Overview

For the vast majority of people, moving to a foreign country is one of the biggest steps they are ever likely to take.  If you choose to make your life in inland Spain there are difficulties that you would never find in the holiday resorts particularly if you don't speak Spanish.  We have seen an enormous amount of people over the last couple of years who have come to live in our area.  They all tell us that they want to live the Spanish way of life, associate with the Spaniards and learn to speak their language.  Experience has shown us that probably less than 10% are telling the truth.  The main reason they buy inland is because the property is infinitely cheaper than in the coastal resorts and they simply cannot afford to buy on the coast.  After they have lived here for a while they realise that living in rural Spain is very similar to living in rural anywhere!!!  There are no MacDonald's restaurants, 5 star hotels, cinemas, bowling alleys - in fact there is very little to do other than go to the bars or restaurants in the area.  Soon they find, having led fairly busy and entertaining lives in England, that they are bored.  Here is where something very interesting happens, particularly for those who find it difficult to learn Spanish.

In England they used to associate with their friends with whom they shared common interests.  However, they will now speak to anyone who speaks English, whether they have common interests or not.  Someone, who in England, might never share their social circle now becomes part of their lives.  We had a client who told us that he had driven a car to a UK airport, left it in the airport car park after finding a telephone directory, randomly picking a name from it, entering that person's name and address on the log book of the vehicle and leaving the log book in the glove compartment.  He then got on an aeroplane to Spain.  Our view of this was that whoever the poor unfortunate soul was,  whose name he picked from the telephone directory, would probably go through a whole series of grief and hassle before proving to the authorities that the car had never belonged to him or her.  Thoughts of little old ladies worried out of their minds because of a series of official type letters arriving in the post came to mind.  In addition, this client regaled us with how he had cleverly avoided paying his taxes in England and he saw no reason why he should pay the Inland Revenue because he lived on the coast and the Revenue were inland.  There were a number of other things this client did and said which made it very clear to us that he was not someone that we would want to associate with, however he has one thing going for him in Spain.  He speaks English and he is now surrounded by a circle of relatively respectable people who will give him the time of day and socialise with him.  In England, these same people would not want to be a part of his life BUT HE SPEAKS ENGLISH

This leads to the next interesting part - when boredom sets in and there is nothing to do, the best form of entertainment in these parts is to find fault with as many people as possible who do not form part of the group and when that gets boring, they set about each other.  Nothing is ever said directly to a person who is the main target of their fault finding and gossiping - in fact quite the contrary.  Nothing can ever be said directly to the person because one day it may be necessary to ask for that person's help so usually the knife that has been stuck into the back of this person usually belongs to someone else. Another popular source of entertainment for all the bored people is to laugh as much as possible at everyone else's misfortunes.

Most people who are well travelled will appreciate that expatriate life in Spain is no different than anywhere else in the world but we feel it worth mentioning because so many Brits are moving here permanently and maybe can, with foresight, avoid falling into this trap.  It is worth thinking quite seriously about a move to rural Spain because if you want "Britain with Sun" it is better to find somewhere nearer the coast where the communities are larger.  Back stabbing is much less easy when there are large urbanisations and one can retain a degree of anonymity.  In small villages, everyone knows everyone else, (and even if they don't they will usually make up something about them in order to make themselves appear more knowledgeable or interesting than the rest of the group) the percentage of Brits not working is far higher than those who do and those who are bored are usually highly envious of anyone who appears to have a normal working life.  

Tips on how to avoid leading this sad type of existence will follow during the next few weeks.  Several of us actually did come to rural Spain to enjoy everything Spanish.  We like the mountains, we like the Spanish people and considering we have a bar where 98% of the clientele are Spanish it proves the point that Spaniards and Brits can live together very amicably and enjoy each other's company.  Spaniards tend to be less competitive, less argumentative, less bored and find considerable enjoyment in simple, natural things.  Normally if they can't think of anything nice to say about something or someone, they don't bother saying anything at all.  Most people have heard of the book "Driving over Lemons" - our Managing Director is in the process of writing one entitled "Crashing into Almond Trees" which will be written along the same lines as the "Desirable Hovels" section on our website.  If it was not possible to laugh at these situations we would all very likely be sitting in bars, with one group or another, crying into our beer and getting paranoid about whose bow was going to fire the next arrow and in whose direction.