# Moving to Spain with Children



## MrMountford (Apr 8, 2016)

Hi all I.m new to the forum and would be grateful for any info that will help us.

Me and my wife and 2 kids (2 and 4) are looking to relocate to Spain in around 1-2 years I know that's a long way off but its gonna take a lot of organising. We are looking at the north of the country. My wife is Chilean and I'm British but she has citizenship. We wouldn't need jobs straight away but eventually we would I.m an Electrician and she is a Export sales Administrator. Our kids would also need to start school in Spain upon arrival.

The reason for the post is to get as much info as possible from people that have been and done it.

I hope you can help.
Thanks


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## xabiaxica (Jun 23, 2009)

MrMountford said:


> Hi all I.m new to the forum and would be grateful for any info that will help us.
> 
> Me and my wife and 2 kids (2 and 4) are looking to relocate to Spain in around 1-2 years I know that's a long way off but its gonna take a lot of organising. We are looking at the north of the country. My wife is Chilean and I'm British but she has citizenship. We wouldn't need jobs straight away but eventually we would I.m an Electrician and she is a Export sales Administrator. Our kids would also need to start school in Spain upon arrival.
> 
> ...


:welcome:

We did it over 13 years ago & many people do it all the time. 

You say your wife has British citizenship? That makes it easy, red-tape wise, since you can all move here & no extra visas are needed.

The children will be a good age to go into Spanish school.

The main issue will be work. Learn as much Spanish as you can before you come, if you don't already speak the language - that will certainly help. With unemployment running at well over 20% compared to 5% in the UK, you'll need it.......

Who knows though - it might be easier in a couple of years :fingerscrossed:


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## bob_bob (Jan 5, 2011)

I think as a sparky you will have to retrain in Spain. A major problem for you both is the very, very high rate of unemployment with thousands of out of work Spanish electricians.

Personally if I were your age and wanted to move I'd be looking at an English speaking country like Australia or New Zealand.


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## jojo (Sep 20, 2007)

It helps to have lots of fact-finding visits and not just in the summer, but in the winter too, so that you get an idea of all aspects - good and bad! Try to get talking to other expats and locals there and see how you would fit in and where.

Jo xxx


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## Chopera (Apr 22, 2013)

MrMountford said:


> Hi all I.m new to the forum and would be grateful for any info that will help us.
> 
> Me and my wife and 2 kids (2 and 4) are looking to relocate to Spain in around 1-2 years I know that's a long way off but its gonna take a lot of organising. We are looking at the north of the country. My wife is Chilean and I'm British but she has citizenship. We wouldn't need jobs straight away but eventually we would I.m an Electrician and she is a Export sales Administrator. Our kids would also need to start school in Spain upon arrival.
> 
> ...


You'll seriously struggle to find work as an electrician in Spain, let alone decently paid work. If you are really set on Spain then you need to be flexible in what work you do, usually something that takes advantage of your language, or involves working from home, or running a business in the UK that doesn't require you to be there all the time.

I guess your kids speak Spanish anyway so they shouldn't have a problem integrating, not that it would take them long to learn Spanish from scratch at their ages anyway.


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## MrMountford (Apr 8, 2016)

Would around ?2000 PM be enough to live off in the beginning? I know finding work will be tough.


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## jojo (Sep 20, 2007)

MrMountford said:


> Would around ?2000 PM be enough to live off in the beginning? I know finding work will be tough.


 It would depend on whether that is 2000 €s or £s, how much you are prepared to pay in rent, whether you would need to pay for private medical cover, as in Spain you need to pay into the system (by way of an employment contract) to be eligible and how you intend to live (fast or slow lane).

But yes its doable.

Jo xxx


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## MrMountford (Apr 8, 2016)

Thank for the reply. No £1500-£1700 income from the UK but don't want to rely on that long term mayb a year. The last time we were in Spain I found it very cheap. Is the economy showing any real signs of improvement?


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## soja (Apr 10, 2016)

MrMountford said:


> Thank for the reply. No £1500-£1700 income from the UK but don't want to rely on that long term mayb a year. The last time we were in Spain I found it very cheap. Is the economy showing any real signs of improvement?


As a whole yeah but the South and Canary Islands not really, unless we're talking about working in tourism. Depends what your skills are and if you speak Spanish.


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## Pesky Wesky (May 10, 2009)

MrMountford said:


> Thank for the reply. No £1500-£1700 income from the UK but don't want to rely on that long term mayb a year. The last time we were in Spain I found it very cheap. Is the economy showing any real signs of improvement?


No. The government (not that there is one at present!) will obviously try to sell you that idea, but growth is not what they had predicted. More people are in work, but conditions have worsened considerably


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## Milanesa (Jun 1, 2014)

Hi, if you can do it, then have some time in areas of spain that you might like to come too to try it out, which areas are you looking at?


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## mrypg9 (Apr 26, 2008)

If you have to find work you go to areas where your chances of coming across it are higher.

A family of four living on £1500 a month....depends on where and how you choose to live.
But .....six months ago that £1500 would have bought you around € 2100 . Now it will buy you around € 1900. When we arrived here it bought us €1500.

It's possible that in the event of Brexit we could see steep falls in the value of £sterling.


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## MrMountford (Apr 8, 2016)

Yeah I know brexit leaves a big ? Over the whole thing but we're not planning to make the move for about 2 years anyway so it should be clear what the situation is by then. Yeah we will be visiting northern Spain to do some research. We would ideally like to move to Chile but that's even more tricky. Spain is the next best option and it's not impossible to travel to the uk mon-fri to work but that's certainly not the plan.


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## marypop (May 8, 2016)

Hi, this is the opinion of a Spaniard: there are some signs of improvement on the economy but at a macroeconomic level; people won´t notice that in the short/médium term. It´s going to take years for us to recover but of course, the government will say otherwise. I don´t want to put you off but I honestly think it would be extremely difficult for you to work as an electrician if you don´t have a good Spanish (unless you go to live to places like Malaga, where there are a lot of British people and you can then start building up your reputation within the expat community). Besides, we Spaniards always try to get people like electricians or plumbers from a referral because there is the belief that many are useless and charge a lot of money for being useless. Another possibility that has just come to my mind is that you live in a village or small town where everybody knows each other and if you do some work and people are happy, they could well recommend you to other people but again, you´d need to have a decent Spanish. Hope this helps.


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## pablo1 (May 9, 2016)

Electrician in Spain?

Forget it. Retrain as something else as in my wife's family we have at least 4 members of family who are fully qualified electricians who cannot find work/clients to make it worthwhile.

This is the situation in the northern parts of Spain where the unemployment levels are around 12-15% depending on what source you look at. It really is grim and I don't think a recovery is possible for the very long distant future. (10 years +)

Sorry this might not be the news you want to hear but it is a very honest point of view.


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