Why Spain as an Expat? My answer to \"How did you end up living in Spain?\"

I get this question so often, that I thought I might as well dedicate an article for it.

When I get this question, I find it so self-explanatory that I feel tempted asking back that how come you did not end up living in Spain?!?

I guess it’s quite lucky to have been first time in Spain when I was 4 years old.

Obviously, I don’t remember much of the trip (other than needing to go to toilet when we finally climbed up the big slide in a water park in Tenerife, although mom had many times asked beforehand if I need to go or not – you know, kids and their impaccable timings).

Anyway, the warmth and energy probably somehow stuck to me, and I had travelled a few more times to Spain as a kid and teenager.

When walking in the complete darkness in November in Finalnd with my friend at the age of 13, we were often sharing our memories from the trips abroad and how nice it was.

Anyhow, not to get you too bored on young teenager girl’s thoughts and daydreams, let’s get to my first time living in Spain.

I moved to Canary Islands when I was 24.

Before that I had done my 7 months of Erasmus in Ireland, so it wasn’t first time going for a bit longer while abroad, but it was first time moving into non-English speaking country.

I got a job as a Dancer and Activity organizer in a 4-star hotel in the most touristy part of Canary Islands – Maspalomas in Gran Canaria.

The job was, you know, a job that 20-something can do for fun: high energy, long hours, but not much responsibilities but a lot of fun.

I mean I got to rehearse for dance shows as a part of my job, live in Spain and eat my meals in a 4-star hotel, so it was quite a dream, I would say.

However, I did not stay there longer than a few months, as my relationship had come to an end at the same time and I wasn’t in the best place with myself mentally.

So I kind of returned to Finland “too early”.

The job wouldn’t have been a job for a loooong-term anyway, as it was more of a lifestyle with working 6 days a week.

But at the same time I would not say it was though, but it meant you could not have much other life.

It was not though because my daily work was things like organizing archery, volleyball, aqua gym, yoga, sjoelen and bingo for the hotel clientele, and after a day have a dance practice for the next show.

Salary wasn’t much , but I lived in a shared room provided by the employer and I could go eat at the hotel anytime I wanted, so I did not need to consume much money either.

Life moved on and I continued living in Finland, traveling occasionally to Spain and then moving to Malta for over two years.

Next time I moved to Spain was right after covid.

Acually, I had wanted to relocate for a longer while to south east Asia, but due to all covid certification etc. that dream became too complicated paper war to my taste.

So we decided to stay in Europe - at least then we wouldn't need to think about Gut Health While Traveling

We moved to a city I had visited and fallen in love with: Valencia.

We packed our Ford Focus in September 2021 and headed towards south.

First by boat to Germany, and slowly via Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, France and Switzerland to Spain.

We were both working remotely back then, so we took the roadtrip really slowly, travelling for 2 months.

We were one of the first ones to receive the vaccine passport that required having 2 vaccines and we basically left immediately when we both got those QR codes to show in other European countries.

Random times, when thinking it now in retrospect. The vaccine passports were mainly asked in Germany in all the places, like when entering a café or signing into a hotel.

To be honest, I don’t know what we were thinking, when we packed or whole life to Ford to move to Spain, while we had done just a 6-month rental contract for a flat in Valencia.

I guess the thought was to see if it suits for us and relocate somewhere else in Spain if it does not resonate.

That was actually a good choice, as for a few reasons life in Valencia was not the kind of romanticised reality as fantasized during the sunless months in Finland.

That’s too long story to tell here, but I will write an article about our life in Valencia.

We ended up quite randomly looking for the option of buying a property in Spain.

Actually really non-classy way: mom had been watching these British reality tvs about finding a second home in Spain that they show also in Finnish tv, and she was saying that there are cheap places in Torrevieja.

I can’t believe we were open-minded enough to check some places from idealista in Torrevieja.

Luckily our beloved Ford Focus saved us from that: our car broke just before the weekend we had organised flat viewings in Torrevieja.

So, we did as we deemed best: decided to go buy train to Alicante instead and called to have a viewing for all the interesting seeming flats the day before.

You can soon read the full story on buying the flat in Spain here.

But the bottom line is: we ended up buying the first flat we saw because we had such a strong intuition about the place from the very first breath. :D

Since July 2022 we’ve been living in the sunniest place in Europe, aka Alicante and haven’t regretted a day.

It’s been one of the best decisions of our lives and I’m glad we trusted the intuition; we basically bought a flat the first weekend we visited Alicante :D.

I hope I did not bore you with the whole context instead of getting to the point: WHY SPAIN?

For me Spain has always been the country for long-term relocation, because

it’s in Europe, so not far from home country,

the language is super nice and actually useful to learn,

people are sympathetic and well, small Sini had gotten the feel of it already in 1996.

For me countries like Italy or Greece were never the option, as for me learning Spanish seemed much better decision and in general I don’t see myself living in Greece or Italy long-term.

In Spain you can learn the language and people are also open-minded in a sense that there are people from all over the world in Spain and locals don’t really mind.

I’m not saying it does not cause any friction between locals and expats, of course it does, but I would call Spanish people really tolerant, open-minded and simply way too chill to make a problem when there isn’t one.

In this Spain is 100 times better than my home country for instance, that too often focuses on the differences of other people, rather than the similarities and simply minding their own business instead of neighbour’s.

So one of my favorite things I appreciate about Spanish people is that they’re sympathetic and focusing on their own life, instead of commenting, optimizing and judging others all the time with some random rules, social norms or sour energy.

Unfortunately in Finland there are way too many people with too much free time, so they have time and energy to judge others and talk behind back and simple be unpleasant without any common sense.

(Ok, this got a bit sidetracked , so let’s get back to why Spain.)

Weatherwise I don’t think any expat from higher than France needs to state the obvious – that sunny weather all year around motivates.

However, for me, I already learned when living in Malta that I basically got completely rid of my difficult insomnia and sleeping issues when moving to Mediterranea, because the circadian rhythm is much more regular all year around compared to Finland.

In simple terms, sun actually sets and rises all year around, unlike in Finland where we have nightless nights and polar nights.

So this is my answer to “Why Spain?”.

I would call Spain and Alicante my home base, but I still have way too much wanderlust in me waiting to discover also new corners of this beautiful planet.

However, travelling and nomad life is much more fun, if you also have a home to return to, and mine is in Alicante.

Hope you liked reading it and I’d love to hear your comments or experiences about this on Instagram. You can comment my latest post or DM me.