There have been a lot of online articles and comments following the broadcast of the much-awaited 2nd part of Paradise Lost last Wednesday, the ITV documentary detailing the traumas of everyday Brits who have had a nightmare in Spain.

I have to admit that I was a bit confused at the end of the programme. Most of the airtime was devoted to a group of very content expat Brits in the La Marina region of the Costa Blanca – not everyone´s cup of tea, but a lot of people´s idea of paradise. Then there was the Queen of Marbella Real Estate, Kristina Szekely, getting herself all excited about what people get up to in jacuzzis, whilst showing us around several OTT luxury villas in Marbella. And finally, the tale of a Huddersfield hairdresser who was determined to make a success of his newly opened salon in Marbella by charging people top dollar.
All very aspirational….and frankly no harm at all to the Spanish real estate market, especially in the Marbella and Puerto Banus areas.

The only negative during the oddly titled programme was the horrific tale of a group of Brits who were in danger of having their properties in Almeria bulldozed. Whilst this is indeed the most extreme example of ´when things go wrong´ I was told by a lawyer on the Costa del Sol yesterday that the dispute had now been resolved and that the Junta de Andalucia had been forced to back down from their threats – funnily enough NOT something that was reported in the programme.

The whole thing left me a little cold – just another example of a badly researched piece of scare-mongering nonsense.