Foreign Residents Bring Wealth to Spain Too

 

Tourism is doing well again – with around 12% of Spain’s GDP coming from that business. It provides jobs, and income and perhaps some pride for Spaniards in the many cultural, culinary and geographical offers this wonderful country can boast.

Mind you, most of them are here for the sun-burn, the evening boozing and the odd summer romance.

And the endless selfies which are then uploaded to Facebook.

It’s not that we particularly like tourists: the queues, the jibber-jabber, the crowded restaurant, the full parking-lot, the foreigner in the supermarket who is not wearing a tee-shirt and the other one being sick in the municipal gardens – it’s the knowledge that they’re spending lavishly and, better still, that they’ll be gone in a week or two.

Not that all of them spend wisely – some don’t even use our hotels, preferring to doss down with friends or family. Others come along in their camper-vans or maybe rent an apartment from a family who doesn’t even own a hotel.

Contrast this with Residential Tourism – with no promotion, no agency, no ministry, no budget and no wealthy hoteliers to defend it. This form of tourism (of course, it’s not tourism at all, it’s really homesteading) also has a high – if largely unknown – value for Spain. They buy an ice cream or a bottle of lotion or a china ornament. We buy a house and a car and white goods, and we shovel money into the outstretched hands of the lawyers, insurance agents, gestores, doctors and (above all) barmen – all year long.

A couple of years ago, there wasn’t much tourism, thanks to the dreadful pandemic. Maybe next time, it’ll be something as simple as a cheaper offer elsewhere, or a war, or a cholera outbreak, or new visa-requirements, or because Vox won the elections in Spain…

But you know something? We Residential Tourists will remain here and steadily grow in numbers, bringing Spain a massive and reliable income each year.

Perhaps one day somebody will notice.      

The Usual

It’s always nice to see when a new café opens near where I live. Sometimes, I even make an effort to visit there and have a coffee or a beer and a tapa, depending on the hour.

I live in a working-class neighbourhood, so the cafés are open early, five o’clock early, and generally call it a day by one in the afternoon. The bars will last a little longer, perhaps closing around five – after the lunch trade, or even staying awake until the wee hours of ten thirty or eleven at night on the weekends.

My tap-room habits aren’t what they were, and I tend these days to stay home and raid the fridge or put on the kettle according to my inclination.

In the morning, I might drop in at the café opposite and have a coffee and a tostada. Since this order never varies, the girl will smile when she sees me and shout through to her partner who will cut a small loaf length-ways in half and put my bit in the toaster. He'll then cover it with shredded tomato and I'll round it off with salt, pepper and lots of olive oil. Good stuff. 

Of course, if I wanted something else, maybe a tostada with tomate y jamón on it, or with butter and jam (locally called 'un mixto'), then it's easier to go to one of the two other nearby establishments, who will know exactly what I want, because I always have the same when I'm there. 

It saves on the conversation.

It used to work the same way when I was younger - that place for gin & tonic, that one for a beer and, oh my, that one for a beer as well. Well, sometimes you have to order, but with training, they'll just plonk down the right drink in front of you. 

I remember Diana, an elderly and eccentric British lady, coming into the Sartén (a famous bar in Mojácar) one evening and arranging herself on a bar-stool. 

'The usual?' asked Simon, by way of greeting. 

'Oh yes, rather', answered Diane. 'By the way', she said after a short pause, 'what is my usual?'

'Creme de mente you silly old cow', said Simon, reaching for the bottle.

So today, I crossed the road for my breakfast coffee and tostada, to find a new girl behind the bar. 'Café con leche', I said, 'y una media con tomate'. 

'You want that in a glass or a cup?'

'Warm or hot milk?'

'What sort of bread do you want?'

So many questions. I wonder if she'll charge me the same as the usual girl does - which is just 1,20€ plus the few bits of straw from the stables that have collected in my pockets during the morning. 

Brenda Lee keeps giving me a mental nudge as I write this. 

But Brenda, it's As Usual!

I think I've got the record somewhere. 

It beats watching the television.        

The Letter Home

 Dearest Ethel,

This may come as a surprise, but Maude and I have decided to return to England and we shall have to rely on you, as our favourite sister, to put us up in your house until we can find out feet again.

I remember telling you twenty-nine years ago that we were moving to Spain to start a new life and that you would soon be ready to move over and join us. In fact, if it hadn’t have been for the various things which got in the way, I’m sure that you would have been one of the 200,000 Brits that annually leaves the country for better things – or at least did so until the bother with the Brexit.

Which, come to think of it, you supported.

Things started to go wrong here some time ago, when the local town hall decided on tourism as their mainstay. That way, they reasoned, we get their money quickly enough, and in return they get a sunburn and a hangover.

Maybe a social disease which their famous health service will no doubt quickly resolve.

Tourists though, once the flight, agency fees and airport breakfast have all been paid for, don’t leave a great deal of money for the villagers to spend on sprucing up their wardrobes and transport.

The average tourist, having perhaps been sick in the hotel gardens, or creamed a streetlight on the far side of the road while backing out of a parking space with the rental, or purchasing the very last set of water-wings in the whole province, doesn’t leave that much money here, and he only does so for an average of five or six days. Whatever he spends in the hotel (all inclusive?) will end up, once the staff are paid, in Barcelona.

Whereas we foreign residents are here all year long, pumping money into the bars, restaurants, shops, dealerships, furniture stores, dog-charities, pharmacies, tax-experts, lawyers and dentists. Our outgoing begins to add up – as the local bank-manager will tell you. Or he would if he could. Sometimes we rent out the spare-bedroom - pin money of course, and don't tell the Hacienda.

Naturally, we don’t use the local hotels, so we are of no use to them or their apologists.

If we go on holiday, or explore Spain, then we will stay in the Parador and generally splash out in some destination with there are no package-tours, tourists or blue flags. We spend because we love to be here; and we expect, and receive, little in return.

Perhaps a street named after us, or an international gala, or even that the mayor and his henchpersons might come by the local foreign bar for a round of drinks to show that they care. Just the one time would be enough, I think.

We once had a foreign-sounding street. When the mayor of the day decided to open the pueblo to trash tourism, we were greeted with the 'Avenida Horizon' which stretched - briefly under that name - from the bottom up to the top. Mind you, it lasted as long as the tour-company: a couple of years.

After all, there’s a Plaza Margaret Thatcher in Madrid (no kidding!).

The odd thing is that there is no Spanish ministry to encourage foreigners to move here and buy a 200,000€ home. The Ministry of Tourism has international fairs here and there, agencies and offices, staff and a huge budget in 2023 of over ten thousand million euros.

Us lot? Well, we are sometimes allowed to vote.

There are over six million foreigners in Spain, and around a million of them are Northern Europeans. Sometimes, it’s like being on a cruise.

Although to be sure, some of us are in steerage.

I suppose that when a local person sells something, the buyer hauls it off (or drives it away). But, when we are talking about a house, then you’ve suddenly got yourself a new and permanent neighbour who only speaks foreign and keeps dogs. There goes the barrio. Worse still, if your father hadn’t have sold the family land thirty years ago for peanuts, you wouldn’t be driving an old SEAT today.

In short, we have an ‘us and them’ situation, with all the eggs in the ‘them’ basket.

Despite some towns having more Northern Europeans than local Spaniards on the town hall registry – it’s a rare town hall that employs a guiri and a rarer one still that has a foreign councillor.

So the experiment appears to have failed. We have good sun tans, know more about the world than we ever did before, have finally learnt how to cook and can walk through a crowd without saying ‘sorry’; but it is now time to return back to England…

…or maybe move on to somewhere else.

Hmmm…

So Ethel, we won’t be wanting much, but could you get in some decent vegetables.

Besos.