Some parts of Spain are developed and posh which surely are the areas you live in and go to, but when you average out most areas, the averaged environment is rather semi-developed especially the soft-infrastructure. Granted, it is still much better than Greece/Turkey, but the only way to experience positive surprises in Spain is to first consider it as Greece, which if i did I wouldn't be disappointed. Since you have lived in the North, I am surprised you decidedly chose to live in Spain with your family. Sport-wise, am surely good in your chosen school, but how is it academically? Any IB scorecard / college admission stats for that school
I wouldn t argue over whether many parts of Spain look like poorly developed shitholes though, I haven't t been all over the country but some urbanisation are really lousy, including in touristy areas ( it attracts lots of cheap Europeans tourists). Roads and infrastructure look very much first world though.I ve called once the emergency service in Madrid and got a reply in a couple of seconds, from a helpful staff. I used to dial the emergency number in Paris without getting an answer, but more experiences would be necessary to get a fair comparison For schools Runnymede and American School of Madrid also have excellent reputation (Asm better than Ics actually but it is further away from the sports school so we didn't t apply). No doubt there are other good schools in Spain. We might move to Belgium or elsewhere if daughter doesn't make it in the Sports school here, but I have strong cultural links to Spain, want to give it a try for a few years and get nationality( on paper I'm entitled to a fast track, but few things end up really fast when Spanish administration isinvolved aparently)
About the rude part, it might be a cultural bias, I d say Spain (Madrid specifically)) is the place where I find the people most helpful when asking for help in the street (in spanish), overall it is quite friendly imo I m lazy to dig up the link, but again Madrid came recently as the favourite european capital for expats to live in, even despite the slow bureaucracy, and health markers are excellent in Spain, overall it apears a well functioning city.
I do agree with what you say and understand your view when you have an above-average wealth, life shouldn't be bad. Also agree the hard infrastructure are all fine. But when I try to imagine the life of an average dude (average income, average home, average education,etc), my estimated average life doesn't compare well to a Northern EU country, again I might be biased given my extremely negative experience with the government agency, which caused me a lot of trouble.
Took a website look at Runnymede and Kings Madrid, from their univ destination data, hardly look like top schools. https://www.runnymede-college.com/university-exam-results.php , https://madrid-soto.kingscollegeschools.org/academic/university-destinations/ low % of imperial/oxbridge/lse and extremely low% to US ivy (mostly unknown US crap schools). One thing attractive about madrid schools is the tuition fee is rather low (eur15k/yr). Schools in malaysia cost at least $20k, singapore/hk above $30k
Blueraincap, about your disastrous experience with Spanish administration, have u tried applying for a residence permit there? I had witnessed several issues with the local admin, and have actually pretty much given up the idea of getting a Spanish passport (i m entitled to a fast track but a birth certificate fromSpain came so late- over 7month- the other docs from overseas were not valid anymore when the Spanish doc came through the post, waste of time and money) Have been through the process of registering the EU part of the family which is already more complicated than it could be with an efficient admin and is not finished yet, but just started to try and register Mrs, a non EU national, as we received all the necessary documents, and it appears that it is next to impossible to get an online appointment to meet with the admin and hand out the files, it seems lots of non europeans are stuck in limbo with this issue and can t get an appointment on time before whatever legal situation they are temporarily in expires. Sounds crazy, and a huge waste of timeif one must file in vain the online application again and again. We need to start that process to get residence permit to add Mrs to my health insurance, for which I m already paying. She can t apply for a driver license either nor do a bunch of stuff by herself, if she was on a temporary visa she probably couldn't t sort out the issue before her visa expire. Add to this wealth tax outside Madrid and the Basque Country and the problems dealing with other parts of the local bureaucracy for those who invest in Spain it is no surprise the golden visa has been a huge flop. Situation seems to be way tougher for non europeans (appointments to get a EU citizes residence card are easy to get, although the office is 30kms from my place and the system sucks so much one basically can t book 2 spots at the same time), looking for a lawyer now who can sort out this issue. On the bright side we are living in a "penthouse"( top floor duplex ) in La Moraleja and it s quite nice, plus cheaper than expected. no noise issue we ll see if that gets worse in September, posh but old building so expect heating and water issues. But cool area, way more pleasant than where we used to live. Not much of a soccer fan but many pro players happen to live in area, we ended up sitting next to 2 Real Madrid stars last Sunday at the local coffee shop, i was with family members coming from Catalunya who were wearing a bunch of Barca parafernalia and the Madrid players quickly moved to more decent pastures. Lol, catalans are very unpopular nowadays in Madrid...Hopefully they don't ban us from the coffee shop !
I didn't check much the British schools btw, but the Runnymede wikipedia entry states it was declared the best overseas British school a dew years back, dunno by whom and on what basis