The Parts of Living in Spain No One Warns You About
The unglamorous, everyday realities that decide whether living abroad works—or just doesn’t
Over the weekend, my wife and I were walking through Valencia’s old city.
For the first time in the 13 months we’ve lived here, I felt slight concern that our personal safety might be at risk. A person visibly struggling with addiction muttered a few things to us as we passed, then followed—a bit too close behind—for a few seconds.
It felt strange to assume a defensive posture inside—and a little on the outside—on the off chance something happened. To recall and slip back into the state I was in pretty much 24/7 when walking the streets of Los Angeles and San Francisco.
When you leave the house in parts of the United States—not just in California cities—you often experience these types of encounters multiple times per hour. Without getting into the sociopolitical dynamic of the entire mess, let’s just say that that’s not normal, but it’s become normalized. You have no choice but to be desensitized when you’re living in the United States.
When you move abroad, that’s one of the biggest changes—interactions like that aren’t the norm, especially once you let go of the social and psychological conditioning that led to normalization.
Living in Spain doesn’t really reduce stress. It redistributes it.