Thread: Making the move to Spain this year.

Hola. Myself, my hubbie and 22 year old daughter (plus our two dogs) will be moving to Spain this year once we have sold our home.

It is a scarey thing for us to do as we don't know where to start in regards to which area of Spain to move to. We have had this dream for the last five years and have decided that this year is the year we will make the move to Spain.

We have been to Playa Las de Americas and Alcudia, but over the last few years we have been on holiday to Calella and we love this area, but we would love to move somewhere whereby its hot and sunny all year round with alot of tourism and where its not too dusty.

With regards to work experiences, I myself have many strings to my bow. I'm currently working for a LA as an Adoption Support Worker and I am also a self employed Doula and have had a lot of experinence working with pregnant women and thier families.

I also have experience in Wedding and Events planning, I'm a certified ballon Artist, pregnancy and newborn photographer, web designer and also a Reborn Artist so I'm sure that I will be able to find some sort of work in Spain or even working from home.

I can hear people say 'OMG how does she fit it all in?' Well I don't do all of the things above 24/7 only when there's a need for my services.

I'm currently learning Spanish as I appreciate that this is a must if living in Spain.

My hubbie is hoping to buy and sell furniture/antiques when we move to Spain and our 22 year old daughter currently works in a residential unit for adults with disabilities. She is also a qualified Door Supervisor. She wouldn't mind hotel or pub work. So hopefully, as you can see, work may not be a problem for any of us.

I need your help though please folks as we don't know which area of Spain to move to??????

Also, we don't mind initially renting a property, but ideally we would like to purchase a property asap. If anyone could recommend any good agents in the UK whereby they rent/sell properties in Spain I'd be gratefull.

We are either after a house or a static mobile home on a residential site whereby we can live for 12 months of the year and have our dogs live with us too.

With regards to the move, although we currently have a 4 bedroomed house in the UK we would get rid of alot of our personal possessions and perhaps transport the basics ourselves as we don't like flying we only drive when going to Spain.

I know that there is a wealth of knowledge out there on this forum so any suggestions to my questions would be gratefully received.

I can think of a few problems which you might encounter. You say that you want somewhere that is warm all the year.. There is nowhere on mainland Spain or the Balearic Islands where that would happen.. I live on the Costa Blanca and the temperature has been below 10 degrees for the past couple of weeks. The only places that you can mostly guarantee warm weather in winter are the Canary Islands. However if you want to travel by car, and don't like flying, that would be virtually impossible. You will have to accept that although the weather in Spain is generally much better than the UK, it certainly isn't warm all the time. We have a number of British run second hand furniture shops here, and they are not accepting any more furniture, because they can't sell what they have. Also the unemployment situation in Spain is worse than in the UK. I am not trying to put you off, but I think you need to do a little more homework before you sell up.
If you are below pensionable age, you would be required to take out private health insurance or pay into the Spanish health system.
Keep asking questions, I have given my thoughts, but you need the opinions of others as well.

Hi Thader,

Thank you so much for your constructive advice which we have taken on board. I appreciate that its not going to be easy and as you can imagin we are really apprehensive about making the big move. At least we don't have small children to worry about.

I think I'm asking a little too much for warm weather all year round LOL.

We will be going back to Calella fairly shortly and will be looking at renting first so that we can do our homework before committing to buying. At least if we don't like one area we can move to another part of Spain and rent again until we find the right place.

Thanks again for your constructive reply Hun.

Hi Pinky

Welcome, as CD says times are tough in Spain and finding work is hard, that said there are always opportunities and having a positive attitude helps.

My advice would be to do lots of research on the internet and make sure that when you do come you are well prepared. Wanting to work in the antiques sector, you may find city life more attractive. As CD mentioned above renting to get a feel for the area is definitely advisable. There's tons of information about the various regions of Spain online so you could can probably narrow down the areas that most appeal to you before carrying out a deep dive researching the remaining candidate areas.

Finally if you search this site there are a number of articles covering this topic which offer lots of advice and things to consider ;-))

Wish you all the best with your new life. Life is abit hard at the moment in Spain but some times you have to grab life by the neck just do some mote home work you are a good place to be able check out other parts of spain

It is obvious that you know and love the Costa Brava area around Calella. You also mentioned Alcudia in Majorca... I imagine that you have only visited these places on holiday in the summer months.. You really need to see what they are like in the winter.
Many of these small coastal towns are vibrant places in the summer, but almost deserted in winter. We are interested to know how you get on, keep us informed.
CD

Some very good points above. You were talking about selling your house in the UK, however couldn't you rent it out for six months or even a year, then rent over here and see what the work situation is like before committing yourselves to a permanent move? As others have said, things are tough here at the moment, though I do believe that if you are very determined, talented and/or resourceful you can probably make a success of life wherever you choose to live.

Good luck!