Look and Find - but not in Madrid

I am currently spending a couple of weeks in Madrid - my wife´s home town and it´s quite interesting to see how different 2 countries - Spain and the UK - are with regards the Internet. On arriving in Madrid one of the first cars that I saw had emablazoned across it the name of a well-known estate agents - Look and Find - yet nowhere was the web address displayed. What´s even more bizarre is that the website has a complete listing of properties for Look and Find across the whole of Madrid and Spain!

Even coming from a town which is around 200 miles from London, I find this is very strange to see indeed. The internet cafe that I am currently writing this post doesn´t have a website address - though it is very busy and quite good (3w.com - c/Tetuan, Madrid). I think every small company - even those with under 5 employess - that I work with have a website in the UK.

This is not to say that Madrid and Spain have not adopted the Internet - ADSL is cheaper here than the UK and one of my colleagues told me only the other day that a friend of his is dealing with a Madrid company that´s at the cutting edge of streaming video and doing things which are far more advanced than anything in the UK! 

I´ll continue my observations over the coming week.

adrid