Never Retire: Spaniards Really Are Welcoming
In what might be my favorite newsletter post ever, life in Spain is crushing our very realistic expectations
We walked out our front door on Sunday morning and this is what we saw—
Could it be any more Spanish?
This was just the beginning of another day where living in Spain has far exceeded our expectations. And it’s exceeding our very realistic expectations because of the locals we have met. People who have embraced us and our presence to an extent I never anticipated.
Good stereotypes exist. And the Spaniards we have met are living up to them. Equally, they’re giving us real insight into how people feel about the changes—particularly the influx of newcomers—taking place in Spain. Or, at least, how they treat people like us.
As always, this is our experience. So it exists in our vacuum, which is—for what it’s worth—a firsthand vacuum.
More on that in a minute, including words and images from what was an incredible Sunday where we followed a rolling party through the streets and watched a local tradition take place from literally the perfect location.
But first—
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To best explain how incredible Sunday was, thanks to the locals, specifically the people we have met through my writing, consider something I wrote on Medium earlier this month adapted from the newsletter—
A lot of people want to move here right now. If you ask them why, I don’t think many (maybe most?) can give a good, well thought out answer.
They don’t have a solid elevator pitch, let alone a comprehensive explanation to illustrate the desire to do something that really is life-changing. They’re taking a vacation or what somebody else is doing and extrapolating the heck out of it to a day-to-day they can barely conceptualize, much less operationalize within the context of their own lives. Of the reality they experience where they live today and exactly — like precisely — how that reality will look, feel and function differently in another country.