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This is their story, from Adam's email of 10 July 1997:
" We met in 1986 when we were teaching (she French, me English) at the same language school. As we were in Spain, we began speaking Spanish together. The fact that my wife was brought up bi-lingual in French and Spanish made this natural for her, and it certainly worked wonders for my Spanish.
When our daughter was born we had already decided that I would speak English to her and my wife would speak French, confident that Spanish would be acquired outside the home. The complication was that we spoke Spanish together, and I was sure that if our daughter saw that the community language was also the one used for general communication in the home, she would end up understanding French and English but just speaking in Spanish.
My wife had been urging me to speak English with her for a couple of years, but I had never been able to. It just didn't feel right after years of speaking to her in Spanish. It felt like it wasn't her. However the prospect of my daughter not being proficient in English was obviously enough to persuade me, and my wife and I switched to English as our language of communication. The strangest thing was, that for several months I missed my wife!! This is because of course it felt almost like a new relationship.
We have not really had really had any problems because of our cultural differences. My wife is already bi-cultural, having been brought up in France with a very Spanish mother. I already spoke French and Spanish when I met her, so there were no real clashes or surprises for either of us. Furthermore both France and GB are in the EU, so no legal problems were experienced. What problems we did experience were caused by us both being foreigners in Spain. At that time Spain wasn't fully integrated into the EEC, so we had no end of work permit problems, and my wife even had hers refused, despite having a Spanish mother.
That's all behind us now however, and we are enjoying bringing up a little girl who will eat foie gras and Christmas pudding at Christmas, and also celebrate the Three Kings of Orient (Spanish custom) at epiphany.
We have one three and a half year old daughter coming to grips with English, French, Spanish and Catalan, and a second child due in January. "
