After 30 years of owning properties in France we felt that we had not really established ourselves in the towns we bought in or made any non British friends that we could spend time with. So myself and my wife decided as we loved Spain - especially  the quiet parts away from the busy  Costas - to go and look for a location that we thought would fit the bill. Somewhere interesting where we could buy a second home,  learn another language and also hopefully make some new friends!

The  most important thing was picking the right place and after having numerous holidays in Spain in many parts of the country we decided that we liked the more "spanish" Costa de la Luz. Purely  because it seemed to be relatively untouched by a lot of commercialism but also  it had guaranteed weather and lots of interesting places within easy reach by  air , road or rail. 

Our second concern was buying a property  in  Spain and all of the much publicised pitfalls and horror stories that appeared on line with alarming regularity. I had read numerous accounts of people buying properties relying solely on the word of agents and the vendors to find themselves in very difficult circumstances and owning nothing but  problems.

Very quickly I decided that as my spanish was really only at beginner level or just above I would find an english speaking lawyer to manage the purchase and any other issues we had  - I think this was probably our best decision and we were incredibly fortunate to find a law firm in the city we eventually  chose who made the whole thing as easy and safe as we could have wished. More on this later!