Staff Reporter
A BRITISH expat who moved her entire family from Portsmouth to Spain is urging fellow Brits to jump ship too.
Real estate agent Nicola Powles, who runs the Property in Spain Group, made the life-changing decision in 2001 after a three-day holiday to the Costa del Sol that cost just £99.
“It’s a shame but Britain is quickly becoming a third world country with nothing to offer for the people who live there,” Powles told The Sun.
“It’s a scary country with crime out of control, you can’t see a doctor and ambulances don’t arrive. It’s always grey – where will it end?”
The mother claims to save approximately €1,000 (£850) per month on bills and rent compared to UK prices, making her financial situation significantly more comfortable than when she lived in Portsmouth.
“In the UK, we were paying the same amount of rent for one house than what we were doing for two in Spain, which both included a pool,” she explained.
Powles claims that many everyday expenses are lower in Spain, highlighting affordable dining options.
“I can get a three-course meal, including a drink, in a local hotel for £11,” she said.
Three weeks after her initial holiday, Powles moved her entire family including her then-husband, two children, two horses, and two dogs to the Spanish coast.
While her family has since returned to Britain, she insists she has no plans to follow them back.
“I miss my daughter and grandchildren, who live in Britain, but the country has nothing to offer me anymore,” she said. “The only way I’m ever returning to the UK is in a coffin.”
After more than two decades in Spain, Powles now runs her own company helping fellow expats relocate. She advises potential movers to be mindful of local regulations, saying: “Always use a local lawyer, as coast and country rules are very different in every town.”
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According to data from Kanan, a study abroad company, the average cost of living for a family of four in the UK was approximately £2,200 per month in 2024, excluding rent. In Spain, this figure was around £1,400.
Despite her strong opinions on leaving the UK, Powles acknowledges that the expatriate lifestyle isn’t for everyone.
“If you want to live off benefits, then stay in the UK,” she said. “If you want constant sunshine and a cheaper way of living, then Spain is the place for you.”
Where on earth is this restaurant that costs €11 for 3 courses?
The comment “the UK is a third world country” is just a daft meme, with very little brain material put into action to consider the subject. Also a typical comment of an ‘expat’ who either moved for golf lunches, or easyjet flights and the array of dire bars and cafes called ‘Steve’s Bar’ etc, turning coastal south Spain into the new Blackpool.
There are also many dozens of towns in Spain ( that maybe this lady never visited in a quarter of a century ) that are in a far worse condition than anything in the UK. If you want to live in a cuckooland bubble, along what is basically, a long giant snake like concrete urbanisation, of holiday lets and very average seaside areas, then that is your universe.
Spain and other ‘significant western countries’ are all in decline, don’t kid yourself, merely because you became yet another one of the folks who offer ‘good legal advice for living in Spain’ or opened a ‘caff’/bar/holiday let. The average Spanish ( and Portuguese person ) struggles daily. In the UK, there are thousands of places where it is possible to visit that are nice villages, towns regions. More accurate to say that some areas of the UK are in rapid freefall – but it is not a ‘third world country’ which is just insulting to real ‘third world countries’ where people don’t know if they can eat or drink water the next day. Not sure what is also, in southern Spain, the intensity of resort town after resort town, the endless rollercoaster motorways that shadow them, the proliferation of basically towns full of UK’ers and Germans etc, hecticness, developments, is something way and above southern Portugal, despite the developments there. The options, ideas this article suggests are just another great example of the short term, blinkered, self serving modes that bought about the UK ( and western European ) declines in the first place.
Lol, the average Spaniard lives off grandarents who use to live in tiny white washed villages. They are now full of tattooed 30yr Olds with 2.5 kids who get pissed every weekend. No different from the tourist who pay to come to Spain and keep the economy going. Get rid of tourism are they going back to working in the fields like there grandparents did?
Then I think like many, perhaps that is a persepctive from around the small circles like Blackpool del Mar, aka, west of Malaga. Go into the interior or other areas. Spain has an unemployment rate of around a quarter and just like in Portugal, young people go abroad every year in huge numbers, to save a year or two working in Swiss hotels etc, leaving rural small towns bereft of younger people – or the go to Blackpool del Mar or Marbella to work on shops and restaurants maybe. Maybe averagely, the story is a bit more acute in Portugal but not such a different story.
Just to add to the above. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youth_unemployment_in_Spain
Probably a similar story for many, if you get your engineering or chemistry degree, there are not enough jobs in those sectors, so cleaning hotels in Luxembourg and Switzerland is a way to save money. Even if there are properties within families, if where the property is gives no income any more, no jobs, it is not much of a useful base.
Separately, no not get rid of tourism but tourism itself is not a physical product or skill or craft or innovation that would be better for all concerned. It is also less predictable long term. Hence why there are empty unfinished developments. It is also the quality of some areas