Notes from a Small Spanish village
One of my favourite books of all time is Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson and so when I was thinking about how I should share my experiences of living and working in the small village of Manilva on the Costa del Sol, I thought that I would call it Notes from a Small Spanish Village as a bit of a homage.
I do hope that I am not infringing copyright or aiming too high by aligning myself with one of the funniest, most observant authors, but hopefully he can inspire me to relate my tales in an entertaining way.
Let me begin by giving you some background. My partner and I have been living and running a marketing agency on the Costa del Sol for seven years, but always in the cosmopolitan town of Marbella. Whilst Marbella is a small place it has a real buzz, an International population, loads going on and great bars and restaurants and we loved the lifestyle there. However, when we wanted to capitalise on the property market crash and buy a property, our budget would only buy us a small apartment in Marbella, so we started to cast our net wider and see what was around.
During our search we suddenly started seeing spacious townhouses for the same price as a 1 bed apartment and Manilva was on our radar big time! We wondered what was wrong with the place, and noticed that there had been a lot of overbuilding in the area, resulting in a severe oversupply of properties which drove the prices down. In addition, it’s a sleepy village with not too much going on and a poor reputation which also reduces housing prices further, however there didn’t seem to be much wrong with it overall. We walked around the village, nervously at first, noticing the lack of restaurants and sleepy feel which was very different from what we were used to, but in the end the head ruled the heart and we just didn’t think we could pass up such a great house, with space for an office, for so little money, so we took the plunge.
We moved in to the house last April, almost a year ago, and at first it was a real culture shock. The house was amazing and the views beautiful and we could walk into the village and a great playground which was a real bonus. However, we were struggling with getting to know people, finding nice places to go and really not feeling we fitted in and to be honest we kept going to rubbish places and not feeling good about it at all. We were back and forth to Marbella 3 or 4 times a week, spending loads on petrol and always having to drive and feeling pretty negative about where we lived.
A year on, I am pleased to report that we’ve totally changed our minds and the key has been finding a lovely local school for our son, establishing a business network, getting a few great friends and finding some bars and restaurants we really like. So I am going to share my experiences of dealing with a rural Spanish village and how we’re adapting and benefiting from the community as a family and a business. I hope you enjoy my tales!