🇪🇸 Hidden Spain: My family love Spain but not for the obvious reasons
We love living the "vida loca" in Aragon, but what keeps our base here is all about quality of family life
👋 Welcome, welcome newbie readers! 👋
🔥Yearly Subscription = €40 for full access + archive 🔥
🙏Thanks to the growing community of paid subscribers, YOU make this possible 🙏
Yes, I know, I know - the Food, the Flamenco and the Wine!!
🇪🇸 Meet Ro in Sevilla with Vivel Network - use: ROWENA20 for 20% off 🇪🇸
Those 3 things are just the start of an extensive list! The reasons for why Spain is so popular internationally is no surprise. The country is regularly featured in global Top 10 lists and get’s 83 million tourism visitors every year.
But yes, myself and my family appreciate the tapas, the diverse nature and countryside, the 2,500 miles of coastline, the historic sites and monuments, the buzzing social activities and all of those more common criteria for liking Spain.
But moreover, we appreciate the place where spending two thirds of our time a year, is fundamentally a major boost to our quality of life as a family.
For context: we made Spain our base country as a global mobile (or part-time nomadic) family, 6.5 years ago, after moving from Ireland for health reasons.
Real Hidden Spain in Awe Inspiring Aragon
The most common question we get asked whilst having tapas locally, “Why here??” The locals are often bamboozled. Yes, there are other foreigners and expats here, but mostly in transit.
Erasmus students, (a very popular European Erasmus location!) they pass through. English teachers, they pass through. Some people on business projects, they pass through.
🫶🏻 Paid subscribers can access the full archive #DigitalNomadStories
However, when our very blonde daughter begins to babble away in Spanish with a Aragonese accent, people are intrigued, they can’t figure it out, at all!
Finding Aragon, was like sticking a pin in the map of Spain at random. Before Valencia was a tech and nomad hotspot; sooner than the obvious ex-pat hubs of Madrid and Barcelona; fefore the southern gems of Seville and Malaga, started to be recognised. Zaragoza was beginning to shine.
Some of those Erasmus students exchanged with universities in Dublin and small pockets of engineers and software developer communities began to emerge. We listened, we visited in August (and almost melted), no-one spoke English and it was SO hot and dry, but we decided yes, it was unknown outside of Spain, and we liked that!
Many brilliant tech talent and English speaking locals, were coming back after living abroad, amongst them, we had some friends. They encouraged us to consider Zaragoza, with the prime consideration being how incredibly dry the climate is.
We have a desert (yes a desert) just down the road, called Monegros.
🫶🏻 Paid subscribers can access the full archive #DigitalNomadStories
Here are the main lifestyle affirming reasons our family stays in love with Spain:
Super Social Services - from clean streets, to low crime rates through to a (generally) very reliable and accessible healthcare system, which is not surprising when Spain has almost 40% of it’s employed working as civil servants.
Caveat: we are mainly comparing to Ireland, which has a very low bar on all of the said above items, unfortunately.
Endless Exploration - we travel extensively around Aragon and the other regions of Spain. I write about it regularly. Our routine consists of mountains during the non-summer months. Gran Canaria every December, for 2-3 weeks (we have family there!) and picking new places to explore as often as possible!
For example, I am off to Seville for the first time in December, very exciting!
🇪🇸 Meet Ro in Sevilla with Vivel Network, use: ROWENA20 for 20% off 🇪🇸
Investigating travel around Spain is a constant feature of our travel planning and yes, we have a battered map pinned to our wall with all of the Spanish regions included, so we can tick them off as we visit!
Children & Family First Culture - this is so hard to explain to people who have not lived here or who don’t maybe have children…..so I will try, picture this: when all parks are designed with cafe’s beside playgrounds, when every 15 minutes of walking has a child friendly space, when almost all public events and activities have family-friendly offerings (including the older generations too!) and when the people everywhere welcome and love children, without fail.
The Spanish are an amazing, open and welcoming bunch of humans - but they way the raise up children is exceptional.
Life for us and our daughter takes on another level of joy, below she is taking part in the annual Fiestas del Pilar celebration in honour of patron saint of the city.
Traditional Aragonese Wear during the Fiestas del Pilar Education - our daughter mainly attends a local public (free and not privately paid for) school, we choose a small local community school and we are very happy with the service provided, which fits our family values and needs. More importantly she loves it there and is very well integrated and she takes all her classes in Spanish.
Interestingly, she has approx. 8 months of school terms per calendar year, enabling lots and lots of travelling (see above!)
As a family, we relish in living the “vida loca”, everyday - but having the very best quality of life, social services, education and healthcare are fundamental to our wellbeing and the main lifestyle supports, we really need.
🔥Yearly Subscription = €40 for full access + archive 🔥
Subscriber gifts: 🎁 Tons of RoRemote freebies 🎁 FREE Linkedin learning courses 🎁
🌱 Follow me for Substack Notes, Linkedin & Twitter