British Expats - How did YOU decide where to live?

We bought our apartment in the centre of torremolinos 2 years ago. We have holidayed in Majorca, Portugal, and the Canaries for the last 5 years once i (sort of) got over my fears of flying.
We then decided it would be lovely to have our own place out in Spain so we could holiday and use in our retirement where we plan to spend time in our caravan at skegness visiting family and the rest of the time in spain. Retirement not being for 10-15 years yet. Luckily my hubby and i have 'fairly good' paid jobs, so was able to remortgage our home in able to buy a property. Thank heavens we did it back in 2007, because with the 'current climate' we certainly wouldn't gamble on doing it now.
We were on holiday in Torremolinos and had such a great time we decided that was where we wanted to retire to. Everything was at hand that we wanted. Beach, walks, shops etc etc.
We saw several apartments during the summer of 2007 and finally settled on one near the town centre. We finalised papers etc in September 2007.
So it was quite a simple story of how we come to get a place in Spain.