Trouble in paradise: Brits in Spain can end up lonely and alone

British people are “living the dream” in Spain – that’s “until the wheels fall off the bus,” Euronews was told.

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When Margot Campbell-Parton’s husband died in an accident in 2006, her dream of a carefree life in Spain was shattered.

After police officers knocked on her door one Sunday morning with the grim news, the 65-year-old Glaswegian was left completely alone, having had to identify his body herself.

“It was just a horrible time,” she told Euronews. “No one asked me how I was. I didn’t see anyone.”

Her sons soon arrived to support their mum, but more nightmarish problems befell the family.

Margot and her husband Alec had borrowed money to set up a business in Port de Sóller, Majorca, with a third person who promptly “buggered off”, leaving her lumbered with a €250,000 loan.

In the months that followed, heartbreak turned to severe depression, as she struggled to sell her house, clear the debt and process her husband’s passing – all without the option of returning to Scotland as she had sold her home there.

“I was never a hard person. I was always someone who would cry very easily. But everything that happened made me really cold,” she said.

“It was a very lonely time. A very sad time.”

‘Things are much harder than at home’

Some 307,000 British citizens live in Spain as of 2022, according to figures from epdata.

A vast majority tend to be older, heading south to spend the later stages of life somewhere that is cheaper – and certainly sunnier – than Britain. 

However, Dr Kelly Hall, a Reader in Social Policy at the University of Birmingham, who has researched care issues facing British migrants in Spain, says some can run into “really big problems”.

She details a textbook scenario where “healthy” Brits move to Spain in their 50s or 60s to areas with high concentrations of other British people and do not learn Spanish because they either “struggle or don’t need to” – despite “good intentions” at times. 

“They’re quite happy for some time,” Dr Hall tells Euronews. “But then something happens, say a partner dying or health problem, that puts them in a very precarious position and can trigger a whole host of mental health problems, like loneliness and isolation.”

Earlier in November, the British Embassy in Spain warned that many of the 72,000 Britons living on the Costa del Sol – home to the largest community of Brits in Spain – could find themselves isolated and alone.

A central issue is that many British ex-pats do not speak Spanish, meaning they can struggle to access support services when needed. 

“Spain’s a big country, there are lots of organisations helping people, but people can sometimes get a bit lost,” adds Neil Hesketh of Support in Spain, a non-profit website helping British expats inside the country.  

Another issue he points to is that Spain’s social care system is not as big as Britain’s, with Spanish families expected to provide more support for sick or elderly relatives, compared to a “more individualistic” UK. 

Even in normal times, language barriers and the fact of being geographically far from friends and family can cause issues. 

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“People get lonely everywhere,” explains Hesketh. “But obviously in Spain it’s different because they aren’t in their native country. Traditional cultural reference points, like the pub, aren’t English-speaking.”

“Someone’s son or daughter can’t just pop round for a cup of tea, you know.”

Part of this is down to the British. Some don’t “bother to integrate”, meaning many problems can remain undetected or unaddressed, according to Hesketh.

“It can be very frustrating and perplexing for Spanish people when they find a poor English person with dementia in their garden.”

His organisation works to support British people who get into vulnerable situations in Spain, pointing them towards services and support they can access inside the country. It has around 8,000 users a month, he says.

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‘Not enough thinking ahead’

For Hesketh, an important problem is that British expats can fail to plan for what he calls the “nasty things in life”.

“Everyone comes over to Spain to live a dream,” he tells Euronews. “They’ve got some money, they buy a house in the countryside. Where people get into trouble is when they have made the move without really planning what might happen if things go wrong.

“They’re living the dream until the wheels fall off the bus,” he continues.

Brexit has also thrown a spanner into the works, impacting the lives of many Brits in Spain. 

Dr Hall notes many of those living off “really low incomes”, especially state pensions, were hit hard by the depreciation of the pound following Britain’s decision to leave the European Union.   

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“They can’t afford to go meet their friends in the restaurant or bar… as their disposable income has disappeared so has their social life,” she says, highlighting cases where elderly people have ended up sleeping on the beach because they are unable to pay their rent. 

Since the 2016 Brexit vote, the pound has lost 20% of its value, according to analysis by CNN. 

But help is on hand. 

Britain’s embassy in Spain has called on experts and public authorities to assist their compatriots, though when asked by Euronews to detail exactly what it was doing it did not provide information. 

“The British Embassy works to protect and promote British interests in Spain. As part of that, we provide support and advice to British people visiting or living in Spain,” it said in a statement. 

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Consular services are “overstretched” in Spain, according to Dr Hall. 

Town councils are working on innovative ways to create community and provide care to their British residents, however. 

One of those is the Town Hall of Mijas which – through APEMEX (The Programme of Help for Elderly Foreigners) – has developed associations connecting the elderly so that they do not feel alone.

“British people who came to Spain when they were completely autonomous made the decision to live away from their families and social networks, they are a prototype of independent and free people, so when they reach old age people do not change,” said Professor of Social Work and Social Services at the University of Jaén, Yolanda María de la Fuente. 

“Perhaps we should apply a kind of gerontological pedagogy and make them realise that with a little support and help they could live much better and, above all, design their own life plan with a certain amount of guidance,” she added. 

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For those considering making the move, Hesketh of Support in Spain urged Brits to “integrate as much as possible, learn the language and understand how the Spanish system can help.

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Zelenskyy’s globetrotting diplomacy leaves Putin looking isolated

After a whirlwind week of diplomatic visits that has taken in the Vatican, Saudi Arabia, Europe’s capitals and Japan, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s world tour has left his Russian counterpart looking increasingly isolated.

While the world awaits Ukraine’s spring battlefield offensive, leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy has launched a diplomatic one. In the span of a week, he’s dashed to Italy, the Vatican, Germany, France and Britain to shore up support for defending his country. Later on Saturday, he’s due at the G7 conference in Japan.

On Friday, he was in Saudi Arabia to meet with Arab leaders, some of whom are allies with Moscow, tweeting about his visit.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, was in the southern Russian city of Pyatigorsk, chairing a meeting with local officials, sitting at a large table at a distance from the other attendees.

He has faced unprecedented international isolation, with an International Criminal Court arrest warrant hanging over his head and clouding the prospects of travelling to many destinations, including those viewed as Moscow’s allies.

With his invasion of Ukraine, “Putin took a gamble and lost really, really big time,” said Theresa Fallon, director of the Brussels-based Centre for Russia Europe Asia Studies. “He is an international pariah, really.”

It was only 10 years ago when Putin stood proudly among his peers at the time, Barack Obama, Angela Merkel and Shinzo Abe, at a Group of Eight summit in Northern Ireland. 

Russia has since been kicked out of the group, made up of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Britain and the US,  for illegally annexing Crimea in 2014.

Now it appears to be Ukraine’s turn in the spotlight.

There were conflicting messages from Kyiv about whether Zelenskyy would attend the G7 in Japan on Sunday. The secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council said on national television the president would be there, but the council later walked back those remarks, saying Zelenskyy would join via video link. The president’s office would not confirm either way for security reasons.

But whether in person or via video, it would be of great symbolic and geopolitical significance.

“It conveys the fact that the G7 continues to strongly support Ukraine,” said Nigel Gould-Davies, senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “It’s a visible marker of the continued commitment of the most highly industrialised and highly developed countries in the world.”

It also comes at a time when the optics are just not in the Kremlin’s favour.

There’s uncertainty over whether Putin can travel to South Africa in August for a summit of the BRICS nations of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

Moscow has long showcased the alliance as an alternative to the West’s global dominance, but this year it is already proving awkward for the Kremlin. South Africa, the host of the summit, is a signatory to the ICC and is obligated to comply with the arrest warrant on war crimes charges.

South Africa has not announced that Putin will definitely come to the summit but has been planning for his possible arrival. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has appointed an inter-ministerial committee, led by Deputy President Paul Mashatile, to consider South Africa’s options with regard to its ICC commitment over Putin’s possible trip.

While it is highly unlikely the Russian president would be arrested there if he decides to go, the public debate about whether he can is in itself “an unwelcome development whose impact should not be underestimated,” according to Gould-Davies.

Then there are Moscow’s complicated relations with its own neighbours. Ten days ago, Putin projected the image of solidarity, with leaders of Armenia, Belarus and Central Asian states standing beside him at a Victory Day military parade on Red Square.

This week, however, the leaders of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan flocked to China and met with leader Xi Jinping at a summit that highlighted the erosion of Russia’s influence in the region as Beijing seeks to make economic inroads into Central Asia.

Xi is using the opportunity “of a weakened Russia, a distracted Russia, almost a pariah-state Russia to increase (China’s) influence in the region,” Fallon said.

Putin’s effort this month to shore up more friends in the South Caucasus by scrapping visa requirements for Georgian nationals and lifting a four-year ban on direct flights to the country also didn’t appear to go as smoothly as the Kremlin may have hoped.

The first flight that landed Friday in Georgia was met with protests, and the country’s pro-Western president has decried the move as a provocation.

Zelenskyy’s ongoing world tour can be seen as a success on many levels.

Invitations from other world leaders is a sign they think Ukraine is “going to come out of the war in good shape,” said Phillips P. O’Brien, professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

Otherwise, “it simply wouldn’t be happening,” he said. “No one would want to be around a leader they think is going to be defeated and a country that’s going to collapse.”

By contrast, the ICC warrant might make it harder for leaders even to visit Putin in Moscow because “it’s not a good look to visit an indicted war criminal,” Gould-Davies said.

European leaders promised him an arsenal of missiles, tanks and drones, and even though no commitment has been made on fighter jets – something Kyiv has wanted for months – a conversation about finding ways to do it has begun.

His appearance Friday at the Arab League summit in Jeddah, a Saudi Arabian port on the Red Sea, highlighted Kyiv’s effort to spread its plight for support far and wide, including in some countries whose sympathies are with Russia.

In addition to Zelenskyy, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman also welcomed Syrian President Bashar Assad at the summit after a 12-year suspension – something analysts say aligns with Moscow’s interests.

Anna Borshchevskaya, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute who focuses on Russia’s policy in the Middle East, called it “another testament to the fact that Russia is not isolated globally for its invasion of Ukraine, that the Middle East is one part of the world where Russia is able to find avenues to avoid global isolation – both ideological isolation but also economic isolation.”

She added that Zelenskyy and his government deserve credit for “in recognizing that they need to reach out more to improve their diplomatic efforts in this part of the world and other parts of the world where the Russian narrative resonates.”

Kyiv could expect that “this is the beginning of a larger shift in perception that could eventually translate into potential support,” Borshchevskaya said.

Similarly, the Ukrainian president’s participation in the G7 summit is “a message to the rest of the world, to Russia and beyond, and the so-called Global South,” Gould-Davies believes.

There is a concern in the West over the extent to which some major developing economies – Brazil, South Africa and, to a degree, India – “are not criticising, not condemning Russia and indeed in various ways are helping to mitigate the impact of sanctions on Russia,” he said.

“Collectively, economically, they matter. So there is, I think, this need felt for a renewed diplomatic campaign to bring some of these most important states into the kind of the Western way of looking at these things,” Gould-Davies said.

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