# Relocating to Axarquia region



## nattyboomboom (Mar 12, 2014)

Hello to all in the Axarquia region!

My husband and I are planning to relocate to the mainland from Gran Canaria sometime this year, preferably before October as I have a bun in the oven due out then!! reggers: We've been thinking of the Torrox pueblo, Nerja, Frigiliana area, but we're still not sure.

At the moment we live in northern GC and this winter has been horrible! I can deal with the cold and having the fire on all day but it's the constant greyness that does my head in. The rest of the island is lovely and sunny while we're in practically UK type weather! We'd also like to move to the mainland for other reasons such as having access to more activities, cultural and otherwise, than we have available here. 

Ideally we'd like to move somewhere close to a town and within about a 15 minute drive of the beach. It would be nice to have a bit of a melting pot of nationalities too - not just Spanish or dominated by Brits or Germans (no offence!) We live in a very Canarian village at the mo and although everyone we meet is lovely and friendly, they tend to be like most locals you meet from anywhere in the world and it's hard to integrate if you're an outsider. 

So my questions are - 
What is the weather like in the winter? Like I said cold is fine but grey skies every day for months on end is horrible....it was about 15 degrees here but miserable and rainy for Dec, Jan, Feb and most of March!

Is the campo safe for living? We only want to be about a km or so from town but I've read about Torrox having a crime wave back in 2011!?! and also that people have moved from the campo due to the fear of being burgled with no help nearby. Is this the case or is it just isolated incidents that always find their way onto the internet?

And finally....Which town/areas would you recommend or avoid?

Any help is much appreciated!


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## jojo (Sep 20, 2007)

nattyboomboom said:


> Hello to all in the Axarquia region!
> 
> My husband and I are planning to relocate to the mainland from Gran Canaria sometime this year, preferably before October as I have a bun in the oven due out then!! reggers: We've been thinking of the Torrox pueblo, Nerja, Frigiliana area, but we're still not sure.
> 
> ...


The Canaries are known to have milder winters than the mainland and I have to say, that we visit Nerja in the winter and its cold (especially at night), varying amounts of grey, rain, wind and yes, some sun. Its been nice this winter, but the winter before, it rained most of the time we were there - 5 out of 8 days!?

Jo xxx


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## Lynn R (Feb 21, 2014)

Jo is right about the weather, I would have thought that the Canaries are generally much warmer in the winter, although you seem to have been unlucky this year.

This winter has been mild in the Axarquia with much less rain than usual, last year wasn't too bad but the 3 before that were very wet indeed, with flash floods doing a lot of damage in some inland areas. 

Nerja, Frigiliana and Torrox are probably the areas with the biggest expat populations and all have a mix of nationalities, although Torrox Costa is very German orientated. I've read about burglaries happening in Nerja and Torrox, we've had them here too, but you can say that about any area in these times, I think (I posted a link to an article yesterday in the Security Alarms threat about the police having arrested a gang thought to be responsible for a large number of burglaries in the Marbella and Estepona areas). Town, urbanisation or campo, it doesn't really make any difference. The only "good" thing that can be said about it is that the overwhelming majority of them are carried out whilst the properties are empty (many reports of properties being watched in advance to make sure of that) and very few involving any violence towards the householders. I don't want to make it sound like crime central, you really don't have to live in fear, just make sure you have good insurance cover and take sensible precautions. We were burgled ourselves about 5 years ago and it was very upsetting at the time, but the place wasn't trashed and nothing of an irreplaceable nature was taken.

As to places to recommend/avoid, personally I like the villages of Benamocarra and Algarrobo Pueblo but they may be too "Spanish" for you with not enough of an expat population. Both are only a short distance from the coast. Maro, just along the coast from Nerja, is nice and has lovely views but very, very quiet.

The areas inland around Lake Vinuela, Puente de Don Manuel and Alcaucin seem to have quite a problem with properties that have been deemed illegal retrospectively by the Junta de Andalucia (Google the organisation "Save Our Homes Axarquia").

Can't really recommend any particular areas in the campo as country living isn't for me. As well as liking to be within walking distance of all the shops, leisure facilties and public transport, I also want a good fast internet connection (particularly important now we can only watch UK tv via internet, regular postal deliveries, no water cuts during dry summers, to be within easy reach of a hospital in case of an emergency, and not to live somewhere where the road or a track to my house might be washed away by a winter storm. All things which should be weighed against the attraction of living in a rural area, imo.

Good luck with your search.


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## Aron (Apr 30, 2013)

I live in the La Vinuela area. We have a mix of people in our street, half Spanish, the rest mostly British, but a couple of other nationalities too the locals are lovely people. Our street is all urban land. Several of the houses have been sold and resold over the years.
I have relatives all along the Costa del Sol, but we chose our area because there is less traffic and less crime. We were well aware of all the pitfalls long before moving here. 
The weather, well in winter you can have sunny mild ones, or sunny windy ones or cold and wet. On the whole, the weather is good in this area.
La Vinuela health surgery is the best I have ever had in my life. Okay, not everything goes to plan some days as the nurse or one of the doctors can be called out to an emergency. The health centre has two resident ambulances and is open 24/7.
Nerja, I just love the town, but it can be an expensive place to live. In the recent crisis, house prices didn't fall as drastically as other places.
Torrox Costa is okay, but Torrox pueblo is much more the old town. It claims to have the best climate in Europe.
One thing to bear in mind in La Axarquia, the coastal mountains are the barrier between the mild temperate winter weather as it is colder the higher up you get, but in summer it is the reverse.
I live inland of Torre del Mar. It takes about 20 minutes to get to the beach. 35 years ago Torre del Mar was nothing special, but they have done a lot of work on the place and I prefer it to any resort west of Malaga.
Crime, there is crime everywhere, but I have always felt safer here in La Azarquia than anywhere along the coast. Each year in winter you hear of burglaries. Two years ago there were 30 in a six week period. You have to bear in mind the thousands of properties here, 30 is a very small percentage. I was told they caught the culprits, it was a local family, but nothing was mentioned in the press that I saw.


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## nattyboomboom (Mar 12, 2014)

Thanks so much for the replies!

I've kept an eye on the forecasts for the mainland for a few months now and it always seems to have better weather than here so it's good to know that maybe this winter has been a one off. 

We moved to northern GC from Lanzarote thinking that we wanted to have more changable weather - the north is very green and totally different from the southern half of the island - and the weather was good for last summer until around December when a grey cloud decended and didn't leave until March! If there had been some variation in the greyness it would've been something but every day was the same, raining, cold and miserable. The south meanwhile had fairly sunny weather so we only had an hours drive if we wanted sunshine. The thing is with the mainland is that you can capitalise on having the colder weather by hopping in the car and heading for the Sierra Nevada mountains for some snow fun. 

We lived in a tourist resort in Lanza and then later more inland in a more typical Canarian town. We didn't want to go back to being in a resort but I find I miss the varied community of people that you find in a resort. We had friends from all over - South America, UK, Germany, Belgium as well as some Spanish mainlanders but no Canarians as they were few and far between! With a 2 year old and another baby on the way I really want to have access to more kids activities and groups as well and where I live now there is nothing unless I drive south for an hour. 

I'm a little concerned about the crime level as in 5 years here I've led a sheltered life and not had so much as a pocket picked! I always complained to my husband that he would leave our doors unlocked but nothing has ever happened apart from having someone lop off a bunch of bananas from one of our trees that was overhanging the back of the garden!! Still, southern Spain is still known for having a low crime rate compared to elsewhere and there seem to be many other benefits that outweigh the risk of something may or my not happening.

Thanks for the info on the different areas, I'll be looking them all up!! Also thanks Lynn for mentioning the downsides of the campo....there were some issues I hadn't even thought of!!! 

I was also wondering about rental prices as I'd read on another (old) thread that rental prices can be negotiated down by up to 100/150 euros! Is that still the case or has demand started exceeding the supply?


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## Pesky Wesky (May 10, 2009)

As far as weather is concerned I think the idea of winter is usually ... has gone out of the window in Spain. The south coast generally has better temperatures than places in Madrid and upwards, but when talking about rain and wind - both can hit any part of Spain and at times they are ferocious!
Here we also have regular snow falls and again you never know what kind of winter you're going to get. This winter we haven't see the snow which is very unusual, but it's rained a lot more than "usual" That makes for a great spring, which reminds me. Watch that avatar.


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## Lynn R (Feb 21, 2014)

nattyboomboom said:


> Thanks so much for the replies!
> 
> I've kept an eye on the forecasts for the mainland for a few months now and it always seems to have better weather than here so it's good to know that maybe this winter has been a one off.
> 
> ...



If you've been used to Canarian winter temperatures, one thing I would make very sure of is that any rental property you sign up for has some kind of proper heating, especially as you'll have a small baby. Wood or pellet burning stoves are great for heating the whole house, I'm told hot/cold air conditioning can work well too, but I suspect might give rise to large bills. It can often be warm and sunny here in the daytime (between 11am and 4/5pm) but before the sun gets up and after it goes down, the temperatures are much lower. As I said before, this winter was mild but there were days when the outside temperature was only 5/6C when we got up in the morning.


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## nattyboomboom (Mar 12, 2014)

Oooh Lynn, you are scaring me about the weather you know! 

But I guess I have to decide how important sunshine in the winter months is to me.....maybe having a better lifestyle on the mainalnd with access to more amenities and groups etc should really outweigh the fact that I'll have to put up with a few months of a mild Spanish winter lol!


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## Lynn R (Feb 21, 2014)

nattyboomboom said:


> Oooh Lynn, you are scaring me about the weather you know!
> 
> But I guess I have to decide how important sunshine in the winter months is to me.....maybe having a better lifestyle on the mainalnd with access to more amenities and groups etc should really outweigh the fact that I'll have to put up with a few months of a mild Spanish winter lol!


Honestly, the last thing I want to do is scare you - IMO this is a great area to live in and I wouldn't be anywhere else. I think the winter weather here is as good as it gets anywhere in mainland Europe.

However, I think people often think only of what the temperature is like at 2 pm on a lovely sunny day with a bright blue sky - which we do get lots of. Nothing I like better than waking up and seeing that sky. But I've known people who have left all their winter clothes behind when they moved here from the UK, thought they wouldn't need blankets or a duvet and have given no thought to how they were going to heat their house, and they get a nasty shock when the sun goes down and the temperature drops like a stone.

If you're prepared for that, it's fine, and we only need our heating for 4 months of the year anyway (November to March). Layering is the order of the day when it comes to clothes - fleece dressing gowns are wonderful for keeping you cosy when you first get up in the morning, put on a T-shirt and a sweater or cardigan when you get dressed and later on, the woolly comes off once the sun is properly out and over the house-tops, to be re-donned later once the sun goes down. We follow the Spanish custom of keeping all the house windows open from late morning to sundown as the outside temperature during those hours is invariably warmer than it is inside, then shut them all. In the summer, the opposite applies -you keep the windows and shutters closed during the daytime to keep the house cool. We really had to "learn how to live" in this house after we came here.

As you say, you need to weigh up what your own personal must-haves are.


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## 90199 (Mar 21, 2010)

I have lived in the Canary Islands for years, the climate suits us. However we have friends, native to Gran Canaria, they live in San Jose de Alamo, in the north of Gran Canaria, up there it feels colder than Buxton Road, Huddersfield, on a wild winters day when the wind is howling down from the Pennines…………………..or perhaps we have become acclimatised to our Balmy Herreño climate,

Good luck with your re-location


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## Alcalaina (Aug 6, 2010)

Pesky Wesky said:


> That makes for a great spring, which reminds me. Watch that avatar.


Ah yes, the hills and valleys round here are covered with pesky-wesky plants (aka rock-rose, _jara_, cistus ladanifer). Driving back from the Sierra de Grazalema yesterday we saw plenty of the pink version too.

Without the winter rains, we wouldn't have the glorious spring flowers. They make it all worthwhile.


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## Pesky Wesky (May 10, 2009)

Alcalaina said:


> Ah yes, the hills and valleys round here are covered with pesky-wesky plants (aka rock-rose, _jara_, cistus ladanifer). Driving back from the Sierra de Grazalema yesterday we saw plenty of the pink version too.
> 
> Without the winter rains, we wouldn't have the glorious spring flowers. They make it all worthwhile.


They certainly do. We have lots of cantueso here too and the wisteria has gone mad this year.


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