Living in Spain

The city of Alicante is the gateway to the Costa Blanca in Spain – as such, for many people it’s just the name of an airport on their flight tickets as they head for bars and beaches and summer sunshine!  However, if you’re looking for a fantastic place to retire abroad, Alicante could be well worth your closer consideration and inspection.

The city is hugely accessible in terms of air access, with its airport well serviced by daily flights from across the UK, Europe and beyond.  This means that if you do decide to retire to Alicante you won’t be cut off from home.  What’s more, because of the tourism invasion the city receives every summer, English is widely spoken and understood in Alicante and all along the Costa Blanca, making the process of transition simpler for many Brits.

If you’re one of the 23% of British pre-retirees who favours Spain as your ideal retirement home in the sun, read on to discover what Alicante could offer you, and find out why Spain has topped a recent survey as the easiest place for expatriates to integrate abroad.

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Majorca, or Mallorca (same place, different spelling of the name) manages to be both a party/holiday island and a beautiful and tranquil place to live.  It’s one of Spain’s Balearic Islands lying in the Mediterranean, and it’s second in terms of Spanish island population only to Tenerife.  It has a fabulous climate, the way of life on the island is good, and as a result it is a very popular place to live for expats.  But, most people know all this!  Especially anyone thinking about going to live in Majorca…

However, what’s not such common knowledge among would-be expats is what it’s really like to live on the island.  Are there any jobs?  Is there a reciprocal healthcare agreement in place between Majorca and the UK?  Can you take up temporary residence on the island as a retiree?  And what about the weather in the winter?

If you’ve holidayed in Majorca I am 99% sure you will have at least had a fleeting thought along the lines of ‘I could live here…’ – and if you’re now back home and that thought’s still eating away at you, read on to discover both the pros and the cons about living life on this undoubtedly idyllic Spanish island.  After all, if you’re contemplating a relocation you need to know the good, the bad and the ugly in order to make up your own mind.

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There’s a catch 22 when it comes to getting your expatriate children into school in Spain – firstly why would anyone who needs to get their children into a school commit to a property rental before they have secured their children a place, because you can be allocated a place in a school almost anywhere within your catchment area.  And yet, you cannot even begin the process until you have a fixed address in Spain!  So, starting from this point of confusion, it’s clear that finding a school for your children in Spain will not necessarily be easy.

We’re well aware of the many frustrations expatriate parents face as they seem to be passed over by pushy Spanish families who know how to play the system, as they struggle to get their child into a decent educational establishment and then when they realise the fact that the public schools have very different and sometimes old fashioned teaching methods that don’t seem to do children any favours at all.

So, in a bid to hopefully ease your frustrations, we have put together a report about education in Spain, your choices, how the system works and what you’re going to have to accept and come to terms with if you’re moving to live in Spain with children of school age.  We have included some resources we think you will find invaluable!

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“Spain’s too expensive, the euro’s too expensive, property in Spain is too expensive…” – and so it goes on, the whinging excuse list that we can all create in our minds to prevent us from taking a step that’s perhaps just a bit too challenging in life!  I.e., moving abroad to live in Spain…

Well, we’re here to tell you today that the 10 best things about living in Spain are actually free – so if you have a dream to live in this sun-kissed hotspot, there will be very little, if anything, holding you back from moving after you’ve read our review of everything great about Spain!

From tourism hotspot to expatriate home of choice – Spain has always ridden high in our favours as Britons, but recent bashing of the country by consistent media focus only on the negative aspects of the nation, and the fact that the euro is an expensive currency compared to the pound these days, has meant that the country’s reputation has been tarnished.  However, as we will now show, Spain has so much in its favour that anyone looking for an escape overseas would be crazy to overlook it!

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One of the last things that anyone thinks about when they move overseas is the fact that the laws of succession abroad can differ greatly to those we’re familiar with back home – and that this fact can have a dramatic, and sometimes devastating impact on your family and loved ones if you die overseas or die leaving assets abroad.

Getting the correct legal advice about matters of life and death in Spain relating to the likes of probate, wills and inheritance can seem difficult.  If you search on the Internet for example, you’ll find contradictory half stories at best.  So, at Shelter Offshore we have teamed up with Legal4Spain.com to get a correct and complete understanding of the situation affecting expatriates living in Spain, as well as those onshore with assets such as property in Spain.

It is critical that you understand your position and that of your future heirs and beneficiaries if you want to save them time, stress, worry and even money, and if you want to correctly order your affairs, ensuring you have control over how your estate will be divided up when you die.  We appreciate that this is not a particularly positive subject matter – but at the same time, we are acutely aware that this is a topic that has to be touched upon, therefore we will do so in as full and comprehensive a manner as we possibly can to directly assist you.

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Spain continues to be an incredibly popular destination with relocating Brits.  It has the sun, the sea, the sand and the sangria, not to mention the fact that it is populated with plenty of other expats, is an exceptionally easy nation to adjust to, it boasts a good quality of life and is within easy reach of family and friends back in the UK.  In fact, it’s almost hard to understand why anyone would think about moving abroad to live anywhere other than Spain!

So, if you’re thinking about moving to Spain, or you know someone who is – there’s a new must-read book on the shelves this winter called ‘Sol Searching.’  It’s being billed as ‘a fun-filled tale of a modern girl’s move to the Costa del Sol’ and is by newly published author Keidi Keating.  The book is as much a really realistic introduction to moving to Spain as it is an hysterical Bridget Jones style tale about the adventures of one expatriate as she endeavours to make Spain her new home from home.

You will laugh out loud, be moved to real engagement with the author, discover a lot about what it takes to make a new life in a new country, and be thoroughly entertained on multiple levels with this excellent book.  What started out as Keidi’s personal diary has now become a must-read for anyone even remotely interested in moving to live abroad – particularly in Spain…read on for our review.

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Despite everything, Spain remains one of the most popular choices with Britons dreaming about or even actively planning a new life abroad.  It’s accessible from the UK with cheap flights aplenty, it’s a country you don’t need a visa to live in, and what’s even better is that in Southern Spain the sun shines almost all year round.

These are all fine reasons for choosing Spain as a relocation destination, but in this report we’re going to counter that positive argument with 15 billion reasons not to live in Spain.  You see, if you thought the UK was in a bad way economically speaking, you ain’t seen nothing until you read about the mess Spain has found itself in.

The Spanish government have seemingly acted as ridiculously as our own dear politicians in the UK in terms of digging an enormous budget deficit shaped hole, and now they’re looking to the lowly taxpayer to fill it.  And if you moved to Spain, you would become one of those lowly taxpayers…

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With the euro still riding high against the pound, the British economy in recession, the housing market on its knees and no sign of a particularly positive breakthrough on the horizon any time soon, we understand why many people approaching retirement in the UK are quite keen to leave, but are perhaps prevented from doing so because of fiscal restrictions.

Well, what if we were to show you a number of ways in which you could end up retiring to Spain and actually living for less?  Would that bring a little light to your otherwise dull day – made duller by the grey skies of the British summer?

It’s true you see, we have a whole host of ideas up our sleeve that will show you how you can now leave Blightly behind, move to Spain, soak up the sun and enjoy your retirement living for less in stunning Spanish surroundings…read on to find out more.

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According to a newspaper report out today, Gillian Merron, the British minister for consular affairs in Spain has intimated that expatriate unemployment rates in mainland Spain are rising.  This is worrying news for those already living in Spain and committed to their new country – and it’s also concerning for anyone contemplating moving abroad to the sunshine in Spain to escape the gloom of the UK.

After all, if expat jobless numbers are rising, what’s the hope that newly arrived expats will be able to find a job, earn a wage and make a living to ensure that their dream of a new life living abroad can be realised?

Well, in this article we look at how to beat rising unemployment in Spain so that if you do hanker after some sunshine and the inimitably laid back Spanish lifestyle, you can actually make your dreams come true and afford to make the move abroad a permanent one.

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If you’ve holidayed on the Costas or visited Spain regularly and decided that it really is the one country that you could call home, chances are you have a basic but not deep understanding of the country.  Unless you’ve committed to living in Spain for at least a few months, you won’t be able to say for sure that this is the country that you really can settle into.

Yes holidays are perfect for giving you a taster of a country, but to really get to know it well enough to commit to living in it, you need to spend an extended period of time living there.  In our collective opinion at Shelter Offshore it really is essential to spend time living in a nation before you commit to moving there lock, stock and barrel – no matter how familiar it is to you on the surface.  So, when planning on where to live in Spain, go and spend time there getting to know the different regions and areas.

What’s more, maybe you’ve holidayed before in a remote farmhouse or rural villa, an apartment on the coast or even a hotel – so you probably won’t have experienced the full range of property types that there are available for sale or rent in Spain.  During your research stay it will therefore be important to spend time looking at the housing options available to you as well.

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