Retire to Spain
What are you looking for in your retirement to Spain? Do you want to feel like you are on holiday all the time? If so a resort will be for you if looking for an apartment or a campsite if looking for a mobile home.
If looking for a normal retirement with much better weather, then it has to be the towns and villages away from the coast or genuine residential mobile home parks.
The big difference will be the lifestyle. On the coast, you will find lots of holidaymakers, English bars and you will pay tourist prices. In the towns and villages, you will be living with locals, enjoy Spanish bars and restaurants, and pay local prices.
If going for a residential mobile home park you will have the best of both worlds, inside the park will be English, including the bar, and outside will be very Spanish.
No matter which lifestyle you choose, you must register in Spain after 90 days in the country. Living under the radar becomes a nightmare, the moment anything goes wrong.
If at retirement age registering means you get access to health care and other benefits. If choosing to live in a park that offers the same services as Park La Posada, you can relax because they deal with all the paperwork for you.
If living in a resort or town-village, then the services of a “Gestor” will be useful and each town has several to choose from. You can also use them to change your UK driving license from the UK one to a Spanish one as that will also need to be done if planning to retire to Spain.
The days of living in Spain full time but pretending to be a tourist in Spain are long gone. Older UK registered cars are stopped routinely now, so it is always best to buy a Spanish registered car to use with the steering wheel in the right place, of course.
For motorhome owners, you will not be able to register your UK RHD motorhome onto Spanish plates because the home door opens out into the road. You can register (import) a UK car though, and it is up to you if the expense in doing so is worth it.
We have already explained the pros of using Revolut and Transferwise on the home page. It is now worth pointing out that you can still have your UK pensions paid in GBP and transfer to Euros when you need to.
Transferwise provides a UK bank account for you to use just for that purpose. You can exchange it when you want and pay directly into your Spanish bank account.
This is perfect for anyone who does not have a UK address, and the account is a UK sort code and account number but is known as a borderless account.
If your UK bank tells you that you have to close your account because you are moving to Spain no panic, Transferwise has the solution.
