Life In Spain

Daily life in Spain — cultural differences, routines, pace of life and the quality-of-life considerations that make Spain worth the move.

Talking Like A Local In Spain: Getting Started

Spanish classes will get you started, but talking like a local in Spain takes more than a classroom can teach. You can get by in Jávea and Dénia without much Spanish at all. Enough people speak English in restaurants, real estate offices, and tourist-facing businesses that some expats coast for years on a handful of phrases. But coasting isn't the same as living here, and most people who move for the long term want more than survival Spanish eventually. The real obstacle usually isn't ability. It's the expat bubble.

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Don’t Be The “Ugly” American In Spain

It's tempting. You convert a restaurant bill or a rent payment back to dollars, do the math in your head, and blurt out how cheap everything is compared to home. In most social settings in the US, that's harmless small talk. In Spain, it can land very differently. It's worth understanding why before you say it to the wrong person. Don't be the ugly American in Spain.

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Sundays In Spain: Plan Ahead

In the US, Sunday is just another shopping day. In Spain, it isn't. Most stores close. If you don't plan around it, you'll find that out the hard way the first time you run out of something on a Sunday afternoon. Spanish law protects a weekly day of rest for retail workers, known as descanso dominical. In practice, most shops default to closed on Sundays, especially small and mid-sized ones. It's not just a common custom. It's regulated at the regional level, and each autonomous community sets its own rules for which days shops can open.

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How Expats Make Friends In Spain, Not Just Acquaintances

Plenty of expats move here, learn the etiquette, and settle into a comfortable routine. Work, groceries, a nice view. Years later, some of them still feel like a visitor.

Knowing how to behave and actually belonging are two different things, and only one of them happens on its own. Integrating takes real, ongoing work on your part and it doesn't happen automatically just because you moved somewhere beautiful.

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Costa Blanca Weather: Saharan Dust, DANA And Snow

Costa Blanca weather is just all sun and fun. One morning you wake up and the light looks wrong. The sky is a dull orange-grey. The sun looks filtered. Your car, clean yesterday, is now coated in reddish dust. You didn't imagine it. This is calima, one of a handful of weather events that catch new residents off guard on the Costa Blanca. Knowing what they are and what to do when they hit, saves you a confused call to a neighbor and a ruined pool cover.

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Driving In Spain: US Drivers Read This To Avoid A Ticket

Spain drives on the right side of the road, just like the US. That's one less thing you'll have to worry about when driving in Spain. Everything else takes getting used to. A few US driving habits are worth erasing from your memory since holding onto them here, is a fast way to earn a ticket. The rules, the customs and even the road types work differently in Spain. A few of them may surprise you the first time you run into them.

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Dogs in Restaurants, Shops and Beaches: What Spain’s Law Allows

Watch two restaurant terraces on the same village street for an afternoon and you'll see it. One server greets a dog with a water bowl already in hand, the next points at a non-existent sign and shrugs. Both reactions are common and both come from the same source. A law that changed the rules in 2023 without notifying the businesses affected by it. That inconsistency is the whole story of dogs in shops, restaurants and beaches in Spain. This post will save you an awkward moment or two once you're settled in Spain.

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Concrete Walls, Hammer Drills And Tacos: Hanging Things On Walls In Spain

One of the first things you'll want to do after moving into a home in Spain is make it feel like yours. You start hanging things on walls. Some art. Put up a mirror. Mount a shelf.

Simple enough — you've done it a hundred times in the US. You grab your drill, pick a spot on the wall, press the bit in and... nothing. The drill whines, the bit spins and the wall laughs at you.

Welcome to the land of concrete walls.

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Spain Beyond Spain: Enclaves, Islands and Hidden Territories

Markus Trienke. https://www.flickr.com/people/102769624@N02

We've traveled quite a bit around Spain in years past, but still need to check out a few parts of the Spanish mainland such as southwest Murcia, the La Mancha area and the southwest around Cadiz. Once we are in Spain permanently, we're looking forward to doing a lot of those trips and going back to areas we've been to before to stay longer and explore further.

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Adjusting To The Metric System

We learned about the metric system early on in school. We did the worksheets, memorized the conversions, passed the tests and then as most US students do, promptly forgot about it. Moving to Spain means it’s time to reach back into the recesses of our brains and get comfortable with it again.

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Food Culture In the EU

EU food culture

One of the biggest differences between food culture in the US and much of Europe is in how people shop, not just what they buy. In the EU people shop for food more frequently and in smaller quantities, often every few days.

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