Expat problems are universal… except in Spain

Expats who move to Spain will find that their list of grievances is encouragingly small.

The thrill of living life to the full in a fresh and exciting country is real. From the moment your plane touches down, life becomes a near-endless assault of new experiences, new people, new sounds, new smells and new sights…

For some, the immediate rush of it all can be a little overwhelming. But for those able to stick through that initial two-week long rollercoaster, things soon settle down into a relatively familiar rhythm, albeit one that hums to a different beat.

Note the above caveat “relatively”. Life in a foreign country can never be exactly the same as the one in which you were raised, so the question you need to ask yourself before you move is: do you want to fully cast off the tastes of home and dive head-first into a completely new culture, or would you rather the transition was more gentle?

However, a recent twitter hashtag trend – #ExpatProblems – would appear to highlight just how little forethought many expats put into their journey before making the move.

Most of the grievances on show are related to time zone difficulties and the inability to source food and drink that reminds people of home. For example, one tweet from Ian Lawson reads: That moment when you wake up at 2am because it’s 10am where you used to live. #ExpatProblems.

Another from Emily Melcher says: The good news: you do get used to time differences. The bad news: it apparently takes over five years. #ExpatProblems.

Others decry the lack of certain foodstuffs in their new adopted country – namely bacon, margarine, the right type of milk and, of course, good English sausages – while there are a fair smattering of gripes about tropical viruses and poor or non-existent universal healthcare.

From reading the list it becomes immediately clear that not all expat destinations are created equal. For all the glory of Thailand, the friendliness of Australia or the opportunities available in the USA, none of these locations can compete with Spain in terms of making the expat feel at home.

Brits living in Spain do not have to complain about time differences, lack of healthcare or lack of choice in the supermarket aisle. Spain has developed such a deep cross-cultural appeal for Brits and many other north Europeans that it really is a home-from-home for millions of happy expats, albeit one with better weather, stunning beaches, affordable properties and a rich vein of Spanish culture and history that exists happily side-by-side with the many Brits, Irish, Scandinavians and Germans that now call Spain home.

However, one gripe common to the #ExpatProblems thread that many Brits in Spain can identify with is the enduring problems of the heart: “the ones that got away”, quite literally on an easyJet airplane, will continue to be the lament of the lovelorn expat until time immemorial.

There is little Spain can do about that, of course, except promise that it will continue to recycle people each and every day… so love lost today could possibly be rediscovered tomorrow. And there’s nothing more exciting than that, right?