Brexit exiles on Costa del Sol fear
for their future
For many pensioners, Britain’s divorce from EU raises the
prospect of having to return home.
By GUY
HEDGECOE 5/28/17, 6:00 PM
CET Updated 5/31/17, 7:15 AM CET
MÁLAGA, Spain — Taking aim at the dart board at a pub in
Fuengirola, Alf Brewer looks every bit the British retiree living the good life
on the Costa del Sol. But despite his beachwear and sun-reddened face, he
stands out among a politically detached British expat community. A long-time
member of the Labour Party, he has been tirelessly campaigning for its
international branch since moving to Spain 10 years ago.
It’s a tough job. Even with a U.K. general election looming
on June 8 and the tumultuous state of British politics, it can be hard to
motivate fellow Labour voters.
“I know there are a lot of Labour people here, but trying to
get a gathering together…,” he says, his voice trailing off in exasperation.
“There are too many other attractions,” he explains. “For
example, we’ve never had a meeting anywhere near the summer, because it’s too
hot, people spend too long on the beach or too long in a bar. It’s lonely in
that there isn’t the same political drive and passion [as in the U.K.] and
trying to get involved in Spanish politics is so difficult.”
But while Spain’s many British residents may have little
interest in the day-to-day developments of U.K. politics, they are deeply
troubled by how their country’s imminent split from the EU will affect them —
and in some ways already has. These expatriates are also concerned that the
Brexit debate raging more than 1,000 miles to the north — with its focus on
trade deals, the economy and migration to the U.K. — has little to do with
their own very specific concerns.
With the U.K. about to negotiate its divorce from the EU,
the only remaining certainty for British expats is the sun.
“The benefits to a Brit living in Europe are massive — and
they’re all in danger of being taken away from us,” Brewer says.
“What the British population [in Spain] is saying is: ‘Who’s
looking after us?’ We came here under a set of circumstances that somebody else
has changed. And we don’t hear anybody in the U.K. looking after us, defending
us, looking after our rights, negotiating for us.”
Estimates regarding the number of British nationals living
in Spain fluctuate wildly. Many are not formally registered and many others
travel frequently between the two countries. However, the National Statistics
Institute (INE) puts the figure at around 300,000, with the majority of those
living either on the Costa Blanca on Spain’s east coast, or the southern Costa
del Sol. Both areas have built up large tourism industries, driven in large
part by British visitors, since the latter days of the dictatorship of
Francisco Franco, who died in 1975.
Juan Carlos Maldonado, mayor of Mijas, a town near Málaga on
the Costa del Sol, says the British “represent a major presence here, so they
contribute in a big, decisive way to our economy, particularly from the point
of view of residential tourism — most of them live here all year round.”
A general view of villas with the Spanish city of Fuengirola
on the background | David Ramos/Getty Images
A general view of villas with the Spanish city of Fuengirola
in the background | David Ramos/Getty Images
Mijas, like Fuengirola, Benalmádena and several other
resorts near Málaga, is perched on the Mediterranean coastline, with a
commercial area near the beach and a zone further inland where expats tend to
live in villas in gated communities.
These foreigners were drawn primarily by the climate, but
also by the strength of the pound against the euro and Spain’s free health care
system, to which citizens of fellow EU countries have access.
But now, with the U.K. about to negotiate its divorce from
the EU, the only remaining certainty for British expats is the sun.
* * *
British pensioner Isabel Hampton flew from Spain to the U.K.
last June to vote Remain in the EU referendum. A lifelong Conservative voter,
she says many of her retired British friends on the Costa del Sol have been
affected by the dip in the value of the pound, from €1.30 just before the
ballot to around €1.15 now.
“If you’re on a limited or fixed income and that’s your
pension then it matters and it matters big time,” she says, speaking in a
square full of British bars in Benalmádena. “You come out here to have a nice
life, an enjoyable life, a relaxed life — and then all of a sudden you go back
to penny counting.”
For many, health care is an even bigger concern than the
weakness of the pound.
The Spanish health care system has remained robust despite
the pressures of austerity in recent years. The U.K. government pays Spain to
help fund this service for its nationals, to the tune of £223 million in the
2014-15 period. The cost to Spain of looking after a mainly pension-aged
British community is likely much higher than that, but with expats being so
crucial to the local economy, it is a complaint rarely raised in the political
sphere.
pain is Europe's top destination for British expats with the
southern regions of Costa del Sol and Alicante being the most popular places to
live | David Ramos/Getty Images
Spain is Europe’s top destination for British expats, with
the southern regions of Costa del Sol and Alicante being the most popular
places to live | David Ramos/Getty Images
But, as Hampton points out, pensioners make up a large
proportion of Spain’s British community. “If all the old people who retired out
here all went back to the U.K., the National Health Service would crash,” she
says.
Javier Castrodeza, a senior official in the Spanish health
ministry, has said that once the U.K. has formalized its departure, British
residents and visitors will be treated “as non-EU citizens, with a different
health care status” — that is, without free access to the Spanish system.
For many pensioners, that raises the prospect of either
having to pay for private health care — or returning home.
“If we lose [health care], I don’t know what we do,” says
Glyn Emerton, who has lived with his wife Kathleen in Mijas for 10 years. “We’d
have to fund our own health care, which would be impossible, bearing in mind
our age and what it would cost, so would we have to go back to Great Britain? I
certainly hope not.”
Kathleen, his wife, agrees. “It’s the not knowing, that’s
the worst thing,” she says.
* * *
One way to stave off such uncertainty for long-time British
residents would be to apply for Spanish nationality, thereby ensuring they
would remain EU citizens after Britain formally leaves the bloc. But there is
no agreement in place allowing dual Spanish-British nationality — one passport
must be surrendered in order to gain the other.
This has sparked an online campaign by long-time British
residents to persuade the government in Madrid to waive that rule and allow
them to gain dual nationality if they have lived in Spain for more than 10
years.
“We want to be Spaniards, Europeans and British — a
reflection of our true identity, one that Brexit will take away from us,” says
the petition, which has just over 20,000 signatories. As a precedent, it cites
legislation passed by the conservative government of Spanish Prime Minister
Mariano Rajoy in 2015, which granted dual nationality to the descendants of
Jews expelled from Spain in 1492.
The Brexit effect appears to be most pronounced in the
property market, where Brits are by far the biggest foreign buyers.
But the pleas of disgruntled British residents do not seem
to be a priority for Mariano Rajoy’s minority government. The conservative
prime minister has already scored a notable Brexit-related victory by ensuring
that any future divorce deal between the EU and the U.K. that affects Gibraltar
must be approved by Spain, according to the European Council’s draft
negotiating guidelines.
However, if British residents start to leave the country in
large numbers, Spain is likely to feel the pinch. The registered British
population of the Costa del Sol’s Málaga province, where many expats settle,
fell by just under 10 percent last year to 45,000, although that continued a
trend that had begun several years before. If the exodus accelerates, the
economic impact for Spain could be severe.
The Brexit effect appears to be most pronounced in the
property market, where Brits are by far the biggest foreign buyers, accounting
for nearly a fifth of sales to non-nationals. British purchases had been rising
rapidly in recent years, more than doubling between 2012 and 2015, as Spain’s
market recovered from a double-dip recession. But last year spending flattened
out, a development the land registrars’ association attributed directly to the
U.K.’s imminent departure from the EU.
* * *
The Costa del Sol’s British community inhabit an unusual
political microclimate. Spain has traditionally drawn many elderly, relatively
affluent, British citizens who would be natural conservative voters. Yet they
are as unsettled as their Labour and Liberal counterparts about how Brexit
might hurt them. Another issue that unites expats across the political spectrum
is the fact that they lose the right to vote after 15 years abroad, leaving
them unable to influence the general election.
“A lot of people are worried by the stance that the
[British] government is taking and they’re worried because they’re unable to
vote in these elections,” says Giles Brown, who hosts a phone-in show on Talk
Radio Europe in Marbella.
He estimates that around 80 percent of British expats here
who took part in last year’s referendum voted to remain. One of the reasons for
that, he explains, is that the members of the British community are acutely
aware of how Brexit affects their pocket.
“To say, as was the
case perhaps 20 years ago, that people come over here to enjoy the sunshine,
play golf and have lunch out three times a week doesn’t really ring true,”
Brown says.
“Things have changed here — the value of the pound has
fallen and people are finding it hard […] A lot of my listeners are finding it
very hard to make ends meet.”
Back in Fuengirola, Alf Brewer looks ruefully across the
Mediterranean as he recalls his hopes and dreams when he moved here a decade
ago.
“I wanted to come and live in the sun and hopefully have a
longer life without any worries,” he says. “That seems to have been affected
slightly by people voting for us to leave the EU.”
Then he adds, half joking: “But they can’t take the sun away
from us!”
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