We have just returned from a fantastic Xmas week break down in the beautiful Spanish city of Valencia. The weather was cool but bearable, the people friendly and in all a wonderful place to visit with the family. However I wish to throw a few pieces of ‘dung’ at certain members of staff at Barcelona Sants train station.

My Mum and eldest son travelled to Valencia via train as our car only holds five people (there are 7 of us) and all went well until Mum and Patrick arrived at Barcelona. They were to connect with a train for Valencia and on arrival were informed that they could not get on one. Of course we were already well on our way past Barcelona in the car by the time we got the voice mail from Patrick and they were hitting the panic buttons. No-one offered to advise them that they could have gotten on one of the buses just outside the terminal for Valencia, no, they just refused to help in any way.

The problem was that Mum’s purse was stolen from her handbag and in her quest to get some assistance she came up against this annoying habit that the Catalan people have recently taken on. That is that they refuse to speak any language other than Catalan. Now, my Mum cannot speak Spanish let alone Catalan and every person she approached there, whether it was in ‘customer assistance’ (fat lot of help they were) or at the ticket office, they all shook their heads when she enquired as to whether they spoke any english. We all know that they darn well can but they decided to be obstinate and unhelpful towards her.

We are talking about a major train terminal servicing thousands of tourists a day from all over the world and yet every single person claimed they could not speak a word of english. Apart from one nice lady, a cleaner, who helped Mum look around for the purse, but she was the only one who offered any assistance at all. Mum and Patrick ended up sitting there for ten hours whilst we collected the keys to our apartment in Valencia and then back tracked over 300 km’s to return to collect them.

Maybe these members of staff should be relegated to some tiny tin pot outpost of a train station somewhere in outer Extremedura where they won’t be expected to be of assistance to tourists and visitors, and won’t have to be affronted by being asked to speak just a tiny bit of the english language. Staff Barcelona Sants with more helpful and approachable people instead, as I know most of the Spanish to be.