About Nick Snelling
Author – Journalist – Realtor
Nick Snelling is a journalist and author of six books, three of which focus on Spain. He lives permanently in Spain with his family and combines his writing career with running Casalasafor Consultancies, a real estate agency specialising in properties around Gandia.
Of his six books, four are non-fiction. These include How to Buy Spanish Property and Move to Spain – Safely! and The Laptop Entrepreneur. He has also written the accompanying text for several books by one of the world’s leading documentary photographers, Jurgen Schadeberg.
Nick’s investigative journalism has explored a wide range of complex and often controversial subjects related to Spain. His work has examined corruption, the economy, divorce and domestic violence, drug culture, the Spanish property crash, immigration, and the country’s culture of brothel use. He has also written an in-depth profile of a high-class call girl.
He has been a columnist for A Place in the Sun magazine and has appeared as an expert contributor on programmes for the BBC (Radio 4 and BBC One), ITV, and Channel 4, including A Place in the Sun.
Nick has also featured on numerous episodes of House Hunters International for US television, discussing Spain and Spanish property. His media work extends to co-presenting a television programme for a Spanish TV channel, providing voice-over narration for documentaries, and working as a fixer for a major television production company.
In addition to his journalistic work, Nick is involved in international humanitarian missions and has worked in Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Jordan/Gaza.
AWAITING THE TEMPEST (Spain from dictatorship to democracy) Part 4 Imagine it is the early 1970s and you are in Spain… Fiestas may not be emblematic of Spain but they do spring to some people’s minds when the country is mentioned. They occur annually everywhere in Spain, in every town and village, last several days and take a bewildering multitude of forms, some of which are very bizarre. However, most have a religious basis, and many can be profoundly moving. Interestingly, fiestas are not some artifice created by Franco or his tourist department. Most fiestas date back into the mists of time and are usually highly ritualised events that celebrate the Catholic faith. A fine example is the Easter (Semana…
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AWAITING THE TEMPEST Part 3 Imagine it is the early 1970s and you are in Spain… Needless to say, the building boom has had an extraordinary affect upon the demographics of Spain. In fact, since 1960, well over a million Spaniards have left the countryside for the towns and coast. This has been encouraged by Franco after his adoption of conventional economics and his issue of the Stabilisation Plan of 1959. This explicitly recognised that Spain could no longer remain an agricultural society (Franco’s natural instinct) and needed to expand into industry and tourism, if it was to evolve into a modern, successful state. However, for many Spaniards, particularly from rural areas, the tourist industry is a shock. Indeed, this…
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AWAITING THE TEMPEST (Spain from dictatorship to democracy) Part 2 Imagine it is the early 1970s and you are in Spain… Of course, in some ways, life is better than it has ever been in Spain. There is negligible crime, the economy is undergoing miraculous growth and there is more money in the country than ever before, which is producing a burgeoning middle class. This is an extraordinary phenomenon within a traditionally impoverished state, noted for the wealth of a few and the poverty of the vast majority. After the Second World War (1939-45), Spain (along with the UK) received no help from the USA’s far sighted and extraordinarily successful Marshall Plan, which was aimed at regenerating a ruined Europe. …
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AWAITING THE TEMPEST Part 1 Imagine it is the early 1970s and you are in Spain, with the country still firmly in the grip of General Franco (El Caudillo). He is in his late 70s (he was born in 1892) and has held absolute power for the past thirty plus years, since the end of the brutal Spanish Civil War (1936-39). Over 500,000 Spaniards were killed during the Civil War and memories of it are still fresh, with many Spaniards having first-hand experience of the war. Almost everyone is scarred by this and the awful White Terror, during which Franco sought to cleanse the country of any opposition or past opponents of the Nacionales. From 1936 to 1945 there were…
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