She relocated to Spain in 2022, but after struggling to adapt, this American woman has packed up and returned home

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After vacationing in Spain a few times, Cristina Martinez, from the US, felt enamoured with the European country and was eager to return — for good.

Cristina, who is from a Cuban background and speaks fluent Spanish, eventually decided to relocate there with her husband.

“We wanted to be in Europe and live the European lifestyle,” Cristina tells CNN Travel.

In 2021, the couple, who were based in Fort Myers, Florida, at the time, sold their home and went on to move to Spain the following year.

‘I couldn’t adapt’

But after just a year, Cristina realized that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side, and was desperate to return to the United States. She finally moved back home last year, two years after relocating.

“I couldn’t adapt to their way of living,” she says. “It’s totally different from the American way of living… I had very high expectations, and they were totally crumbled.”

Cristina’s ill-fated love affair with Spain began back in 1995, when she visited the country for the first time and instantly fell for its charm.

After visiting a few more times, Cristina returned with her husband and felt certain that “it would be a lovely place to live.”

She began looking into the prospect of moving there soon after, making sure to do as much research as she could before making a final decision.

“We didn’t have good information,” she reflects today.

Once Cristina and her husband had sold their Florida home and gone through the process of applying for a non-lucrative visa – which allows non-EU nationals to live in Spain without working, provided that they can prove that they have enough money to support themselves – they were ready to begin their new lives in Spain.

They left the US in May 2022, heading to Santander, capital city of the Cantabria region on Spain’s north coast, where they’d rented a home.

Cristina says she was relatively happy in the beginning and went on to buy a chalet on the countryside of the same region after falling “in love with the area.”

“I think the first year was like a honeymoon stage,” she says. “I was more in that stage of, ‘Oh, we’re in Europe. This is what we’ve always wanted. This is a dream come true.’”

However, by the following year, Cristina was seeing things very differently, and soon realized that the Spanish way of life wasn’t going to work for her.

“I started to realize… this is not what we had envisioned,” she says. “I mean, we wanted to be here long-term. Forever and ever.

“But the way the country is going, and the way they do things, is definitely not what I’m used to.”

High hopes

So where did it all go wrong? Somewhat surprisingly, Cristina says that the weather was one of the main issues for her.

They were based in northern Spain, which has very cold winters, and Cristina admits that she wasn’t prepared for quite how gloomy it would be for several months of the year.

“I just couldn’t take six months or five months of bad weather,” she says. “Sometimes it just rains five days out of the week. It rains day and night…

“You also have a lot of humidity and wind. And when all those things add up, it’s a very cold, gloomy and depressing winter. And all these elements make it easier for you to get sick.”

And while Cristina struggled with the cold during winter, the lack of air-conditioning in many Spanish homes meant that summertime wasn’t exactly smooth sailing for her either.

“Be prepared to not live with air conditioning,” she says. “To live with the windows open.”

When asked if she considered moving south, Cristina explains that she was worried about the prospect of squatters taking over if she purchased a second property in Spain and left one empty.

“The country has a big problem with squatters,” she says, adding that “if you buy a property over there, you run the risk of it being occupied.”

Spanish laws around squatting are complicated, particularly due to a clause in the Spanish constitution stating that all citizens have “the right to adequate housing.”

Squatters can only be evicted immediately if they’ve moved in within the last 48 hours. If more than two days have passed, homeowners must take the appropriate judicial measures to remove them.

“That’s something that we didn’t know about,” she adds. “So that right there was also a big game changer.

“Because here in Miami, we don’t have that kind of a problem. And if we do, it’s very minor.”

Cristina also found the Spanish schedule, which sees some businesses close for siesta in the afternoons, very difficult to adjust to.

“The other thing that really bothered me about them over there (was) their way of living and their way of doing things,” she says.

“All of their businesses and restaurants, for the most part, close at three or four o’clock in the afternoon. Banks close at two, and then you can’t do anything. There’s no services being provided.”

The differing meal times were another source of frustration for Cristina.

“You can’t go and eat because they close at four, and then they don’t open again until eight, nine o’clock at night,” she adds.

As for the cost of living, Cristina concedes that she found groceries to be less expensive, although utilities were “just about the same as the US.”

While she also found housing to be cheaper, Cristina points out that “you get what you pay for.”

“I noticed that the cheaper homes for rent, you would find them on the outskirts of the big city in remote areas,” she says.

“Out in the country. Some houses and apartments can be in a town that is not that good. It may not have that many services. So it just depends.

“As a foreigner, you really have to do your homework if you want to go live over there.”

‘Closed culture’

Cristina points out that sales tax is “high” in Spain – the rate averaged 18.76 percent from 2000 until 2024.

“People think that it’s cheaper, but you really need to do the math,” she says. “What are you going to get with the exchange rate?

“How much money are you really going to have left? Take into consideration the high sales tax… Because at the end of the day, it may not be that cheap.”

While Cristina didn’t necessarily have strong opinions about Spanish food before moving there, she grew to dislike it, finding it to be largely “fried, greasy and unhealthy.”

“After a while, I got really tired and grossed out with the Spaniard food,” she says, noting that there’s a little “more variety” in bigger cities such as Madrid and Barcelona.

“You’re just like, ‘Okay, I’m done with the French fries… I’m done with the seafood.’ It’s like seafood for everything.”

Although Cristina didn’t have issues making friends in the country, she found Spain to be more of a “closed culture.”

“They don’t open up their house to people very easily,” she says. “They talk to you, but it’s not like, ‘Oh, come over to my house and have some drinks.’”

According to Cristina, many of the locals she encountered seemed surprised that she’d chosen to relocate to Spain.

“A lot of people would be like, ‘Oh, you’re from Miami, but what are you doing here?’” she recounts. And as time went on, Cristina began to ask herself the same question.

She found herself aching for the convenience she was used to back in Miami, as well as her friends and family.

“The convenience of everything being open,” she says. “Going to the supermarket or going to a regular pharmacy and finding everything that you need.”

As she was weighing up her options, Cristina was offered her former social work job back, and decided to accept the offer.

Home sweet home

“Once my job was guaranteed, and they offered it to me. I got a ticket right away, and I left Spain…” she recounts.

“It just didn’t make sense (to stay). Because I thought staying had nothing to offer me. So it was a no-brainer.”

While Cristina has little positive to say about her time in Spain, she admits that she was a big fan of the landscape in the northern coast.

“I like the greenery,” she says. “It’s a very pretty area. You have the ocean and the mountains together… There’s a lot of pretty scenery.

“It (Cantabria) is a very agricultural part of Spain. So there’s horses, of course, and sheep. It’s peaceful. Living in the north, it’s a peaceful place to live. And not too much crime.”

However, the scenery clearly wasn’t enough to convince her to remain there.

Now happily back in the US, Cristina says she feels as though she was misled about Spain, and wished she’d have known more about the way the country operates and its “outdated” procedures.

“If I would’ve known all these things beforehand, I would have never moved to Spain,” she adds.

Cristina admits that she was particularly disappointed by her experiences, as she’d assumed that she’d fit right in due to her background, not to mention the fact that she spoke the language.

“Their lifestyle, the way they live, is very different from the Hispanic way of living,” she says.

“My culture, we’re more warm. We’re more tropical, very happy-go-lucky for the most part…

“I feel like we’re more cheerful. We’re more optimistic. We’re more like go-getters.

“We have a lot of great opportunities here in the United States, and we’ve known how to take advantage of that, and we’ve moved to bigger and better places.”

When asked if she plans to return to Spain for a visit, Cristina says she’s in no hurry to go back.

“It left a really bad taste in my mouth, the whole experience,” she says. “That I don’t even want to go back for vacation. I’m done.”

“And it’s not only because of my experience. But because of other people that I’ve talked to that live over there too. They’re upset too, about their country.

“And I’m not going to tell you that the United States is the perfect country. It’s not. But we have more things going for us here than over there.

“I would have stayed over there if they had a different way of living.”

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