Spain on the phone
The Spanish have never been that enamoured with the
telephone.They appreciate its function, particularly for
establishing appointments, but the national preference
is for face-to-face chat. In fact there are fewer phones
here than almost anywhere else in the EU.
Correspondingly, the Spanish were a bit slow to fall in
love with the mobile phone, although they’ve caught up
in the last few years.Today, they have around 40 million
mobiles, equivalent to one each, although still have less
than half that number of landline telephones.The phone
network went private a few years ago but the old state
outfit,Telefónica, still dominates the market. Various
national companies and a glut of regional operators now
compete for business. Anyone still in the habit of using
public phones can dig out their small change or buy a
phone card from a tobacconist.
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2. Literature
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4. Performing
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7. Food and drink 8. Living culture:
the details of
Dial 112 for the
emergency services
in Spain.
Landline and mobile
phone numbers in Spain
are both nine digits long.
The latter all begin with
a 6.
Phone numbers that start
with 900 are free to call.
To call Spain, place 0034
on the front of the
number you’re calling.
Using a mobile phone
while driving was
outlawed in 2002.
The big phoneys
Telefónica operates
on a global scale,
second only to an
operator from China in
terms of clients served.
The biggest private
company in Spain, it
now counts the UK-
based mobile provider
O2 among its assets,
bought in 2005 for a
mere £17.7 billion.
Five phone facts
