Living in Spain as an Expat

When we planned our move to Spain, we decided to live in rural Analucia, rather than on the coast.  We knew it would be cheaper to live here and we also wanted to be a part of Spanish life, rather than live in an expat community.

We chose to live in a small village in rural Granada.  No one here speaks English other than another couple of expats.  In fact, Granada as a province doesn't appear to have that many people who speak English, and why should they?  We chose to live in Spain, so we should learn the Spanish language.

In preparation for our move we took Spanish lessons on a regular basis and read all the Spanish language books we could find. 

They say it gets harder to learn another language once you are out of your teens and I guess they are right.  Nevertheless, we thought we had learned enough Spanish to get by.  After all, once we were living in our Spanish village, we would soon pick up more of the language by chatting with the neighbours...

We were already prepared for the rapidity of Spanish speech, but we thought we could get by at first by picking out the odd word and trying to make sense of the rest.  After all, that's what the language books taught.  Of course, they hadn't allowed for the Spanish dialect.

The first few times we spoke to our neighbours, our carefully pronounced Spanish words were often met with blank stares and the replies we received, well, we could hardly understand a word.  Requests of "Por favor, puede usted hablar mas despacio?"  were met with confusion in many cases.  Our neighbours are used to talking fast.  Their language and dialect enables them to do this.  "Mas despacio" most often became the slightly slower version of a speeding train.

It wasn't until I was talking to one of the other 'non-locals', a woman who had moved to our little village from a more urban area of Spain, that I realised that it wasn't necessarily because we were expats that we hardly understood a word.  She explained that she had trouble understanding the local dialect also.

Of course, this makes perfect sense.  When you think about all the different dialects in the UK and how difficult it sometimes is for people there to understand each other, why should living in Spain with all the many different regions and cultures here be any different?

After that, our language task became more about re-learning Spanish, so that we would understand our neighbours.

Today we can just about get by speaking Spanish (as long as we are face to face with the person we are talking to - telephone Spanish still gives us nightmares!).  We have a long way to go before we understand the local dialect (or many of the jokes), but we are getting there.  However, in the unlikely event we moved to another part of Spain, some of our 'language skills' would have to be learned all over again.

But of course it's all part of the rich culture of living as an expat in rural Spain and we wouldn't wish to give that up.

0 Like