Spain tops chart for expat social life and healthcare in latest survey

Safety, family life, socialising, healthcare and culture: if you’re an expat searching for these things, Spain is hard to beat.

The latest HSBC Expat Explorer Survey has published data this week that reveals Spain is considered the best expat destination in the world for an active social life and top-notch healthcare…

According to the views of the 21,950 respondents surveyed across 39 countries, Spain also performs very strongly on property value and choice – coming third overall – quality of life, where Spain came second, and culture, where the country ranked third.

Despite garnering an overall position of just 13^th, Spain performed well in the more valued metrics that families and many would-be expats would seek, such as safety, integration, the ability to make friends and the provisions for families – particularly the ease with which children can settle into their new life abroad.

The eighth HSBC Expat Explorer Survey appeared this year to favour financial metrics, with Singapore claiming top-spot thanks, largely, to its well-known ability to provide well-paying jobs to expats who live there. The country also scored highly on safety, and has improved on matters relating to culture and integration as the expat community there grows.

Spain was let down on school quality, where it ranked 26^th, and finance, where it ranked 17^th. The issue of school quality is interesting, given that Spain was pitched against many destinations that famously – like Singapore – bend over backwards to accommodate expats, and thus education provisions are developed along such lines as a matter of course.

Although those on the Costa del Sol are spoilt for choice, for many expats in Spain there are still regions where very few international or British schools exist, hence the disparity. As for finance, Spain’s economic woes in recent years are well documented, but then so is the recovery, which has gathered pace impressively this year.

On balance, Spain performed way above average in the fields that are bound to matter for most expats. The country is seen as providing top-notch healthcare, a brilliantly welcoming culture in which it is easy to make friends and socialise, and a country that has high levels of tolerance and integration.

Job security, entrepreneurship, wage growth and career progression are all metrics in which Spain performed below average, but these are each – while not easily fixable – at least areas which the country can work on.

The survey broke down each country into three separate categories: Economics, Experience and Family. Spain came 36^th out of 39 for Economics, but ranked second overall for Experience and fourth overall for Family – delivering the widest ‘split’ between categories of any nation.

The results for Spain’s politicians are clear: sort out the job market and the economy, and you have on your hands probably the finest country in the world in which to be an expat.

In contrast to Spain’s 13th place, the UK ranked 23rd, France 29th, and Italy a disappointing, and perhaps slightly surprising, 38th, finishing just above bottom country Brazil.