Why Move To Spain? The Answer Is Clear.

Some of you might recall a post I wrote a while back entitled There Are Only Four Valid Reasons For Moving Country. While I was working on this,  I remembered an amusing phone conversation I once had with a fellow freelancer before I decided to move Spain. (I didn’t know him personally, I got his number from one of my clients.) He very kindly agreed to have a chat with me, for which I was (and still am!) very grateful. He gave me some valuable tips on freelancing from Spain, including the need to pay a whopping €254 monthly to social security, which, had he not warned me about it, might have toppled me off my chair when I registered as self-employed shortly after moving here.

But I digress… now, this guy had made the move from the UK a few years ago with his wife and kids. In the middle of imparting his wisdom to me, he suddenly asked, “And why is it that you want to move to Spain? It  is really important to be clear about your motivations before you do something like this. Never do it on a whim”, he went on, ” you need a sound enough reason. Do you know why we decided  to take this step?”

I sat there, in spell-bound anticipation, receiver pressed to my ear, waiting for his profound revelation. “I shall tell you,” he continued, “the weather. The weather with a capital ‘W’. We don’t care all that much for Spanish culture or the food or the people. We don’t really have much contact with them. But we just love the weather here”.

In January, London weather tends to reach the height of shittiness. My friend sent me this picture she took a bit over a month ago. This bus stop is a few minutes up the road on which I used to live. And now that I’m looking at this, I can almost see (part of) the freelancer’s point 😉