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Confessions of an expat mum

By Community Member on 10 Feb 2012 No comments

Back in 2001, I had a bit of a windfall (a savings account matured quite nicely, those were the days….) and decided, instead of reinvesting, to buy us a nice little holiday home in Spain. We bought a little farmers cottage, in Andalucía, did it up, added a pool and spent many happy summers there.

After a few years the summers started to seem too short and we hit upon the thought that maybe, just maybe, Spain would be a nice place to live in permanently. So, in March 2008 we upped sticks and went! Me, my other half, our (then four-year-old) twin boys and the two moggies. My grown-up daughters stayed in the UK. We bought a dilapidated farmhouse and lived in the cottage while that was done up, and finally moved in in September 2009.

Was it a good move? There’s the question. We really planned the move, in fact spent two years planning it, did our homework and thought we knew what to expect. But things never turn out the way they are expected to.

OK, so WHY are we here? There are good things. Generally the weather is good (apart from the legendary winter of 2009 where it rained biblical proportions from December to May). The Spanish are a pretty happy race and that reflects on the lifestyle. It’s beautiful. It’s uncrowded. Those lovely summer evenings of eating outside every night, after an early evening swim. The Sierra Nevada mountains close by (we love skiing). Beaches close by too. We live in a beautiful area surrounded by stunning scenery. We can go to restaurants with our children without being treated like social pariahs. Our kids are now bilingual. Things are mostly cheaper here (ok I know prices have gone up massively but my supermarket bills are still half what they used to be in the UK, maybe because of booze prices being much less). No nanny-state mentality. I generally feel safe in the streets. Even at night.

But there are the bad things. From a personal point of view things haven’t turned out as planned. The recession, plummeting pound and greedy builders have seen to that. We aimed to have a couple of nice houses (one for renting out) and still have money left in the bank. Not so. Yes we do have the two houses and no mortgage, but no money in the bank to speak of. The house reform has been awful, we were plagued with leaks, damp and mould and heating that didn’t work for two years. And it cost us a fortune.

More generally the bad things: AWFUL services. We can’t get a landline, so have satellite internet which has a bandwidth limit and is often painfully slow and it’s costly. Rubbish electricity. We only have a small supply and get frequent power cuts (both in the area or our own supply cutting out), and it’s expensive! Water cuts.Getting anything done is a nightmare. Nobody seems to actually WANT to help. Bureaucracy is a nightmare. I’m self employed but have to pay a fortune monthly in social security payments, which I can barely afford (stupid system, everyone pays the same, no matter how much they earn). The Andalucians are, err can I say stupid? Sorry, that is a gross over-generalisation and I know there are many intelligent Andalucians, but the ones we have dealt with have shown ineptitude on such a grand scale it’s hard to imagine there is a brain cell anywhere in there. They have no logical thought processes whatsoever. They do things with short-term thoughts only and give no consideration to any long-term consequences, even if those consequences have a negative effect on their own lives. Again, don’t want to offend, and am only having a rant about most of the people we have dealt with and been so UTTERLY frustrated by! At the same time they are really really nice, friendly, amiable folk, which makes it all the more frustrating. It is also a hugely corrupt society and I don’t think anyone in a position of power is to be trusted (not just a Spanish phenomenon I know). The worst thing is they treat us like idiots half the time.

So what does the future hold? I actually do like living here, in spite of the bad things. Not so sure about my other half. He currently spends a lot of time in the UK, where he works, and claims it’s his ‘therapy’! I hope we can stay here for a few more years before we have to consider any other options. I miss ‘civilisation’ – and I miss my daughters of course. We will see how things go.

By ZofiaC aka dino_2

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