Usually all the Spanish stuff also landed on our side of the border as well.

I have to thank Spanish game and programming magazines, as well as some famous adventure games like La Abadía del Crimen, for being bilingual in mother languages instead of doing the usual Portunhol.

La Abadia del Crimen had a remake 15-20 years ago.

I fondly remember the almost bazaar-like experience of perusing the tape racks in local Spanish supermarkets, trying to work out which (if any) of the offerings were worth my couple of hundred peseta investment. Sometimes lucky with a great game, othertimes.. not so much :)

I don't know how it is now, but I always looked forward to my holidays in Spain as a kid in the 80s because of Spain's lax copyright laws. Every shop seemed to have racks of pirated 8-bit video games for sale and I would always go home with a few.

This continued even after consoles were popular, with pirated multi-game carts freely available on the high street.

You had pirate GB and NES carts on video renting stores...

I remember the Alice in Wonderland text adventure they shipped in that cassette once and the sense of, uh, wonder and adventure as I progressed through the game <3