When my partner and I decided to leave Madrid and try living in a small village in Extremadura, everyone thought we were having some kind of crisis. We were 34 and 36, we had decent jobs, a flat in Lavapiés, and a social life that kept us busy most evenings. The village — I'll call it by its real name, Alía, because there's no point in being coy — had 380 registered residents, one bar, one shop, and a church that was open on Sundays.
That was eighteen months ago. We're still here.
I want to be honest about what this has been, because I've read too many pieces about people who moved to the countryside and discovered themselves. This is not that piece. What I found was not some deeper version of myself. What I found was a different set of problems, some of which I prefer to the ones I had before, and some of which I don't.
The things that are genuinely better: the air, the quiet, the cost of living (our mortgage is less than our old rent), the sense of space, the fact that I can see stars at night. The things that are harder: the isolation, the distance from friends, the limited healthcare access, the way that being an outsider is a status that takes years to change, if it changes at all.
The village has been welcoming, mostly. People are curious rather than hostile. But there is a difference between being welcomed and being part of something, and I am still on the welcome side of that line. I suspect I will be for a while.
What I did not expect was how much I would learn about Spain by being here. Madrid is Spain in the way that London is England — which is to say, not very much. The rhythms of life here are different. The relationship to land, to seasons, to neighbours, to time — all of it is different. I find it more interesting than I expected, and harder than I expected, and I have no idea whether we will still be here in another eighteen months.