The Journal
Journal
Your first thirty days, in the order we would do them again
The arrival month is mostly appointments. Here is the sequence that stops you waiting on something you could have started earlier.
Choosing a city when you have never lived in any of them
Weather and rent are the easy filters. The ones that decided it for us were language, airport and whether we wanted to be found.
Opening a bank account, and getting paid from abroad
A Spanish account is the key that unlocks the rest of the admin, and getting money into it is its own small project.
The Beckham Law, and the number that decides whether it helps you
A flat tax rate sounds like an obvious win. Below a certain income it costs you money, and the threshold is higher than most people think.
What a month actually costs us, and why every number you read is wrong
Cost of living figures online are averages of averages. Here is how we budget instead, and where our estimates came from.
Renting your first flat when you have no Spanish credit history
The listings are the easy part. Convincing a landlord to choose a family who arrived last month is the real task.
Healthcare for a family, public and private, and why we ended up with both
The public system is genuinely excellent. There are still reasons a newly arrived family often carries private cover alongside it.
NIE, TIE and empadronamiento, in the order you actually need them
Three pieces of Spanish admin that sound interchangeable, are not, and have to happen in roughly the right sequence.
Schools in Spain, and the three kinds nobody explains
Public, concertado and private are not a quality ladder. They are three different systems with different costs, languages and waiting lists.
The five visa routes, explained the way we wish someone had explained them
There are not fifty options. There are about five that matter for a family, and which one you need is mostly decided by how you earn…