Pablo, I am happy for you that you have a little smile on your face every day when you remember that you own a freehold. I have a bigger smile on my face knowing I don’t own one.

er...great, thats good news for you...I think???

Good post

Dont forget to declare the rental income and your assets to hacienda by the end of April.

More important is how much will it be worth in another 5 / 10 or 20 years.

Impossible to know but at present I would guess a lot less if you could ever off load it

crikey, its a bit doom and gloomy here is it not?

the biggest problem will be the language.
most vets here only speak Spanish, but then it is Spain.
we are lucky to have one that speaks reasonable English, having been to Cambridge Vet College for a year or so, although his partner is Spanish only. The receptionist speaks her native Swedish, Spanish and English.
Very few Spaniards in the Andalusia region speak English, although they do like to throw in their couple of words occasionally. This is the long term legacy of Franco and generations have only the one language - like most of the UK.

I know a Spaniard architect who cannot find work and is pumping petrol at weekends whilst improving his English and studying to get more certificates that may prove useless.

the biggest problem is that Spain has something not seen too much in the UK - the temporary contract. A bit like the UK's trial period but there is a tendency now to use that as a way of getting staff and then ditching them before the requirement to start them permanent.

Marbella is a high price area, pandering to those who have oodles of money. Perhaps once you are out there you can find a niche that isnt taken and make a good living out of it. But Andalusia has the highest unemployed of Spain, especially in your age group, and is seen as a drag on the rest of Spain in turning themselves round.

So, perhaps both of you for a time at least, could consider living somewhere like Madrid, Barcelona, where there may be more need for your current skills.
Suggest you look at Google for jobs and see how many agencies there are, but few jobs are down south and as most companies are owned by Spaniards then they will employ a Spaniard before you.

Sorry if it is bad news, but if you & partner and your parents can live for a while to enable you to see how things are then you will stand a good chance of making some go of it - but don't expect to walk into a job.

rgds

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Spain can be quite complex with social security, etc....many ex pats working here do so as self employed,this means you have to pay your own monthly social security! Its not easy for an ex pat to get a job in a bank, a supermarket or petrol station, thats why so many end up working ¨autonomo¨! As mentioned earlier in the thread, there are oportunities to make a go of it here, but you need to take your time,be careful, speak to as many people as possible (here on this forum is a start) find out how long those people have been in business and have in fact lived in Spain, then make up your own mind.......but dont be put off by all the doom and gloom merchants ...in fact, has the OP been frightened off already?

have you been doing the hornpipe again ??

Not me,my glass has always been half full

that bit I understand and I know it is alot more expensive than the costs in the UK, being charged from Day1 of the business project, but I have trawled the Spanish websites on Autonomo and still have one question that hasn't been answered -

If you retire and receive pension but then start a business - do you have to pay autonomo each month or is there no charge for pensioners ??

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If you start a business then you are not retired. You can either be self-employed or retired

but autonomo is based on paying for social security - that individual is retired and therefore already in receipt of pension and SS.

...and so cannot be employed

that is a different take on the situation you stated earlier,

so now you are suggesting that once an individual reaches retirement age they are on the scrap heap - just like in the old days

remind me how big a problem there is with working on the black in Spain as I know a number of pensionista's who are working. so that must be cash in hand.