I bought a house on the coast of Spain – all my neighbours were British

Peter Moreve left the UK nearly 20 years ago for a more sunny and relaxed life in the Costa del Sol, but he is now among a growing number of ex-pats shunning coastal havens usually favoured by Brits in search of the “real Spain”.

The 78-year-old retired consultant first started holidaying in Mijas Costa, a small town that sits between Marbella and Malaga, in 1988. He moved to Spain permanently after retiring in 2006 to enjoy a slower pace of life with “less congestion, noise, and pollution” than he had in London.

But after 18 years he fell out of love with the coastal area. “All my neighbours were British,” said Mr Moreve. “It was not Spain, it was England in the sun. I wanted to live in Spain.”

Mijas Costa sits along Spain’s Mediterranean coast in a province with just 92,000 residents. Data released last year from Spain’s National Institute of Statistics showed Mijas is growing and is now the third most populous area behind Marbella and Malaga. Around 40 per cent of its residents are foreign, the majority of whom are British.

“I don’t particularly enjoy living among Brits,” Mr Moreve said, adding that they get called “the tonterias“, which means foolishness. He speaks Spanish himself but despite his years in the county his reading, writing and speakings skills are not yet good enough to pass the citizenship exam.

But that hasn’t abated his love of Spanish culture. “I like Spaniards because at first sight they accept you for what you are. Then they talk about you behind your back, as Britons would,” he joked.

Mr Moreve, who is divorced with two adult sons, said that Spaniards were “less judgemental and more accepting” than British people, and he valued the sense of community that he didn’t have in London. “I like the fact that when you go into a shop, everyone says ‘Hi’,” he added.

Yearning to live life among Spaniards, he left the Costa del Sol in 2018 and moved to Lucena, a town of about 45,000 people near Cordoba in Andalusia, which has only a handful of foreigners.

“If I live in a country, I want to be part of it,” he said.

In 2018 British people were more commonly buying properties in Asturias, in northern Spain, and La Rioja, the wine region in the northwest of the country, according to the Spanish Land Registry. In La Rioja, 25 per cent of purchases that year were by British people.

But by 2022, Brits had turned to more coastal areas such as the Costa Blanca and Andalusia to buy property, Land Registry data showed.

Now research by the Spanish Tourist Board shows that people from the UK are increasingly branching out from holidays on the Mediterranean coast or big cities like Barcelona or Madrid to explore the interior of the country once again.

Destinations like Avila and Toledo in central Spain, and Salamanca in the north west, have become increasingly popular, as have walking or cycling holidays along the Catalan coast, or in the landlocked provinces of Ronda and Extremadura.

Patrick Millar, from city break specialist Kirker Holidays, said the company has seen a particular surge in demand for cultural cities and smaller destinations outside of the well-trodden tourist trails in Spain.

Mr Morave’s decision to move away from the coast mirrors that of Sue and Andy Whaites who could have chosen a new life in Benidorm or Marbella but instead wanted to live in “the real Spain”.

In 2002, they moved from Somerset to Villena, a small city of about 36,000 people about 30 minutes drive inland from Alicante and a world away from the resorts of the Costa Blanca, where they raised their two young children.

“We wanted to move here in 2002, originally from Somerset in England with two young children,” said Mrs Whaites, 61, an accountant.

“And we wanted the real Spain,” the accountant said. “We wanted to experience a foreign country rather than moving from England to England with the sun.”