Why we Chose to Move to Spain & Our Journey to Zaragoza

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We left the United States and moved abroad to Mexico in 2018 (my deep dive into why can be found here), but why did we choose to move to and settle in Spain in 2021 & how did we choose a city to live in?

Some background: After living in Mexico for 2.5 years, we made the decision in November of 2020 to try to move to Spain. We were not comfortable with Mexico as a long term option for our family. There are quite a few reasons why we wanted to leave Mexico, some of which I have already discussed here:

As part of our decision to try to move to Spain, we had researched other countries extensively, to narrow down our options of where to try to go.

How & Why did we choose Spain as our first option?

The first step in this process was to determine where we could get residency visas at OR where we could stay for 6 to 12 months as tourist.

Second, we had to consider cost of living: where could we afford to live on our current income, or really, where could we afford to live on something much less than our current income? We never want to be in a position of completely depending on every penny we earn, especially since these visas do not come with work privileges.

Third, we had to consider the ability to do that remote income work– this means we had to have infrastructure, ie internet, fast and reliable internet. Without great internet, we can’t work, so there is no point in moving to place that does not have exemplary internet service.

Fourth, we researched future prospects in each country. These are things like educational options for our children, future health care needs, especially for our kids as they grew up, we researched the future job market, safety and security, etc. We wanted to set our kids up for a future of growth and one that was not restricted by borders.

After the top three points, we were lift with a list of possibilities, some of these included Portugal, Spain, Bahamas, Costa Rica, and Panama. From this list, we needed to narrow things down a bit more. These countries obviously have some things in common, but a lot of differences exist between them all as well.

In order to narrow the list down, we then looked at point four: safety and security, current health care availability, access to the United States via plane, current educational options (like the freedom to home educate), and future prospects for our children (citizenship and education).

Lastly, we considered taxes and language. Since one of us was already fluent in Spanish, this helped to possibly remove Portugal from the list, but not entirely. Because they have a lot of English speakers there, and the language is similar to Spanish, we kept it as our first back up plan. I emailed extensively with the Portuguese consulate, and had a plan in place for obtaining a residency visa to Portugal, if our first choice did not work out.

While Costa Rica and Panama were viable options, citizenship in those countries would not be a great benefit to our children. In our situation, our kids already have Honduran and Mexican citizenship, so gaining another Central American passport is not a winning point for us.

We also felt the countries were not quite secure enough for us, especially considering that we were moving from Mexico. We really wanted to “level up” from that life. This does not mean they were removed from our list, they just were not at the top. In fact, 3.5 years after moving to Spain, we still have Panama on our list of future prospects, due to its tax advantages for foreign income earners. Furthermore, we have recently added El Salvador as a possible option for our current 3-5 year plan.

Now comes the Bahamas. I had read a lot about other Americans who were living well and safe there, however we were concerned about the isolation of the island life, the hurricane threat, and access to resources or how expensive they would be (ie technology supplies for example). It has proximity to the United States and Honduras as a positive, definitely closer than any European country. The visa there was obtainable for us, but it had to be renewed yearly, and there was no avenue or advantage to having citizenship in this country. The digital nomad visa type requirements were also shifting and new, so the future was not secure there. It was however a backup plan as an option to move somewhere, but not settle. I am still interested in living the island life one day :).

As far as European countries go, Spain offers a lot of benefits for the future of foreigners, especially for families. For our family in particular, it offered (1) family connection, (2) affordable University education, (3) a reputable healthcare system, (4) a climate generally like American climates, (5) access to permanent residency, and (6) eventually citizenship. The one thing Spain does not have going for it is freedom of education. That is and will continue to be a sticking point for me- and if we ever move from Spain, it will heavily be due to this issue.

You can read more about our experience with education in Spain here, and all of the different things we are been through with the system thus far.

Spain offers a pathway to citizenship for those from IberoAmerican countries, so while a typical foreigner can move to Spain with a 10 year pathway to citizenship, an IberoAmerican can move to Spain with a 2 year pathway to citizenship. This is a direct benefit to 3/4 of our family, with me excluded ;). However, once my husband obtained citizenship, there would be an immediately pathway for me one year later.

What doors does citizenship in Spain open up? (1) The right to work, (2) vote, and (3) freedom of movement within the EU.

Ultimately we chose Spain because it had many things that would benefit our short and longterm collective futures.

• My husband had a Spanish grandparent, so he had grown up with a connection to Spain and also had many family members that had already migrated from his home country (Honduras) to Spain.
• He and the children would all qualify for Spanish citizenship after 2 years of legal residency.
• Spanish healthcare is highly rated.
• University education in Spain is affordable.
• On average, the climate is well balanced.
• Freedom of movement for future educational and job needs for our children.
• Excellent internet access, speed, and reliability

& then there is also the materialistic benefit of a lower cost of living than the other European countries, as well as the opportunity to travel from Spain to other countries for tourism.

Thankfully, our visa application was approved in 21 days, and we moved from Mexico to Spain shortly thereafter. With the choice to try made in November, and with a move date of April 12th (arrived on April 13), we completed the entire visa and moving process in about 5 months.

Choosing a city has been a bit more difficult than choosing a country.

We have now (as of October 13, 2024) lived in Spain for 3.5 years. In that time we have lived in three cities. When we first arrived to Madrid from Mexico City, we had planned to move to Zaragoza, so we drove in a large rental van with all of our luggage and two kids, and on almost no sleep from the Madrid Airport to Zaragoza Spain. We had already rented an Airbnb for three weeks in an area of the city called Actur. Nine days later we had secured an apartment and 12 days later we were moving in. Here are my tips for finding a rental in Spain as a foreigner without 3 paystubs from a Spanish job or a Spanish job contract.

That summer we immediately started traveling and went to Portugal by car to meet friends.

In September, our oldest son started school, which ended up not working out. It was this key item that caused us to move to another city. It was 2021, and the world was still in the pandemic. As a family, we were still trying to home educate as much as possible. After he suffered weeks and weeks of bullying with no adequate intervention from the teachers and staff, we opted to pull him out of the school and made a change to our plans. As part of that change, we made a trip to Andorra, took a break from everything that was going on, and then made a plan to move to Murcia so that he could attend a hybrid school there. This was at the 8 month point of moving to Spain.

We lived in Murcia City for a little over one year.

He attended the hybrid school for all of the Winter/Spring of 2021/2022. In the summer of 2022, this school lost their registration. As visa holders, this caused a major problem for us, one of the documentation requirements for the residency renewal is proof of being registered in an approved school. At this point, we were pretty stressed, because we had not planned on moving again. However, we could not find another school in Murcia City that would give us the same flexibility that this one had. At the time, education was a sticking point for us, and we were at the maximum level of flexibility that we were willing to be in, so if school wasn’t working out, then we weren’t sticking around. Fortunately we had the financial security to do this, and if you are moving to Spain this is something you should consider. You can plan and plan and plan about where you will move, but once boots are on the ground, life can take unexpected turns as you adjust to the culture and society that you find yourself living it- I can guarantee that it is vastly different than anything you are expecting. That is just how life goes.

We spent the summer and fall traveling to different Spanish cities and visiting schools and areas that we were interested in possibly living in.

We went to Fuengirola, Alicante, Valencia, & Madrid. Eventually, we decided on Madrid, because we felt it had a lot of benefits for foreigners, especially those who are not strong in Spanish.

Finally, in the early winter of 2023 we made the move to Madrid.

At this point, we had renewed our non-lucrative visa one time, and we were in the middle of our two year period of not needing to renew it, so school was not a big issue for us. We went on a short trip to Ireland (as it’s always an option to live in one day ie it is home education friendly and English is the language spoken there), and then returned to move to Madrid.

Life in Madrid

Life in Madrid was absolutely amazing. My oldest son finished third grade home education in March after we moved there. This gave him four months of time to consider trying out another school in a new city. He really wanted to give it a shot, so after researching multiple schools, we visited the one school that had a shorter class day and was in English, since his Spanish was not up to par with what we felt he needed to actually in a Spanish school.

You can read more about this here.

We enrolled him just before Semana Santa, with the idea that if it didn’t work out in those first two weeks, he could unenroll over the holiday and no harm would come of it. As it turns out, he really liked it. They were incredibly flexible and experienced with helping kids like him adapt to being in a traditional school setting. He did really well there. He finished the school year there, as a third grader and started again in September.

Unexpectedly, our 3 year old began to ask to go to school like his brother, while simultaneously we were realizing that our now almost 10 year old was not showing evidence of truly learning Spanish at this school. He was also fairly adapted to the schooling process, and was not being academically challenged in anyway, was being given a lot of busy homework, etc. I was no longer happy with the school. This combination lead us to shift our focus to enrolling both kids into the same school- but this time we couldn’t and wouldn’t do private. Two kids in private school was not obtainable for us, especially not while living in Madrid, where the cost of living is through the roof.

By November, we had been living in Madrid for 9 months and had both kids enrolled in a Spanish Concertado, which was a 10 minute walk from our house. The adjustment was difficult, and we went through many different things there, but in the end, my oldest really picked up on the Spanish, and truly benefit from that experience.

After the Christmas holidays, we began to realize that living in Madrid was not sustainable for us longterm. Given that we do not have the right to work in Spain, we always have to be cognizant of our financial situation and future prospects. Keeping our goals in mind of obtaining citizenship, we did not want to risk having to leave Spain for financial reasons, especially since we were within months of being able make the first citizenship application and were soon due for our final NLV renewal.

In March, the kids were out of school for a little over a week for Semana Santa, after that we had two family members come visit us, which meant they missed more school. For many months we had been exploring other outlying cities and towns near Madrid to move to, so that we could stay near the city, since we absolutely loved living there. One of the things were did not like about the concertado was the very long class day, so we prioritized choosing a local school with a short day. Unfortunately, we could not find the combination of short class day + non-religious + Spanish school + affordable rent + near Madrid, so we had to look further out.

Eventually we decided on trying to move back to Zaragoza.

Aside from all of the factors I discussed previously, Zaragoza has an education system that requires children be allowed to opt out of religion in schools, Madrid did not have this. In Madrid, it is up to the school to offer the exception or not- and our kids were only vaguely given the option- with one not given it at all and having to miss a lot of school to avoid attending mass during school hours!

Zaragoza also has many schools that offer french or german beginning in the 5th grade, and some even sooner. In Madrid, some schools had this, but most did not start until ESO (middle school), or not at all. Since our oldest was getting a grip on Spanish, and was already fluent in English, we wanted a “second language” aside from what schools in Madrid offer, which is english- we don’t need that.

The city also has many many schools with shorter classes days, and I believe a somewhat better english system of instruction than what we experienced in Madrid. While our kids do not need english instruction at school, if they are going to get it- we do not want it to be poor instruction that causes them to learn bad habits, and I would prefer they not feel the need to correct their english teacher for bad grammar (!!). The things I read online about Aragon’s efforts to include english instruction in schools looked like it was a stronger program than what we were seeing in Madrid, both by experience and hearsay. As part of moving back to Zaragoza, I learned how to enroll the kids into schools here and how to use the points based application system. This is something I had not known how to do or that it even existed in the first 8 months we were originally living in Zaragoza, three years prior.

Aside from our school preferences, we like Zaragoza for many other reasons as well.

Some of them may also appeal to you, so I will share them here. I know it is very difficult to figure out where to live when moving to a new country, and even after 3.5 years, I still do not really feel SETTLED. It is hard to feel “at home” when you are not at home, no matter what your motivations are for leaving your home country. For us, it was not purely by choice. We are not your typical “expats”, but for you, it may be 100% by choice and you may know that you can easily return home if things don’t work out- in some ways, this makes it easier to leave Spain and harder to adapt, because when life gets difficult, and it will, we want our comforts… it’s human nature.

Now on to my reasons for you to move to Zaragoza :).

1. Zaragoza is a full city with everything any other major city in Spain has. It is also very compact, so it is quite easy to walk across the city. We can get anywhere we need to go on a daily basis with a 15 minute walk. Sometimes we might need to walk 20 mins, but that is it. It is often said of Zaragoza that it is easier to walk than to take the bus.

2. Public transportation, from our perspective, is efficient, reliable, and affordable. To be honest, we walk more than we ride. However, we do currently ride the bus or tram on a routine basis for extracurricular activities, so this puts us on the bus 5 afternoons a week, on a normal week.

3. Everything you could need is here. This is something I hear a lot of migrants from the United States say, and we feel the same way.

4. Zaragoza has a low cost of living compared to other major cities in Spain. For “expats” this is an affordable city to live in. I also read recently that Aragon has one of the lowest unemployments rates in the country, so I think it should also be an economical city for Spaniards as well.

5. It is a typical “Spanish” city. If you are looking to learn Spanish, to be immersed in the culture of Spain, & to eat Spanish food, this is a great city to do that in. You will find people to be very helpful with the language, but there is not a sense of english fluency here like you’ll find in Barcelona or other metropolitan cities.

6. People are friendly- yes, people are very friendly here! I rarely find a person here who has gone out of their way to be rude or inconsiderate. Don’t get me wrong, they exist, but as a whole, the local population is quite kind and considerate.

7. There is plenty to do here. Yes, there are expat groups to associate with, but there are also “english speaking” groups, which contain a variety of people, from locals to foreigners- all with a high enough level of english to communicate and to also allow for an exchange of language practice, while building relationships. There are also many museums, parks, and cultural activities going on all the time.

8. On a whole, the weather is tolerable. From my perspective, Zaragoza has all the seasons- very hot, very cold, and mild spring and fall. I will share though that the locals think there are two seasons here “invierno y inferno”. (winter and hell, because it is so hot in the summer). You will most definitely want to have an air conditioned home if you move to Zaragoza and to almost anywhere else in Spain. It is needed for at least a couple of months out of the year. Many people take the hottest month of the year off of work and leave the city, which is August.

9. Conveniently, it is accessible to both Barcelona and Madrid. Expats love this about Zaragoza- to be able to get on the fast train and be in Madrid or Barcelona in a little over an hour is a definite plus to living in Zaragoza. I know I have some Spanish readers, and I have gotten plenty of feedback on the use of fast trains being a luxury, so I definitely do not mean to minimize that, but from an American perspective, where we don’t have hardly any decent public transportation THROUGHOUT the country, and most of us have never been on a fast train until we get to Europe- this is a cool point. It allows you to live in a LCOL (Low Cost of Living) city, with direct and easy access to the two largest cities in Spain. Zaragoza’s location probably contributes to it’s lower rate of unemployment than many other cities in Spain.

10. People stay here! Because the city is largely local, people stay here- those same people will ask foreigners WHY…WHY Zaragoza- well, I hope you have found your answer, all of these 10 reasons are WHY :-D.

I hope this post has helped you to work through your process of figuring out which country is best for you to live in, within your own means and for your own reasons. It is a privilege to have the luxury to even make this consideration, so we did not take it likely- and we hope you don’t either.

If you have any specific questions about our process of choosing Spain, and how we ultimately and finally settled on Zaragoza for the foreseeable future, don’t hesitate to ask.

Thanks for reading,

Ashley

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