This might be quite a stupid question, but I was wondering about how AM and FM work in Spain (and Europe in general). If I take an American made AM/FM walkman, will it work in Spain?

I'm spending 2 months in Spain and Portugal this summer, and instead of taking CDs or my own cassettes to listen to, I'd much rather listen to local radio. Plus, I was considering taking some blank tapes so I could record stuff from the AM/FM broadcasts. Does this sound horribly stupid? :-)

I'm not sure about the exact frecuencies we use in Spain for AM/FM. I think the frecuencies band are 88 MHz - 108 MHz for FM and 540 KHz - 1605 KHz AM.

As for the rest of Europe I think they are using similar bands (if not the same) and eventually I guess all countries within the EU must agree in the frecuencies we use for every form of telecommunications.

As for listening to the radio while in Spain, I'd like to tell you that you won't be able to get many stations unless you're in a big city. I usually go on holidays to a small village in Zamora and I can hardly received anything there.

[This message has been edited by Antonio (edited 03-14-2001).]

Yes, you can use your American walkman - and probably pick up a lot of American pop tunes on the radio, depending on where you are. Idug all the Flamenco stuff in the south

This is always something that bothered me about radio in Madrid. You search and search and search for a station which plays music sung in SPANISH!!! Most of the Top40 stations, it seems, plays mainly English language songs. I usually search for those playing OLD, traditional music, but there are fewer and fewer of them around.

2 years ago when I went to Europe in a tour over several countries, I took my walkman and while we were on the bus travelling from city to city I could listen hundreds of radio stations in different languages, it was very interesting. And in Spain you will listen a lot of English songs, and what I found interested is that a lot of the music in Spanish is from Latin America, mostly caribean-cuban.

On my first trip to Europe 2 years ago, on my way back, in the airport, when my things were checking by the X-rays camera, the police stoped the line and made me open my suitcase because they saw my walkman was close to a bottle of wine, and that if the bottle brakes could be some chemical reactions in the walkman with the batteries or other things. so I had to grab the bottle and take it with me and close my suitcase.
Rafael