On June 30th 1992, Ley 10/1990 del Deporte came into effect, forcing all but 4 professional Spanish football clubs to convert to private limited liability companies and sell shares on the market. The objective? To add an extra degree of accountability to ensure Spanish clubs managed their books without compromising the quality of the game. The outcome? A vicious circle of private investors throwing money at the game with skyrocketing costs that distance average fans from the running of their clubs. In 3 decades, dozens of great clubs in Spain have fallen foul of incompetent owners, dodgy business deals and mountains of debt while Real and Barca consolidate their duopoly. But new legislation passed in 2022 ostensibly designed to protect employees in Spanish sport has thrown an unintended lifeline to aspiring fan-owned football clubs from Spain's lower leagues. Thanks for listening!

The Romans, the Visigoths, the Sephardim, the Moors and the Castilians.... Each great civilisation in Spain left its mark in the Medieval Fortress City of Toledo. The first ever capital of what would later be called Spain, Toledo is located almost perfectly in the middle of the country and entices countless culture-cravers with its otherworldly relics and architectural gems. Come explore one of Spain's truly great cities as we trace the steps of Visigothic kings, Jewish scholars, Umayyad statesmen, Catholic knights and a plot to blow up the biggest building on the skyline....

Having visited each comunidad autónoma in Spain, James reviews every region and gives his brutally honest rating, from worst to best. What makes a place worth visiting? Food? Architecture? Lifestyle? The locals? That indescribable X factor? In this episode, there are no holes bared as we give our honest assessment of each corner of Spain - PLUS the 5 cities we LEAST liked visiting. Enjoy = )

Spain is a country that offers anything you could want - the best beaches, the finest cuisine, the wildest parties and the craziest cultural events. But which are the ones you really need to put on your bucket list? In this episode the Hispanophiles present the top 10 cultural bucket list activities that you must do in Spain at least once, from wine battles to stargazing via running with the bulls. But is there anything you think we've missed? What activities would you put on your Spain bucket list? We hope you enjoy this episode!

The Casa de Pilatos is a 16th century palace that fuses multiple architectural styles in the middle of Seville - the city at the centre of the world in the 1500s. Between the Mudejar archways and the Romanesque columns, the Casa de Pilatos boasts the first ever application of Italian Renaissance design anywhere on the Iberian Peninsula. Therefore, the palace tells the story of the evolution of Spain's high society in the post-Columbian and post-reconquest era where silver mined in the Americas paid for tonnes of neoclassical marble statues imported from Naples. But in spite of its splendour, the Casa de Pilatos remains relatively unknown to the millions of people coming to Spain each year!

Athletic Club Bilbao claims to be a Basque club for the Basque people, but is it really so? In this Episode of GolGolGolGol, we ruthlessly examine the biggest and most successful Football club of Euskal Herria and look at the ways in which its characteristics represent Basque culture and heritage, from the music played in the stadium, the "Gabarra Athletic" and of course the much celebrated "Basque Only" player hiring policy. But has the club been lying about the origin of some of its recent players?
Thanks for listening!

4,000 years.... 750,000 years.... ten million years.... How long do you think human beings have been living in Spain??

In this episode the Hispanophiles become anthropologists and get digging in the Sierra de Atapuerca to learn all about the lives of the earliest humans ever to live in Spain. From Ronda to Santander, the discoveries of fossilised skeletons and cave paintings illustrate the spread of the first hominids in the Iberian Peninsula. But although Homo Antecessor, Homo Heidelbergensis and the Neanderthals thrived across Spain for hundreds of thousands of years, climate disaster and the arrival of a new specimen quickly drove them to extinction....

We hope you enjoy this fascinating look at ancient history, and thank you for listening to the Hispanophiles podcast!

Do the Spanish still take siesta? How long is it supposed to last? What are its origins?

In this episode of the Hispanophiles Podcast, we're grabbing a pillow and talking everything Siesta - the famous Spanish tradition of grabbing some shut eye for 20 minutes in the middle of the day. Contrary to popular belief, the Siesta is a core institution of traditional family and town life all around the country. The pressures of the modern world and the demands of a globalised economy are threatening one of the greatest Spanish traditions of them all! But as the hidden health costs of an under rested population accumulate, is the world ready for a resurgence of the Siesta?

Thank you very much for listening and we hope you enjoy the episode!

¡Buenos días Hispanophiles!

In this episode, James takes us back to the very first day he moved to Spain and shares the greatest culture shocks and biggest surprises he experienced living in rural Andalusia. A 5 month internship was filled with drunk carpenters, nosey neighbours, arrogant managers, snails for dinner and a tiny town that could find any excuse to throw a wild party.

There is no better way to discover a foreign culture than small town life, so sit back and enjoy this story of a wide-eyed kid making the most of every moment!!

What do the Spanish do better than anybody else??

Hey Hispanophiles, in this episode we are celebrating the little things that our Iberian friends do better than anybody else in the world and asking ourselves "what else are the Spanish World Champions at?" From keeping their city streets clean to folk music via motorway service station food, James, Jessica and Silvano each propose 3 things that they think the Spanish do better than anybody else on the planet. Spoiler alert: arriving on time is not one of them.....

Is there anything else we missed from this list? What do YOU think the Spanish do better than everybody else in the world? Comment below if we missed anything off and like and subscribe. Thanks for listening!