Ultramarine

Published this question on Portuguese forum but been advised to move it here (thanks, dingg).

amideislas

Safe choice. More British enclaves with English pubs on every corner.

Loafing Along

Sel-fulling process, more Brits go to Spain, much easier to travel there than Portugal. Spain always had a very active dynamic publicity programme across Europe , Portugal only recently catching-up. You could ask the same question of Germans, Scandinavians.

Joppa

Many reasons, but familiarity with a country scores high I think. Spain's costas opened up to international, and British tourists, in the 1960s and 70s, much earlier than Algarve, so many more Brits have had holidays in Spain. When people contemplate relocation and retirement, much is based on the memory of holidays, and Spanish expat communities look back 40-50 years. Also Spanish costas started with mass tourism of high-rise hotels and apartment blocks (I can remember a week in Benidorm advertised in the early 70s from £25 so inflation will make it around £250), whereas the Algarve began with villas, and the authorities have tried hard not to emulate mass tourism of Costa del Sol just over the border. Expat communities are more highly developed in Spain than in Portugal, easing the language and cultural barriers for would-be migrants.

Fredbargate

Fortnight full board in Pollensa Park Mallorca 1970 Clarksons Holidays flying from Luton on Courtline £20 per head

Today Hotel Breakfast & Dinner £2,000 twin, no flights
https://www.booking.com/hotel/es/pol...s=1&#hotelTmpl

Joppa

Which compared favourably with a holiday in Blackpool or Margate!

Ultramarine

Well, with the ban on dual nationality Spain does not look like a safe choice.

Lynn R

We narrowed our choices of which country to move to to Spain or Portugal, both of which we had visited many times. The main reasons which swayed us towards choosing Spain were:-
a) weather - in winter even the Algarve is cooler and quite a lot wetter than our chosen area of Southern Spain. As someone who was leaving Manchester I had had quite enough rain and the less there is in my new country, the better.
b) infrastructure - with regard to things like the health service and public transport, in particular, Spain seemed (and still does) to have better facilities.
c) Spanish is, I feel, easier to learn than Portugese and I was determined to learn the language of whatever country I chose to move to.

There have been some changes since we were making that choice of where to buy a property to retire to 17 years ago (such as the introduction of the NHR tax regime in Portugal. although I believe that may be phased out) which we couldn't take into account at that time, but then again there have been changes in Andalucia too such as the improvement in the IHT situation.

Ultramarine

So if you move to Iberian Peninsula today, not 17 years ago, would you go to Spain or Portugal?

Moses2013

Spain as it's the closest for us to drive to the med. Have Atlantic here in Ireland and building plots of land still cheaper.

Lynn R

Still Spain, I think.

Something happened in my life last year which threw into sharp relief the difference in public services between what I'm used to in Spain and how it is in Portugal. My sister was on holiday there and was killed in an accident - knocked down on a pedestrian crossing by a driver who said he didn't see her. She wasn't killed instantly. The ambulance which attended the scene was staffed by volunteer firefighter paramedics (who I'm sure do a very good job as first responders but are just not trained or equipped to deal with major trauma cases). She was in the back of the Bombeiros ambulance for almost an hour until a "proper" ambulance arrived from the nearest larger town, then taken to a small regional hospital before being airlifted 4 hours later by helicopter to the main trauma hospital, where she died shortly after arrival. If that had been Spain, a "real" ambulance would have been despatched immediately and a helicopter sent to the scene from where she would have been taken to the specialist hospital. We will never know if the outcome would have been different had she been able to receive specialist treatment more quickly.

I've had wonderful treatment in Spain both for cardiac surgery (in the private system, which is surprisingly cheap here) and for cancer (in the public system).

Such considerations are more important to me than paying less tax. Plus the points about the weather and the language still hold true!

bobd22

My view is I have yet to visit Portugal so no view on it as a place to retire. Our choice was between Spain and Cyprus. We had lived in Cyprus 40 years ago for a few years (Miltary). We liked the idea of retiring to warmer climate and always thought of Cyprus. We revisited in early 2000s it was similar but not how we remembered it. We visited mainland Spain thought weather similar some nice villages off but close to coast. Final decision came down to flight links re returning to UK as needed for immediate family matters. So we ended up in Spain. I look forward to visiting Portugal in the not too distant future.

Lynn R

Have you seen the recent thread on Portugese healthcare in the Portugal section, Ultramarine? Here is one comment from it.

"I recently needed to attend our Centre de saude as we have not been able to be allocated a dedicated Gp, same as many Portuguese, to see a gp cost 4.5e
Blood test 6e (iirc)
Chest x ray (12e)
Ecg (12e iirc)
Endoscopy (free iirc if no anaesthetic, with anaesthetic 135e, next month date put back due to cv19)

All done pretty quickly but for the virus and same prices for a Portuguese citizen."

There are no such difficulties in being allocated to a GP here, but this comment says that many Portugese citizens are in that position. None of the charges referred to, small as they may be, exist in the public health system in Spain, it is free at the point of use. The only co-payments are for prescriptions, which are 10% of the cost of the medication for pensioners but capped at €8 per month for incomes up to €18k and at €18 per month for incomes between 18-100k - and pensioners living in the Valencia region don't pay anything for prescriptions.

spainrico

'pensioners living in the Valencia region don't pay anything for prescriptions'

Really? I thought they still made a contribution to the costs.

Lynn R

I've had it pointed out to me in the past that pensioners in that region don't pay for prescriptions. It seems that may only apply to those whose income is below €18k, but that also applies to non pensioners with an income below that level and to the unemployed, since 2018 (unless there have been more recent changes?).

https://www.levante-emv.com/comunita...s/1708539.html