30 Apr 2014 6:00 PM:

All countries progress but I feel Spain is very slow in catching up bureaucracy wise and their legal/government routes and processes seem very difficult to use and sometimes nigh on impossible to deal with !

I suppose you either take Spain or leave it as it is and don't want for a miracle to happen to change things for the better !

Thread: End to Mediterranean dream?

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28 Apr 2014 5:21 PM:

BHTHE -

Agree with regards to corruption and bureaucracy.   We are still waiting for the 1200 euros we are owed by the Spanish Tax office after 19 mths and our gestoria stated when I was angry that we had still not received our money when we had a letter via her dated 14th March that the money was being paid and we hadn't received it, that we were being unreasonable as there were one million people like us waiting for their tax and we must be patient and wait our turn and that they only paid out when a query arose about payment, every 2 months !!    They have had access to our money and millions of others as an interest free loan account.  I was made to feel like I was being unreasonable about wanting our money back when in fact we never really owed it in the first place, having lost 55% equity on the sale of the property so in theory should never have owed anything anyway !!   

The spanish government should not expect people to want to come and buy property and live in their country when they are so openly corrupt in the first place !!

Thread: End to Mediterranean dream?

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28 Apr 2014 1:38 PM:

Don't know what happened to my post but all I will say is this, dreams are lovely if you have money to sustain your life in another country, whether Spain or somewhere else.    People who shout "lies, lies" to these nay sayers might change their tune if their homes they bought in good faith were suddenly deemed illegally purchased by the local council.   Let's face it Spain is one of the most corrupt countries in the EU and you can buy a property engaging a solicitor to conduct the same in what you think is a "legal" contract and all of a sudden you are told the purchase was illegal and you have lost everything as there are no checks in place to ensure otherwise.   In these situations you are unlikely to uphold the "dream" if you are left with nothing.

To think otherwise is pure naivety.

Thread: End to Mediterranean dream?

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27 Apr 2014 4:56 PM:

Hi Finisterre

My daughter and her partner are moving to Nerja/Torrox area so don't quite know how they will fare with work.   Her partner speaks a little Spanish and will I am sure be learning Spanish fluently when he gets there.   They have a friend who has been there for 40 yrs and they will be able to get advice and some pointers with regard to work no doubt, though she does admit work is hard to come by.   She has spent years working for herself there as an interpreter, keyholder, apartment cleaner etc. but is now in her 70's and has given up the "manual" side of the business so hopefully they might be able to pick up some work from her.   My daughter as I say is a qualified hairdresser but she only wants to work part time as a mobile hairdresser as she has back problems sometimes.

It's good to hear there is work in Seville, it must be the exception rather than the rule as most other people have advised on other forums that unemployment is running at 37% in Andalucia where they are going, so seems they will have a battle on their hands.

I am wishing them good luck and hoping for the best although fearing the worst, I hope I am wrong as they are taking all their property equity with them and can only last 2-3 yrs without regular work.

The way I look at it life is too short to go to your grave with regrets.   My parents emigrated to Australia in 1960 when I was 10.   They came home to the UK nearly 5 yrs later older and wiser and determined that UK was the best country to live in.   My husband and I bought an apartment in Spain and had it for 8 yrs before selling 18 mths ago.   We decided that the tide of the Spanish economy had turned against us and decided to keep a base in the UK no matter where or how long we spent in other countries visiting.   We never regretted our experience of owning a property in Spain but would never buy there again.   My parents never regretted going to Australia, my mother said it was the best experience she had ever had in her relatively unexciting life and had seen countries she would never have had the opportunity of seeing if she had not emigrated.

So what am I saying ?   Well, that if it does not work out for my daughter and her partner, at least they will have fulfilled one dream before they shuttle off this mortal coil !

Thread: End to Mediterranean dream?

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26 Apr 2014 11:08 AM:

Well I can say I have seen it from both sides.    We had a property in Alicante for 8 yrs and loved visiting it, however, due to financial circumstances and changes, and the fact that Spain was getting a more expensive place to visit and subsequently retire to, we sold up and after 19 months we STILL have not got our 3% tax retention back.   Bureaucracy in Spain is a complete nightmare and I have told our gestoria who still insists we are not being unfairly treated waiting for this money, that I wouldn't touch another Spanish property with a barge pole !   

However, our daughter and her partner are just about to move to Costa Del Sol where they both hope to find work.   They both love Spain (as do we both still) and they want to try to make a living there.   They have sold their apartment here and will be able to live for 2 or 3 yrs financially independant but then will have to return if they don't find regular work.

My feelings are (even though I passionately want them to make a go of it), that they will fail to find enough work to keep them going.   They both will do anything, our daughter is a qualified hairdresser but doesn't want to open a shop and he is a self employed jack of all trades and also prepared to do anything, he has run his own business too.

My opinion is that a lot of people who left the UK to go to Spain wanted a better life and did get that for a while, cheap food, cheap living expenses, cheap property and the sun was a bonus !   Now since Spain joined the EU (same as in the UK), the living conditions are deteriorating.    The EU has changed much and many countries in the EU are no longer worth living in.    Many are selling up both here in the UK and by the looks of it in Spain and heading to regions outside Europe.   The EU is sucking the life out of Europeans.

I hope my daughter and her partner can find some sort of life in Spain, they have litte here in the UK, working as they do 52 weeks a year without a holiday and no sun either !   Living in the UK is very expensive and it is suffering the same fete as Spain, full of foreigners who do not want to integrate !   The UK is swamped now and not with the right kind of immigration, there is little left for the indigineous Brits unless you are an employer paying your workers peanuts and taking advantage of slave labour coming in to take British jobs.   Our NHS is crumbling, we have people living 25 to a house and the schools are so overcrowded, they are using playgrounds to build makeshift classrooms.   Public services are disintegrating.   In other words quality of life is disappearing here in the UK.

There will be many on here defending the EU and there is a big propaganda machine in the UK determined not to let the UK leave but my feelings are that it is inevitable and Spain could do itself a favour and do the same and maybe see the numbers returning.   After all Brits who move to Spain take their money will them and get little in return if they show up with nothing, here the opposite is true and when Brits leave Spain, they likewise take their buying power with them !

Thread: End to Mediterranean dream?

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