Margaret V. from Boise will visit friends in the La Manga area this summer. She wants to know if we could recommend any good book or course to learn spanish. Similar questions came in from Ian, Kalzok (not sure if right name) and Joanne all asking for a basic spanish language guide, for travelers.

Years ago, I did my spanish language course in Barcelona where we had used the schools learning material. Since I have been living here for many years (and married to a lovely spanish lady) I don't really use any language books anymore.

However, I recommended the following course in one of our past newsletters and readers wrote back that they liked the online learning method (and that it was free). The free spanish course from a website called rocketspanish will get you at least started with some basic spanish vocabulary.

They offer a trial course for six days which gets you going with some basic spanish words.

http://www.alicante-spain.com/alink/spanishonlinecourse

This free course is definitely good enough to give you a quick start into some basic spanish. If you feel like you want to give you a bit more "spanish language juice", you can upgrade to their full online course which is around $70 i think.

However, in my opinion the free six part course will most likely be enough for some basic "tourist spanish"  (and to order a paella :-).

Hope this helps a bit.
- Hubert