Barriej

While I have to agree that most of us Brits are deficient when it comes to languages.
When I was at school you could only learn French, and at 14 when you made your choices hardly anyone bothered as it was lumped in with other subjects as Geography and History (well at my secondary modern for boys it was).
My kids were given halfhearted Madarin lessons and my son picked up more Polish from his schoolmates than he did Mandarin.. No other language was offered and they both went to Catholic schools in the UK. They are 27 and 29 if that helps.

Its not the individual thats to blame, its the complete UK culture and to be honest Im struggling to learn enough Spanish to get by, partly due to confidence and partly down to being slightly deaf (well its mild Tinnitus caused by the machinery noise from my working life). I can lip read in English but that aint much use here...

Again a lot of the locals around here have some english (our neighbour downstairs has an 8 year old daughter who speaks good english and has asked me to help) Ive asked for her to help me and she gave me some stuff suitable for a 4 year old. Got to start somewhere.
We also have shed loads of Scandinavians and dutch in Alfaz and lots of the older ones don't speak Spanish either, because there are many of their countryfolk around.
Yesterday I was asked directions to Guadalest in German not Spanish, because behind me were a load of Germans out walking....
And this morning the DHL man phoned and asked in Spanish if I was Senior Barrie? "Si, senior" says I and then he says in English "I have your packet i will be by your house in 5 minutes" See...

Now this is not an excuse but Ive worked for German and Italian companies as a service engineer and they all used to laugh when I said I wanted to learn some of their language.
All they wanted was to practice english because it was the language most used in Asian and African countries not to mention the US, Canada and Australia.
They always said there was no point learning because I would never need it...

Anyway back to houses. We have a block in the village of one bed flats all owned by a bank, these are mostly.
There are two houses that are falling down and one of them was owned by a man with six kids, they refused to pay the taxes and its just sitting there falling apart.
In the town one house has been empty from around 2004 as it was an illegal build but has just sat there.


I doubt Spain would be on a list of countries to invest in property unless you were looking at a couple of hundred years to realise some decent growth.
Even buying to let is full of danger with squatters.

And for the OP if you haven't got fed up with us and are even bothering to look.

Please visit and research, research, cost out everything, look at the visa requirements,. And then do it all again, you have time as you said three years before you can move.....

Moses2013

I have to agree with Barriej and it would be wrong to only blame British. Other nationalities are no better and they only learn another language if they need it (for work). Even in Germany the Arbeitsagentur (Jobcentre) had to employ people who speak Turkish because people complained that services were only in German. Then you have a lot of Chinese here who only eat their food and don't speak a word of English. It's just natural and people in Europe agreed that English is the easiest way for all to communicate.

As said, there are so many challenges and things to consider. Lynn R mentioned Portugal and I was reading an interesting blog about the downsides of life there. Similar could be said about Spain and when it's about sunshine and sangria you can quickly forget the daily challenges in life. Unless you live in a small wealthy community and have the cash, not every area is perfectly manicured. You still have issues such as dog barking/dog fouling, animal cruelty, pollution, lack of customer service, loud neighbours and so on. Just because it's Spain doesn't mean these problems that can also be found in the UK are non existent.