Now that the dust is settling – quite literally – on our renovation project, I’ve started to reflect on the mad journey we have been on since July 2024, when we finally left Istria. In fact before then, because the journey started for real, when we finished the renovation of the Istrian house and put it back on the market, selling this time, to the first couple who viewed it. We’d been tinkering around the edges with this house and despite many viewings and lots of love for it, it just wasn’t selling, so we had to take some big, decisive action. We knew that if we were to ever sell out home in Istria, we had overcome some hurdles because of its location – it was in a very small village, at the top of a valley, and lacked easy amenities. So, we took the bull by the horns, and invested money into the demolition of a second small house we owned at the rear, creating the space to create a Mediterranean style walled garden, on different levels, covered in white stones, filled with greenery and with access from the living room. And, bingo – it sold.

So, the first why. Why Andalucia as our next step?

We did our homework this time. We looked at lots of parts of Spain, but kept coming back to Andalucia. It’s a region we have visited before and there was an element of romanticism about it, with all of whitewashed villages, mountains, sparkling Mediterranean coastline and sandy beaches (there are no sandy beaches in Istria…). We searched online for properties and made spreadsheet after spreadsheet, listing each one and which of criteria each one hit. We had a big criteria list, and this did help us to narrow down properties, eventually. However small, or strange, your requirements are, add them to your list – they are important. These, from memory, were what we wanted the most, not necessarily in order of importance:

• a view;
• a large village/small town, and ideally a pueblo blanco;
• easy access to larger towns/cities
• close enough to the coast that we could there easily, but far enough away to not be living at the coast, and its associated costs – so about 30-40 minutes away;
• proximity to a social life – bars, restaurants, local shops – not necessarily large shops, as we could drive to those;
• proximity to an airport, ideally no more than 2 hours away – and we were realistic about this because Andalucia is a huge region and we knew that we were looking at Malaga as probably the main airport;
• ideally a townhouse, not needing a full renovation – hmmmm…

After seven years in Istria, we knew also what we didn’t want :

• an isolated location – not because we ever felt lonely or actually isolated, because we are very self-sufficient, but because we wanted to reduce the amount of time we had to spend in the car;
• a village with just locals – which initially is very exciting because you have to pitch in, but ultimately it can become quite limiting, especially if your neighbours rarely leave the village and once the interest in you as the “newcomers” wears off and they realise that you are actually never really going to become a “local”, it all becomes a bit difficult;
• a location that had no amenities to speak of – no shops, no bars, no restaurants – in walking distance;
• a location that had admittedly lovely summers, but in absolute contrast, long, cold, wet, dismal winters;
• somewhere that effectively shut down over winter;
• somewhere that was difficult for visitors to get to, especially out of season.

So, as I say, we did our homework, and all paths were leading to beautiful Andalucia – it was just a question of working out where, as the region does stretch from Murcia in the east to Cadiz in the west. As in, the whole stretch of southern Spain. We had intended to fly out and do a trip for a couple of weeks before we sold up in Istria, but time constraints and obligations didn’t allow this to happen, so our first recce was when we actually landed in Spain, off the ferry in Barcelona from Genoa, and drove south.

No idea at all where we might end up, just a handful of houses we’d seen online that we wanted to view. So, we made the most of the freedom we had, and took a couple of weeks driving down through Spain, revisiting places we hadn’t been to for years, discovering new ones and generally feeling like we were actually on holiday. Yes, it’s true – living abroad doesn’t equal one long holiday, especially when you have to work and are renovating and well, just, living a normal life. So, this did feel like a break – and we made the most of it, because we knew what potentially lay ahead…