I have just posted the following on my blog ( http://expatsmadrid.blogspot.com/ ), but thought you may find it interesting.

Moving from a country where you live in a house, to a country where everyone lives in a flat, where you know when your neighbors use the toilet, where you know what the people upstairs are watching on TV at 3am, where you know that the people in 4C are trying for a child and where the average temperature of the building is 38?C as the porters wife “feels the cold”, is difficult.

The latest episode is when I came back from a business trip in Asturias, to find that there had been a water leak and that the whole building had been without hot water for 5 days. Instead of repairing it, they sent around a letter to all the residents stating that I had prevented access to my apartment and thus the main downpipe could not be replaced. The consequences? I get abuse hurled at me night and day as the neighbors think I did this on purpose!!!!!

I can no longer use the lift, the stairs when other people are there. I have had hate mail put in my mail box, the whole works. When I posted a note to explain the situation, the community president replied saying that I was calling him incompetent and therefore was guilty of Libel (which is not a crime in Spain).

So..If anyone lives in Juan Ramon Jimenez 45 in Madrid, has been without water and ants to know what happened. The President did not contact me. When we realized what happened my wife called and visited his apartment 5 times, but he refused to see us (as the letter had already gone out). When we called the administrator, the administrator denied any knowledge of the issue.

Libel isn?t a crime in Spain, so I hereby accuse the President of corruption, of taking bungs and bribes from an incompetent plumber that has visited 4 times and has stated that a leak is condensation. The President is a liar and a coward, who has lied to the residents and is afraid to talk to us direct. And he is an idiot, as he accused me of a crime that doesn’t exist.

Mr President, you are a buffoon. He is also the same person who illegally ran an office on the 9th Fluor and still hasn’t paid for the door to the building installed years ago (the only one who hasn’t paid).