After continually moving further and further south in search of sunshine, US couple Gail and Greg Warner were seriously considering relocating somewhere much further afield.
By that stage based in Florida, they had travelled to many different countries together and often wondered what it would be like to move to one of them.
“You know how everyone does that, when they’re visiting a place and they go, ‘Oh, I could live here’,” Gail, originally from Chicago, said.
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“But we were serious.”
However, there was always one thing holding them back — their beloved dog, Beau.
“We have no children, so he (Beau) was like our kid,” Gail said, adding they felt such a move might be too much for the canine.
“The intention was just to wait it out until he went to the big farm in the sky.”
By 2017, Gail and Greg — who have been married for about 35 years — realised they could retire early if they made some lifestyle changes.
And after spending a lot of time researching “expat life,” Greg had learned they didn’t have to wait until it was just the two of them — they could take Beau with them if they made the appropriate arrangements.
“Within about six months of deciding that, we pulled the cord,” Greg, who previously worked as a project manager, said.
Choosing the right place to relocate to wasn’t easy.
Eventually they narrowed it down to Singapore and Spain — two destinations they knew well and could envision themselves living in.
After weighing up the pros and cons of both, they settled on Spain — mainly due to its closer proximity to the US, which would mean a shorter flight for Beau who had a heart issue.
“It was one thing to get him to Europe,” Gail said.
“But we don’t even want to be on a plane for 27 uninterrupted hours, let alone this poor guy.”
Concluding the city of Valencia, on Spain’s eastern coast, would suit them best, they arranged a trip there to “test it out”.
“We’d never been there,” Greg, who is originally from Indiana, said.
“And we wanted to see what it was like and make sure it was what we had read about and seen on YouTube videos.”
The couple then began the process of arranging a non-lucrative visa, which allows non-EU nationals to live in Spain without working provided that they can prove that they have enough money to support themselves.
They’d originally planned to leave the United States in December 2018.
But Gail and Greg ended up bringing their move forward several months after a “very, very nice man behind the desk at the embassy” made it clear to them that once their visas were approved, they could head to Spain pretty much whenever they wanted.
“We get back (from the Spanish embassy), and Greg’s like, ‘Guess I’m retiring a little bit earlier than I thought. I’ve got to make some phone calls,” Gail recalls.
The couple quickly put their Florida home on the market and set about winding down their lives in the US.
“We did all the paperwork ourselves to file for permanent residency, sold two cars, our home, and 90 per cent of our possessions,” Gail said.
As having a long-term rental contract was one of the requirements for their visa, they already had an apartment set up in Valencia.
“The realtor walked us through it by video call,” Gail said. “And we were like, ‘OK, that’s fine’.”
A new life
In July 2018, Gail and Greg, who were in their mid-50s at the time, “shut everything down in Florida” and jetted off to begin their new lives, bringing a few friends along for the journey.
“About one week after I retired, we were on a plane over to Spain,” Greg said.
Once they arrived, the trio moved into a two-bedroom apartment in the “historic core” of Valencia and got themselves acquainted with their new surroundings.
“I’d say, within two weeks easily, we had everything we thought we needed,” Greg said.
“We had figured out where the grocery stores were and where the market was.”
The couple say they hired a mutual friend, who spoke fluent Spanish, to help them with tasks such as setting up a bank account.
“The bank account was probably the most difficult,” Greg said.
“But the need to speak the language is what makes it more difficult.”
They settled into life in Spain very quickly and immediately noticed that the attitudes and priorities of their Spanish neighbours were very different to what they were used to back home.
“I am constantly inspired by people’s ability to enjoy the moment,” Gail said.
“And not be like, ‘Oh, if I work even harder, I can get a bigger car.’ Or, ‘If I work even more, I can get a bigger house.’
“It is just not about that … everything surrounding you is so absolutely beautiful, and you’re so ingrained in your community that it’s not about showing off.
“It’s being content with what you have and really enjoying whatever the day brings you.”
As she’d studied Spanish for more than a decade during her younger years, Gail hoped the language would come back to her over time.
However, she found she didn’t remember much more than “useless phrases” that popped into her head every now and again.
“Some things I can rattle off perfectly,” she said.
“And other things where, if I’m trying to respond to somebody in real time, it’s tricky. Then they walk away, and I’m like, ‘Oh, I know that’.”
Adapting to a laidback lifestyle
Greg has taken up padel, a hybrid of tennis and squash — which he says is “enormous” in Spain — and regularly plays with locals.
Although he’s now retired, Greg has noticed other players will sometimes play in tournaments in the middle of a workday, which is something he can’t ever imagine happening back home.
This aspect of the laidback Spanish lifestyle suits them fine, but there’s one particular difference that Gail and Greg are still adjusting to — the later lunch and dinner times.
“In Valencia, the restaurants would not open until 2pm for lunch,” Greg said.
“We get up and have breakfast at 6.30am 7am and we can’t wait to eat that long.
“And then their dinner won’t start until about 8.30pm or 9pm. We’re usually in bed by 10.30pm so that’s way too late.”
They also admit they’d gotten used to being able to get most things whenever they wanted in the US and had to adapt to the idea of shops closing “for siesta”.
“So if it’s 2pm and you go, ‘Oh, we ran out of soap’ well, you’re waiting until 5pm, if the store even opens again,” Gail said.
While they initially had private medical insurance, another requirement for their visa, the couple signed up for the Spanish public health service after a year in the country, and have been very impressed by the standard of care, as well as the lower costs.
“I think the health care system here is so much better,” Greg said. “The quality of care is better. The cost is unbelievably less expensive.”
Gail recounts how they misheard the price of Greg’s prescription when they visited a pharmacy and asked the pharmacist if they could pay by card.
“She kind of looked at me funny,” Gail said. “So, she runs the card and he gets the receipt and it was one euro and four cents, and he’d thought it was €104.”
New ‘family’
Over the years, the couple say they’ve “basically formed a family composed of Spaniards and fellow expats from both the US and Canada as well as France”.
And according to Gail and Greg, they have Beau to thank for many of the friendships they’ve developed while living in Spain.
“Dogs just open up a whole different world … we made so many dear friends, literally, just because of Beau,” Gail said.
“Lots of people just can’t resist a cute dog. So, either he would pull up to someone and we’d have a conversation, or they would come to him — because he’s so cute — and then the conversation was open.”
Sadly, Beau passed away in 2022.
“He stuck around for a good three and a half years (after we moved,)” Greg said.
“And I bet it (relocating) was easier for him than it was for us. He seemed more outgoing here than he was in the States.”
On reflection, Gail and Greg are very glad that they opted to move to Spain with Beau in tow rather than waiting it out.
“I’m so thankful in so many ways that we had him when we came over,” Gail said.
Although the couple have both made learning — or re-learning in Gail’s case — the language a priority, they still feel as though they’re not at the stage that they’d like to be.
“I can understand a lot better than I can speak,” Greg said.
“It’s taking me a lot longer than I ever thought it would to be able to speak it (Spanish) simply.”
After five years in Valencia, Gail and Greg decided to move to Malaga City in the Costa del Sol region of southern Spain.
Now that they’ve lived outside of the US for so long, the couple say they can’t imagine ever moving back, and feel as though they were often on a “hamster wheel” before.
Adopted home
“You don’t really realise how much of that is going on and how overt it is until you leave it,” Gail said.
“And you’re like, ‘Why would you kill yourself like that?’ … It’s easy for us, from this vantage point, to see it.”
Some of the Spanish people they meet can’t understand why they would ever leave the US, and the couple say it is “the perfect place to be” when you’re working.
“It is a land of opportunity if you’re willing to sacrifice a lot,” Gail said, conceding they made some “smart investments” along the way.
“Yeah, I will give you that to this day.
“We were just born there, so that was nothing but dumb luck. And we were opportunistic, so we took advantage of that.
“It is the last place we would want to be without having to work.”
Gail and Greg now consider Spain as “home” and say that the US “felt like a foreign country” when they took their first trip back in 2023.
“Just the crush of humanity that is around you all the time,” Greg said.
“It seemed like everybody was in a rush.
“And then that gets you tense, because you’re like, ‘Wait a minute. I’m sorry I’m in your way’.”
One regret
He says he can’t think of anywhere else in the world that appeals to him as much as Spain now.
“I’d be very depressed if we had to move back to the US somewhere,” he said.
Gail was surprised to find many of their relatives didn’t seem particularly interested in their lives in Spain but is thankful they’re “happy where they are”.
“They know our guest room (with a view of the Mediterranean) is always open to them,” she said.
Last year, Gail, whose maternal grandparents were from Slovenia, hired a researcher to help track down some of her relatives and has since travelled over to the country to visit.
“I doubt that would have happened had we stayed in the US,” she said.
The couple say they’d advise anyone considering moving to a completely new destination to really throw themselves into the experience and accept their lives likely won’t be the same as they were before.
“The people who struggle the most are the ones who are, for whatever reason, just trying to replicate the life they had in the place they left,” Gail said.
“Like, ‘I can’t find soft pretzels.’ And I’m like, ‘Why are you looking for things that don’t even exist here? Just go with it’.”
Gail and Greg couldn’t be happier with their new lives, but the couple do have one regret about leaving the US and starting over in Spain.
“Honestly, my only regret is that we didn’t do it earlier,” Gail said.