Best place to live in Spain? How the j*der would I know.
Someone asked on an expat Facebook forum the other day, “What’s the best Spanish health insurance to get?” The responses were unsurprisingly various and not very helpful, the reason being – obviously – that few people have experienced more than one insurer and therefore lack the ability to make a valid comparison. Furthermore, a lot of Spanish health clinics are aligned with one insurer or another, so the most sensible line of enquiry would have been to make an assessment of the clinics in the town where you’ll be living and choose the insurer accordingly.
The same principle applies for the even-more-common question: “Where’s the best place to live in Spain?”
A popular YouTuber published a video recently of his trip to – among other places – Estepona, on the Costa del Sol in Spain’s south-east. The town is popular with English and American immigrants. He visited a lovely bar on the beach and espoused the terrific, calm atmosphere and host of great things to see and experience.
The thing is, he visited in May.
I’ve never been to Estapona, but we did live in San Sebastián – in Basque Country in the north – for a year and a half. It too is a seaside town, arguably one of the prettiest in the world. It too is wonderful in May (and for much of the rest of the year). But you should see the place in July and August: you can’t move for the crowds of tourists.
The same applies to other cities and towns popular with visitors. The cosy beach bar we saw in Estapona would be thumping in the summer months, and if you lived there you’d soon tire of wrestling tourists for a table. You’d just as quickly tire of wrestling them in the supermarket, in every other bar in town, and in the very streets themselves.
And with bell curves being what they are, it’s not just July and August that present an overcrowding problem. In San Sebastián I reckon we failed to enjoy daily life as we had hoped it would be for nearly four months of the year. Our favourite bars were full, tourists loaded to the gunwales with shopping bags got in the way wherever we went, and every inch of the beach was covered in bodies of varying shades of pale and circumference.
Summer time in San Sebastián is … busy.
The question of the ‘best’ place to live in Spain is inherently personal and takes some hefty analysis. Do you want to be somewhere there are people from your home country? Are you prepared to drive? Are you okay with mega-hot days, or do you prefer a milder climate? (And if so, will you hate the rain that goes with it?) Got kids and need a school and stuff for them to do? Do you like eating and drinking in locals’ bars, or are you more comfortable with name-badged English-speaking wait staff? Are you confident attending an appointment in a town hall where few people speak English? Do you mind climbing up and down steep neighbourhood streetscapes, or are you trending towards easier walking these days?
To borrow an old term from architecture, we like to think of our daily life in ‘patterns’. One pattern is that we eat out more or less once a day – lunch or dinner – and we like … need … to be able to walk there and back. In Jerez (as it was in San Sebastián) there are literally 100 bars within 10 minutes walk of home. That Jerez is also beautiful and has everything a city could offer is a bonus. We also love that there are relatively few expats from the English-speaking world, as it’s helped us to assimilate with the locals a little more easily. They see us as more a novelty than as part of an invasion force. And while Jerez gets really busy during festivals, they last days not months, so you’re never far from getting your town back as the tourists head home.
If among your own patterns are a need for a daily swim or hike, or hanging out with English-speaking friends, or holing up in a peaceful countryside enclave with cows at your front door, Jerez ain’t for you. How you’d like to live day to day should be the way to begin interrogating the question of where in Spain would suit you best.
Now to the most important question: How hard will it be to find somewhere to live? In recent years it’s gotten a lot more difficult to find an affordable apartment in a nice town. (Just ask the locals – they too would love a modern two-bedroom unit close to the beach and bars, and they aren’t too happy that these places are increasingly being snapped up by cash-laden foreigners.) You can’t assume that your ideal place will be available in the town you fancy most.
Ordinarily I’d say the solution would be to hit the Airbnb circuit for a few months to give you a base while you search, but if like us you’re here on a non-lucrative visa the short-term rental idea doesn’t cut the mustard with the visa bureaucracy. It’s potentially an insoluble conundrum and it’s only going to get worse as housing availability and affordability decrease, in line with the rest of the world.
We got lucky with our first apartment in San Sebastián but it was rather nerve wracking, having signed a contract and paying the hefty deposit sight unseen. Finding our next place was a lot easier. We’d spend long weekends in a different town looking for somewhere and eventually the stars aligned in Jerez.
If I were making the move today I’d take a slightly different approach. Take a holiday in Spain and travel around for a month or two. You’ll get a feel for what you like and don’t like. Your patterns. Second, don’t be too picky first up. Yes, you’ll likely need to commit to a long-term lease of 12 months, but you’ll be pleased to know that such a lease can be broken without penalty after seven months as long as you give 30 days notice.
Getting your foot in the door will give you some breathing space to find your patterns and settle comfortably into your forever home in Spain. It will likely be a town that you haven’t seen on YouTube.
