I´m Maureen Dolan, SpainStruck from childhood. It all started with my Scottish primary school teacher making us count our playtime biscuits in Spanish: uno, dos, tres. At secondary school I took Spanish and at eighteen, went to Glasgow university to do Hispanic Studies. And it went on. Years abroad in Zaragoza, Oviedo and Santa Barabara, California, where I worked towards a doctorate on Hispanic culture. For some years I taught Spanish at university. A few years after marrying my Spanish boyfriend we came to Alcalá de Henares, Spain and now have a bilingual daughter.
Living in Spain has been a challenge. The suffocating bureacracy, the fundamentally different attitude to life, the lack of opportunities for employment and growth have been hard. Yet I´ve done a great deal of translation work, I´ve completed a creative writing course and even got a Diploma in Spanish from the Instituto Cervantes.
SpainStruck is the result of nearly forty years of living with Spanish. It´s a space in which I´ll leave no stone unturned to bring you understanding, explanation and inspiration to keep your dream of this wonderful country alive.
