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Spain named country where Brits most want to retire in the world

Analysis of search engine data has revealed that Spain is officially the country where most Britons want to retire.

Spain named country where Brits most want to retire in the world
A man sunbathes in a designated roped-off area on Poniente Beach in Benidorm on June 21, 2020. Photo: JOSE JORDAN/AFP.

Though it’s long felt anecdotally true to say that Spain is the favourite retirement destination among Brits, there is now data to back up the claim.

After a new study revealed the top 10 countries in the world where Brits want to spend their retirement, Spain has come out on top.

Experts at Retirement Solutions have dug into the data and studied the average monthly Google search volume for different search phrases relating to retiring abroad.

READ ALSO: MAP: Where do Spain’s British residents live in 2023

They combined different Google search terms with each country to calculate the total search volume and ranked them according to the results. The following searches were analysed:

  • ‘retire in X’ 
  • ‘best place to retire in X’ 
  • ‘best places in X to retire’ 
  • ‘can I retire in X’ 
  • ‘how to retire in X’ 
  • ‘retire in X from UK’ 

Spain – a retirement paradise?

In news that might not surprise many, the country with the highest average monthly search volume was Spain, with 1,050. Spain has long been a popular retirement destination for Britons, and remains so despite the bureaucratic complications of Brexit. In fact, even after Brexit Spain’s British population continues to grow.

That’s according to new data from Spain’s National Statistics Institute (INE), which shows that the number of Brits residing in Spain has actually increased by 11,047 over the past year.

READ ALSO: 

The reasons why Britons might want to retire in Spain seem limitless, but the main draws are the pleasant climate, affordability, proximity to friends and family in Britain, and the gentle pace of life. With the rising cost of living across Europe, particularly skyrocketing utilities bills in the UK, many retirees from across Europe have decided Spain is the best place to live off their savings and pension while avoiding rising prices.

Where do British retirees live in Spain?

According to the latest figures from Spain’s Ministry of Migrations, there are a total of 409,763 Brits living in Spain. This is over 115,000 more than the figure stated by Spain’s official stats body INE, who gauge the number by those with TIE cards, which not all Brits have.

The sociological profile of British residents in Spain may be unsurprising to many. The average age is 54 years old, considerably higher than other non-Europeans migrant groups, most notably Pakistanis and Moroccans, both groups with median ages of 33 years.

READ MORE: The places in Spain where Brits outnumber locals

Most popular Spanish regions for Brits to live in

It might not come as a surprise to discover that in early 2023 the biggest number of Brits in Spain lived in the southern region of Andalusia, home of the famous Costa del Sol, with a total of 92,180.

This was followed closely by the Valencia region, which includes Alicante province, with a total of 87,699, and then the Canary Islands with 29,631. 

Other autonomous communities with a sizeable British population are Catalonia with 24,689, the Balearic Islands with 19,569, Murcia with 17,562 and the Spanish capital of Madrid with 11,831.

READ ALSO: How much money do Britons need to move to Spain in 2023?

Most popular provinces

Meanwhile, the latest data from the padrón register also shows where the majority of Brits live on a provincial level. And unsurprisingly the provinces housing the Costa Blanca and the Costa del Sol are the most popular.

Of Spain’s 50 provinces, Alicante in the Valencia region comes top once again with 76,739 Brits. This coastal province is of course home to popular spots among Brits such as Benidorm, Torrevieja and Jávea, where those from Blighty represent anywhere between 10 and 30 percent of the total population and sometimes even run in municipal elections.

READ ALSO: What makes Spain a great place to retire to?

The Spanish province with the second biggest British population in 2023 is Málaga province with 56,019. Similarly, places like Benahavís, Marbella or Estepona have a sizeable British representation. 

In third place are the Balearic Islands, which isn’t classified as a province but rather a region made up of four main islands, with Mallorca housing the bulk of the 20,000 Brits who live in the archipelago. 

Murcia, which is also not a province but a region, has its British population living mainly along the coast and in particular in the municipality of Mazarrón, where a 8,000-strong British population make up a third of residents.

The Retirement Solutions Rankings

Spain came out on top in the rankings, and the rest of the top 10 was made up of familiar retirement destinations, including Australia (2nd), Iberian neighbour Portugal (3rd), Thailand (4th),  Canada (5th), France (6th), India (7th), New Zealand (8th), Italy (9th), and Greece (10th).

A spokesperson from Retirement Solutions said of the study’s findings: “There are many ways to spend your retirement, whether that be picking up new hobbies or becoming more active – but one thing that many people may not get to experience as well as they’d like to is visiting different countries and exploring new cultures. For this reason, retiring abroad is very appealing to many Brits.” 

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PROPERTY

How important are foreign second homeowners to Spain?

A new study has reported that foreigners with second homes in Spain contribute a massive amount to Spain's GDP, at a time when some regions are considering limiting the number of overseas property buyers.

How important are foreign second homeowners to Spain?

The extent to which foreign second homeowners contribute to the Spanish economy has been made clear in a recent report, but it doesn’t come without drawbacks.

In 2022 foreigners with a second home in Spain contributed €6.35 billion to Spanish GDP and generated more than 105,000 jobs in the tourism sector, according to the study “The economic impact of residential tourism in Spain” done for the Spanish Association of Developers and Builders (APCE) by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

According to the study’s definition: “A residential tourist is considered to be a foreigner who buys a property in Spain to enjoy it during the year.”

Though there’s no time duration specified, we can take it to mean a second homeowner who spends some of the year in Spain.

READ ALSO: Where in Spain are rent prices rising the most?

In 2022, the foreign purchase and sale of property in Spain reached a historic high with 88,858 acquisitions. Of those homes, almost a third (32.8 percent) were bought by a handful of nationalities, all long-established second home owning communities in Spain.

Despite Brexit limiting the amount of time second homeowners can spend at their Spanish homes, Britons still lead the pack (11.1 percent of purchases in 2022), followed by the Germans (9.5 percent), French nationals (7 percent) and Belgians (5.2 percent).

Overall, 71.5 percent of so-called ‘residential tourists’ who visited Spain in 2022, to use the vocabulary in the study, came from the UK, Nordic countries, Germany or France.

The financial contribution made by these second-home owners in Spain is clearly significant. In fact, experts point out that the money brought into the Spanish coffers by foreign homeowners even outstrips some major industries.

“The contribution of residential tourism to GDP is triple that of the textile industry, double that of the timber industry and the same as the manufacture of pharmaceutical products in Spain,” Anna Merino, director of the Economics team at PwC, said when presenting the study.

Every euro spent by ‘residential tourists’ adds €2.34 to Spanish GDP. On top of this direct contribution to the Spanish economy, the surrounding economic activity associated with the spending generated 105,600 full-time jobs in 2022.

According to Merino, that is a similar number to that of the chemical industry and double that in furniture manufacturing or beverage production.

The report comes at a time when there’s some uncertainty about the status of foreign homeowners and their impact on the property market in Spain. The report was requested by the APCE amid the possibility that some Spanish regions, namely ones traditionally oversaturated by tourism more generally, might make moves to limit the purchase of homes by foreigners.

“With this study we want to demonstrate the negative impact that a measure such as the one proposed by some regions would have on the Spanish economy,” says Juan Antonio Gómez-Pintado, president of the APCE.

“The impact of the real estate sector on other sectors, such as tourism, is enormous. Knowing the GDP and employment data is very important to convey it to the regions and to society.”

Regional administrations and political parties in the Balearic and Canary Islands, as well as the Valencian Community, all areas long popular with foreign second homeowners, have floated plans to limit or even ban property purchases by foreigners in recent years.

READ ALSO:

For British homeowners in particular, the 90/180 day Schengen rule has been a source of frustration and limited the time they can enjoy at their second properties.

At the end of 2023, there was excitement when rumours began circulating that Spain could change the rules to allow British second homeowners to spend periods of 3+ months at a time in the country.

This came following the French Senate voting in favour of the country’s new Immigration Bill in December – including an amendment that would “ease the conditions of entry into France for British citizens who own second homes in France.”

Following the misattribution of a quote to Spain’s former Tourism Minister, Héctor Gómez, in support of a similar move in Spain, the British press went into something of a media frenzy. LBC, Daily Mail, GB News and several regional English-language sites in Spain wrongly attributed quotes to Gómez, without providing a source, date or location, suggesting that Spain could follow France’s lead.

The Local debunked this rumour, and therefore, as things stand there is no specific, attributable or new evidence to suggest there have been any advances on the 90 out of 180 days question for British second homeowners in Spain.

READ MORE: Can Spain legally offer more than 90 days to Britons?

Of course, for all the financial benefits foreign homeowners bring to the Spanish economy, there are negatives too. A post-pandemic surge in foreigners buying properties in cash has contributed to price inflation, worsened the wider supply shortage in the Spanish property market, and, in many cases, gentrified what were once traditionally Spanish, often working class areas.

This feeling is compounded by short-term residential tourism too, particularly the explosion of the number of short-term tourism rentals (referred to as pisos turisticos in Spanish) used by digital nomads and remote workers in cities such as Málaga, Valencia, Barcelona and Madrid.

This has contributed to the price spiral in major Spanish cities and priced locals out of their own neighbourhoods. For landlords, short-term lets are far more lucrative than long-term rental deals, leading to the proliferation of tourist apartments rented out on platforms such as Airbnb and Booking.

As a result, several cities, including Seville, Valencia, Palma de Mallorca, San Sebastián, Madrid and Barcelona, have all attempted to introduce restrictions on tourist rentals, though many landlords rent their properties under the table, bypassing regulation.

READ ALSO: Which cities in Spain have new restrictions on tourist rentals?

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