I am sure everyone will agree with me that life is funny in a way it connects you with people from different times, different places, how some random made acquaintances can all of a sudden pop up in some unexpected moments. This is true especially nowadays when we live in a one big global village. Young people take gap years to travel the world. Experienced professionals move for better job offers from Asia to America, from Europe to Australia. That hasn’t been the case yet when I was in my twenties, so taking two gap years at the uni to travel and study English raised a few eyebrows. However, although it might be a long shot to say that, I think that thanks to my adventurous lifestyle as a student, I am where I am now.
My second gap year wasn’t exactly planned. One of my uni friends spent a year in the UK working as an au pair. When her contract was drawing to a close, she contacted me and asked if I was interested in taking over her host family as I had already had an experience working as an au pair in the USA. The family sounded very nice, the location was good (posh Surrey, not far from Guildford) and the job came with a car and lots of free time. The greatest benefit of this decision I can still enjoy – I made friends that I am proud to say I am still friends with and in regular contact with. And through these friends I met a wonderful couple who lived for a while in the UK before deciding to move to Valencia in 2018. I wasn’t aware of that until 2024 when we revealed our plans of moving to Spain to our closest friends. They put us in touch with this couple and this is when our move became real.
I remember sending my first email to Susan* in the summer of 2024 and informing her of our plans and asking how they like it over here and if they think they have made a right decision. The reply came after one hour, so enthusiastic, full of a positive vibe and positive energy. It wasn’t really a surprise to me that she had confirmed that they are super happy in Spain due to all the reasons I had listed: people, food, better work – life balance, climate etc. She had of course mentioned the downsides as well, like high taxes, very hot summers or the property market struggles and raising property prices but these couldn’t outweigh all the benefits. I had mentioned to her that we were possibly thinking about moving in two years’ time (which would be the summer 2026) as we didn’t think it would be possible to organise everything in one year. So the most important sentence of this email said: “If I were you, I wouldn’t wait for 2 years to be honest”. She had argued – why wait 2 years if you can enjoy this amazing life now! And she had an answer to every obstacle I would come up with. After that we exchanged phone numbers and this was really the beginning of our Spanish adventure.
I have to honestly admit it, when thinking about relocating, having a conversation with someone who has done that, for me is the first essential step that needs to be taken. Every person’s or family’s journey will be different. There will be different motivations (moving because of retirement, moving because of the career or to study or like our family – moving to improve our lifestyle) but the goal will be the same – how to end up living in Spain and make the process as painless as possible. My friend Susan was our anchor. She put us in touch with people who helped with all the formalities. She guided us, motivated us when we were down and answered endless questions about everything and anything. And this is what I am doing now. I want to be that anchor to all that are dreaming of moving to Spain but do not know where to start. I have set up Litora with my friend from Honduras who also moved to Spain two years ago as we believe people will trust our experience. We believe it is important to have someone here as the moving process is complex, stressful and involves trying to fit the pieces that move constantly and sometimes don’t want to follow our navigation.
I also have to admit that I hadn’t read any posts, blogs or articles about relocation to Spain throughout the entire process. When I look back at it now I am actually amazed that we pulled it off. I trusted my friend completely in guiding us and relied on my instincts as well. I realize now that we had been lucky as for us everything (well, almost everything) went smoothly, like it was meant to be. This blog is to show our journey and the decisions we had made were based on our individual circumstances. For example we didn’t need to apply for visa or work permits as my daughters’ and myself hold EU country passports. That’s why the process we went through and the steps we took will differ from the families who are in different situations. However, I intend to elaborate on the formal matters in a separate post. So please bear with me as I understand that obtaining the visa or residence permit for many foreigners planning on coming to Spain will be the crucial step which will need to be taken while still present in their current country of residence.
In the next post I will write about finding a school for our girls. If this subject doesn’t interest you, the following post will be about looking for a rental apartment.
*Name has been changed.