Nerja/Frigiliana in 2010 and took a road trip back there - on my gosh what a difference 35 years makes, mass apartment development everywhere, concrete gone mad. I remembered walking through sugar cane fields as a teen, that had long since disappeared. but then everywhere changes and the Spanish have a right to a robust economy if they can maintain one.

I did enjoy the Costa Calida last year, but I was in a top notch apartment albeit a touristy place but up market, i'm going back for a week this summer so it cant have been too bad. Although the drive from Alicante on the motorway going southwards was depressing, I have never seen so much graffiti in my life, generally speaking that seems to be something we have cracked here, but over there it was as bad as it was here 30 years ago. I guess the Spanish authotities dont have the money or resources to tackle it, and once it is up it seems to spread like a disease.

Aside of a month in Lyons on a French exchange as a child my very first package holiday was to the Costa Brava.

Glad you had lovely hols Cidermonster.

hi CDM....thing was I was prepared to go to the court....and cant help but wonder why the date and time was the exact time we had to get on the coach...either they didnt want us to go court for reasons you mentioned in your post....

We got our man but he didnt show...was better than being quilty of charging an innocent teenager...and ruining a families holiday...and the fact coming out he was attacked by the local youth and ran for his life..

Or they knew what a predicament they had put me in...and knew I would have had to get on that coach....and if I wasnt in the court building with the lad half an hour before...they could phone and lift him off the coach...then he would be guilty of a no show....and so guilty anyway...

I wasnt happy about the coach time changing....we were told with half an hours notice...that we were being picked up early and going to Estarti ...we had already sorted the usual hand back keys ect...but as we had hours of time before the coach we had bundled stuff out of the caravan...thinking we could take our time getting sorted before we went...my autistic son was in the shower block still getting a shower...so it was bedlam...and we just about managed it

We spent 3hrs in Estarti...while the coach went to do stuff...there was a market on and we walked round there and the harbour...I cant take the heat at that time of day....and Id not long had an op and had probs because of anesthetics....by the time I got back on the coach my feet and legs were swelling....and it was a very uncomfortable journey home....I decided I couldnt do coach again...I couldnt face the thought of ever again spending
3hrs in the hottest part of the day in Estarti...

When I looked back I realised it was the best thing that could have happened....as instead of being in CDP we were in Estarti....the coach had been and gone long before my lad was due in court....and wonder if the holiday firm knowing the mess I was in tried to help me out....and wether or not this was the case I owe them my thanks...tweetie

A bit on the negative side, I suppose all resorts are struggling due to media coverage. Everytime I have an holiday especially at peak time I have a thoroughly good time and the place is usually busy. The last time I was in the Costa Brava was 2009 and it was "choc-a-block.

Didn't mean to be too negative about Spain having visited 2009, 2010, 2011 and having a week there this year, but i do think that the Spanish Tourist Industry needs to wake up a bit as there is far more competition out there nowadays than there was 35 years ago when people could see no further than Spain, so no place for just assuming the Tourists will still keep turning up with little effort on their part, sometimes good weather alone is not enough to keep pulling the people in.

Doe

Last time i was in Estartit was 2009 to be honest and as we tended to go in early season, it was never really overly busy, so my judgement was never really based on numbers.

I guess my judgement was more on the place becoming more run down, pubs and eating places closing, and on the greed and sometimes very negative attitude of the locals. I think doe is spot on, its not 30 years ago when people found it hard to look beyond the Spanish Costas, there are so many options now and in a recession people want value for money

I think it's very easy to give an opinion on something without looking at a number of other issues which have contributed to the situation that the Spanish and the country faces today, and to just nail it down to greedy Spaniards or their tourist board is a very simplistic excuse, and it doesn't even scratch the surface, and it's not true because the Spanish Tourist Board are regular visitors around the world, including this country attending various trade and tourism shows promoting Spain up and down the UK, and they've shifted the emphasis away from the beach and the Costa's to the heritage and historical tourist attractions within Spain, especially as more people are taking short city breaks.

The head of the biggest Trade Union in Spain admitted last week that they have been intoxicated on cheap loans and concrete, and if you add to that the Tour Operators pushing All Inclusive on the hotels, the abysmal £/€ exchange rate, and Tour Operators 'cashing in' by promoting places like Turkey and Egypt to keep their bookings and businesses afloat, plus not forgetting that we (UK) are also in a recession with high unemployment and austerity measures in place, and people just not being able to afford to go on holiday. !..
All these things have had a detrimental effect on the number of tourists visiting Spain and if you don't get the overall required numbers in a financial year, then your province or business will suffer and eventually close. Tour Operators make their biggest profit during the high season and in most cases this balances out the books by the end of the financial year, and it offsets the losses incurred during the low season, well, that works in Spain too, so it is all about numbers at the end of the financial year.

In Spain with its autonomous provinces , each one relying on the funding from the Central Government in Madrid, which is based on the number of permanent residents in each city, town or village, resulting with the majority of towns being underfunded because they don't take into consideration the number of visiting tourists, who generate the 'extra' income to employ more public sector workers to keep the streets clean, to empty the bins of the extra rubbish the tourists have created or to remove the graffiti, it means that when the province goes bankrupt and the banks are full of toxic debt, then so do you, regardless of whether you're Spanish, British, Dutch or whatever trying to run a business in Spain...and when it's not just a province and it's the whole country, everybody goes bankrupt regardless of whether you're in business or on social benefits because the State can no longer pay anybody anything.

The prices in Spain have actually been adjusted in the last few years with the Spanish taking a big 'hit' on their profit margins, just so that they can keep open and pay the rent to keep a roof over their heads and food in their kids tummies, and I can still buy a cup of coffee between a €1 and €1.20, despite the extortionate price hike of a bottle of milk and the latest 7% rise in electricity.... the same price as I paid 3 years ago.
It's not that the people of Spain are lazy, 24.3% are unemployed and most would give their right arm for the chance of a job, any job! It is the fault of the Government, because it's the job of the Government to create economic growth, promote employment and invest wealth into the country's social and welfare system!.just as it is in the UK.

Sanji

Don't have time for a long reply right now but i don't think anyone was calling the Spanish lazy, nor are people so naive that they don't understand the current economic climate and the hassle caused by the failed experiment called the euro

However, through experience, the flawed system called capitalism does lead people to be greedy, the same old supply and demand rules that have hotels in London at silly prices during the Olympics. Human nature is to get greedy and sadly in my opinion i saw a lot of that during my Spanish trips. For resorts that attracted a lot of British tourists during a time of poor exchange rate (0.67 to nearly 1 for 1) it wasn't clever!

3 hrs in Estartit Tweetie ? I was grumpy about the hour and a half I had to spend in that dump on Thursday while the crew had a free meal in tex-mex corner ! Think its fair to say Estartit is in desperate need of regeneration.

Cidermonster II wrote:

Don't have time for a long reply right now but i don't think anyone was calling the Spanish lazy, nor are people so naive that they don't understand the current economic climate and the hassle caused by the failed experiment called the euro

However, through experience, the flawed system called capitalism does lead people to be greedy, the same old supply and demand rules that have hotels in London at silly prices during the Olympics. Human nature is to get greedy and sadly in my opinion i saw a lot of that during my Spanish trips. For resorts that attracted a lot of British tourists during a time of poor exchange rate (0.67 to nearly 1 for 1) it wasn't clever!

Quite agree, i was going to leave it cidermonster, but I certainly wasn't calling them lazy I am also not daft and understand the economic pressure they are under.

Was in contact with someone that lives in Spain earlier today & the chemists in her area have been on strike for 3 days apparently the government have not re-imbursed them for prescriptions that they have filled for the last three years :yikes. and people moan about how they are treated in this Country.

What a nightmare that sounds obviously I haven't got all the facts, but I can't imagine many UK chemists putting up with not being reimbursed by the NHS for all the scripts they filled the past 3 years.

No wonder the system over there has gone to pot & they are now selling stuff that should be on script off it at least that way they get some money in their tills.

I dont need a lecture on the rights and wrongs of this as it was just anecdotal evidence from a friend who may well have not got it 100% right as people do, but still sounds like a Country in a crisis (and yes, yes, I know it's bad here before anyone wades in and starts blitheirng on about how bad our government are as well, i dont need to here it, its shoved down my throat every day by the UK news and press how bad the UK is and this topic is about Spain !)

Doe

but I certainly wasn't calling them lazy

Ermmm, I never said anybody had called them lazy, I was making a statement that in general terms, they are not, and most would like the chance of a job, in context to the fact that 24.3% are unemployed.

Sanji

It's worth looking at some of the quieter less well Known resorts on the Costa Brava,Rosas, Cadaques and L'Escala to name but 3

Well I will be back i. CDP soon so I hope things aren't as bad as what has been said here
That said it was sad to hear of the guys predicament with the court etc though running away probably didn't help.
To be honest these kind of incidents can happen anywhere and have been happening in every Spanish resort since day dot
Though if these lads were deliberately targeted thats not on.
I still know CDP as a beautiful place and always will be to me though I as I said hope that due to Spain's economic issues it may well not.be the CDP i remember