Never Retire: Wherever You Go, There You Are—and Probably Still Complaining
Spain just happens to be the mirror. What you see there depends on what you bring with you.
Maybe my wife and I hit the jackpot. I don’t know.
Generally, I feel extremely lucky to be living in Spain—grateful for the opportunity really. But it’s the specifics of the situation that I’m talking about. All you tend to read online are the horror stories, typically from Americans, Brits, and—head a bit north on the continent—Europeans, about crooked landlords, awful bureaucracy, and everything happening at a snail’s pace in Spain.
We’re not seeing any of it.
We have an amazing landlord. When something goes wrong she not only fixes it, but often needlessly apologizes because it broke. We asked for a new washer the other day. Without hesitation, her response was si, claro—yes, of course.
After the recent rains we noticed a leak. Around the same time, the downstairs neighbor noticed some water damage likely coming from our shower. Within days of reporting these incidents, two insurance companies—one for the building, one for our landlord, independent of one another—showed up within 48 hours to quickly and confidently assess the situations.
For goodness sake, as I was writing this, our landlord sent me a WhatsApp message stating that she just told the building administrator about changing electrical outlets in our unit. I looked up and there was an email from the building administrator.
You walk into the health center—five minutes from our apartment—tell them you want to get on the public healthcare system. Within 10 minutes, you walk out with your healthcare card. No, it’s in the mail and you’ll receive it within 30 days.
Amazon notices a delivery scheduled to be en route on Friday, but packages it with the order you placed on Monday.
I could keep going because we have nothing but dozens of great examples of the most amazing landlord, simple bureaucracy, and people of all stripes who sometimes respond too quickly even for me—a person who tends to be way too organized (if there’s such a thing).
The United States claims efficiency; Spain actually is efficient.
Is this all just one strange coincidence? Are we somehow the chosen ones?
I tend to think not.
There’s a dynamic at play here that’s probably not unique to people who move to Spain, but emblematic of many of them, particularly the aforementioned groups. I think a large number of these folks moved here because they were—for one reason or another—unhappy with their lives where they came from. Maybe the weather sucks or they were barely making ends meet. Something wasn’t working in their own lives or in the micro and macro environments that can influence and—sometimes, to an extent—dictate your situation.
So, the answer was to move to Spain. The weather is amazing. The cost of living is low. And there’s often the possibility to keep doing the work you were doing at home, live off your pension, or figure something out after you get here. After all, Spain is the new land of opportunity.
Except, shortly after they arrive, a funny thing happens. They not only start complaining the same way they did back home—about the same things and the new readymade grievances they have discovered—but they carry with them a sort of bitter angst. They don’t just complain; they relish the very act of complaining.
Case in point—
For a few days, people online acted like Spain was turning into a socialist hellscape because the current government proposed what—in fairness—would have been Draconian increases to the Social Security quotas paid by the self-employed. The top bracket would have seen their monthly payment increase by 35%.
After the outrage, the government put forward a new proposal. It freezes the quota for lower-income brackets and increases it for the top groups at rates lower than inflation—we’re talking between 1% and 2.5%.
Now, let’s be clear—there’s a difference between protest/resistance and complaining. People protest here all of the time. About 7 million folks did likewise in the United States last weekend. In a true democracy, protest incites changes, not a President with pathetic visions of literally shitting on his country’s citizens—many of whom probably voted for the guy.
Complaining is just something fruitless and annoying that people do. And quite a few people absolutely love to do it. They thrive on it.
They came out with the pitchforks to write screeds on Facebook about a proposal that any sane person—present company included—knew wasn’t going to see the legislative light of day. It was just more fuel for their incessant and ongoing cries that Spain makes it impossible to be self-employed. A few announced their departure. They just can’t take it or make it work anymore. They’re going “back to the UK” or whatever country is offering the low tax rate of the day for “expats.”
I have a theory that applies way beyond this specific incidence of moving to Spain, then acting like a self-entitled twat.
If you come here as a person with a penchant for complaining, you will quickly fall back into complaining. And chances are what you’re giving in your initial interactions—with landlords, with government workers, with tradespeople, with whomever—is bad energy. And when you give bad energy, you often get it back. People who are about to do something for you hate nothing more than being treated passive aggressively or plain poorly by newcomers (or locals even) with a sense of entitlement.
The opposite of complaining isn’t silence. It’s contribution. It’s figuring out who you are and carving out a life where you know the score. One that makes moving abroad—or doing whatever—an enhancement, not some delusional fix-all.
The people who make it here—the ones whose landlords actually like them, whose paperwork gets processed in record time—walk in with curiosity instead of comparison. They ask, How does this work? instead of, Why isn’t it like home? They laugh when things go sideways, learn the phrase they didn’t know, say thank you in the local way.
Spain rewards that. Life does, too.
If you can’t find contentment here—amid this public social life and endless urban cultural amenities—you probably wouldn’t find it anywhere. Because wherever you go, there you are.
