John Kusters Jr.

Welcome to my Writing Adventure

Writing, Income, and My Non-Lucrative Visa

2026-10-05 /

This blog began as a way to document my progress as a writer. It has since grown to cover other parts of my life, but writing remains a deep personal passion for me.

However, the terms of the Non-Lucrative Visa we’ll be using to move to Spain are clear: I may not work or earn income from any professional activity while I hold it. Spain takes this rule seriously, and so do I.

So let me be entirely clear about my intentions. While I’m living in Spain on the Non-Lucrative Visa, I will not seek or accept compensation for my writing. I will not monetize this blog or any other place where I share my work, whether through advertising, affiliate links, paid subscriptions, or sponsorships. Here, writing is a personal passion, not a source of income. I will abide by the terms of my visa until I qualify for long-term residency (generally after five years of legal residence, assuming we meet the other requirements) or, if it makes sense to do so, move to a permit that allows self-employment.

Versión en español: Escritura, ingresos y mi visado de residencia no lucrativa

Este blog nació como una forma de documentar mi progreso como escritor. Con el tiempo ha ido abarcando otros aspectos de mi vida, pero la escritura sigue siendo para mí una profunda pasión personal.

Sin embargo, las condiciones del visado de residencia no lucrativa que utilizaremos para mudarnos a España son claras: mientras lo tenga, no puedo trabajar ni obtener ingresos de ninguna actividad profesional. España se toma esta norma muy en serio, y yo también.

Así que permítanme dejar muy claras mis intenciones. Mientras viva en España con el visado de residencia no lucrativa, no buscaré ni aceptaré remuneración alguna por mi escritura. No monetizaré este blog ni ningún otro lugar donde comparta mi trabajo, ya sea mediante publicidad, enlaces de afiliados, suscripciones de pago o patrocinios. Para mí, la escritura es una pasión personal, no una fuente de ingresos. Cumpliré las condiciones de mi visado hasta que pueda optar a la residencia de larga duración (por lo general, tras cinco años de residencia legal, siempre que cumplamos los demás requisitos) o, si me conviene, pasar a una autorización que permita el trabajo por cuenta propia.

Moving to Spain: October 2026 Update

2026-10-05 / / 0 Comments

I’ll start with the big news.

Ahem.

WE GOT OUR BLS APPOINTMENTS!!!

In late November we’ll be traveling to San Francisco, possibly twice, to hand in documents as part of our Non-Lucrative Visa application. We have until then to make sure we have everything they may ask for, which is often different from what’s officially published. Spanish bureaucracy is fun!

For those wondering why I’m so jubilant, BLS International, the organization that handles document collection, releases only a limited number of appointments for our visa each month (we’ve heard 24 per consulate). They appear at some point near the end of one month or the beginning of the next, usually in the wee hours of the morning. My husband had been getting up at 4am for the past few days to check for availability, including this morning, and found nothing. Then, while browsing Facebook, I saw a post in a group for people applying for the same visa saying someone had secured an appointment at 7am, after my husband had gone back to bed. I ran downstairs to tell him, he logged on, and appointments were available! I logged on too, and we each got one near the end of November. I’m pretty sure they were among the last ones left. Woot! One step closer!

Assuming we’ve given them all the documents they want, and that all of them are deemed acceptable, our application will be passed on to the consulate, where a decision will be made. That can take anywhere from two to twelve weeks. We’re planning conservatively and assuming we’ll hear about the visa sometime in January or February. The timeline is still vaguer than I’d like, but it gives us a window for when we’ll move. I had been saying early February, but now I’m thinking March, possibly right in the middle of Fallas.

Preparing to Move

In the meantime, we’ve been making progress in other areas. First, we had our first (phone) meeting with our chosen health insurance broker and have since chosen an insurance provider. Our broker told us we could start coverage up to three months after the application is made. Since we’re looking at moving in February or March, we chose to hold off for a couple of weeks so we don’t wind up paying for December or January. We’ll try to make another appointment with the broker in early November so our policy documents are ready to turn in with the rest of our paperwork.

We’ve also hired a “Move Manager.” I hadn’t heard of this profession until I was noodling around with ChatGPT and it suggested that hiring one would be a good idea, since we were feeling overwhelmed by everything we had to do to get ready to move. A Move Manager typically assists families with a loved one (or ones) moving into an assisted care facility, and helps distill a house full of stuff down to what will fit in a single room. We’re planning to move or ship a similar volume of stuff, and we’re really, really bad at planning, especially with my ADHD challenges. We met with Joan McCreary of JMPO, talked about how much stuff we have (and toured the house), and discussed how much room we’d have to ship things. We also started talking about how we’ll dispose of what we won’t take on the plane, ship, or put into long-term storage here in California. The company also does estate auctions, so there’s a good chance anything we don’t get rid of ourselves will go to auction. I’m fine with that.

Why Spain?

One question that has come up a few times from friends and family is why we chose Spain specifically. There is no single answer. When you look at all of our criteria and how Spain intersects with them, Spain checks more boxes than anywhere else we considered.

Compatible Visa – This is the big one. Without a visa that would work for us, there was no point in considering the move. Several nations offered visas that could work: France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, and a couple of others. Spain’s Non-Lucrative Visa is perfect for us: we’ll be self-sufficient, won’t need to work, and are fine with buying a year’s policy for health insurance.

LGBTQIA+ Rights – As a gay couple looking to move to a new country, it was incredibly important for us to find one with a strong system of laws protecting LGBTQIA+ rights. Spain, Malta, Belgium, Denmark, and Finland all rank near the top for queer protections.

Political Climate – Politics factored into our decision, too. Italy was high on our initial list, but the current government there is right-leaning, and its stance on LGBTQIA+ families made us move it lower. Italy still doesn’t allow same-sex marriage, offering only civil unions, and recent policies have made life harder for same-sex parents. Spain, by contrast, has recognized same-sex marriage since 2005, and that history shows in everyday life. We’re not naive about it, though. Spain has its own far-right party, Vox, and Valencia’s regional government is center-right, so we’re not expecting a progressive paradise. But the legal protections are strong and widely supported, and we’d rather live somewhere our rights feel settled than somewhere they’re still being debated. Governments change, of course. On October 5th of this year, the Spanish Prime Minister called new elections for the end of November, which could boost Vox, so we’ll keep watching the news before and after we arrive.

European Union – We limited our search to countries in the European Union. We like the EU’s stance on privacy, consumer rights, and people-first policies, and we like being able to travel all over the Schengen Area without worrying about border crossings (for the most part). The EU can be a bit backward on encryption sometimes, but we hope that will eventually work itself out.

Climate – This one really limited our choices. We prefer a climate broadly similar to San Jose’s: warm to hot, mostly dry summers and mild winters, with most rain falling in the cooler months. In other words, a Mediterranean climate. Southern and eastern Spain, southern France, Italy, and Greece all have Mediterranean climates to one degree or another. From what I can tell, Valencia’s climate is very similar to Silicon Valley’s, except with higher humidity and warmer nights.

Walkable Cities – This is an area where most of Europe shines. Many of its larger cities were laid out before the advent of motorized vehicles, so neighborhoods are a lot more oriented toward walking than almost anywhere in the United States. The downtown cores and adjacent districts of most older European cities feature small markets on nearly every block with fresh meat, fruit, vegetables, bread, pastries, and more, all supplemented by nearby supermarkets. Many also have central markets, where dozens, if not a hundred or more, small stalls sit under a common roof selling specialized products. Most of these cities also have decent public transportation. Of the cities we’ve visited, Barcelona felt like it had the best-connected network, with Valencia a close second. London’s Tube also seemed really good, but not one you’d want to ride on a hot day. (England, having foolishly decided to Brexit, was not a nation we considered.) So as long as a city had broad walkable districts and good public transportation, we added its country to the list of possible new homes.

Language – One of our goals is to integrate into the society and culture of wherever we relocate, and part of that is learning the local language. Of the languages in countries with compatible visas, I feel Spanish is the one I’ll be able to learn fastest. Italian was a close runner-up. French and Portuguese are too intimidating, especially their spelling and pronunciation, and Greece uses an entirely different alphabet. Of course, several regions of Spain offer additional challenges, with co-official languages like Catalan, Valencian, Basque, and Galician. While almost everyone in Spain speaks Castilian to some degree, areas with a co-official language often post signs primarily in that language, which makes getting around a tad more difficult.

Cost of Living – Cost of living varies a lot across the EU. Denmark, Finland, and Belgium are among the most expensive places we looked at, and even the strong LGBTQIA+ protections couldn’t offset what we’d be paying for rent and groceries. Spain, Portugal, Greece, and Italy are noticeably cheaper, and within Spain, Valencia is more affordable than Barcelona or Madrid. It isn’t the bargain it was a few years ago, as rents have climbed quickly, but our dollars should still stretch further there than in San Jose, where housing eats up so much of the budget. Spain isn’t the cheapest option on our list, but it’s the best balance of affordability and everything else we wanted.

Healthcare – Moving to another country means trusting its healthcare system with our well-being, so quality mattered to us. Spain’s system consistently ranks among the best in the world, and Spaniards enjoy one of the longest life expectancies in Europe. The country has a universal public system alongside a large network of private hospitals and clinics, and many doctors are trained to a very high standard. As Non-Lucrative Visa applicants, we are required to purchase a private policy, and the policy must have no copays or deductibles. From what we’ve learned so far, that kind of coverage costs far less than comparable insurance in the US (€300 per month in Spain for both of us, compared to over $3000 per month through Kaiser). We’ll also be eligible to pay into and use Spain’s public system down the road, once we’ve been residents for a full year. It’s a bit of a relief, honestly. After years of navigating American insurance, the idea of seeing a doctor without a surprise bill waiting at the end is very appealing.

Taxes (Spain’s Weak Spot) – Not every box got checked. Taxes are where Spain is weakest among the countries we considered, and I’d rather say so than pretend otherwise. Spain taxes its residents on worldwide income once they spend more than 183 days a year there, with progressive rates and investment income taxed at up to around 30%. As US citizens, we’ll keep filing a US return too, and while the tax treaty and foreign tax credits should keep us from being taxed twice, they don’t make the paperwork go away. Spain also has a regional wealth tax, which Valencia applies, and residents must report foreign accounts and assets above a threshold. The “Beckham Law” flat rate for newcomers isn’t available to us because it’s meant for people who move there to work. Italy, Greece, and Malta all offer low flat rates on foreign income for retirees or new residents, and Portugal’s NHR program, once the poster child for tax-friendly relocation, has closed to most new applicants. But we’re choosing a place to live, not a place to minimize our tax bill, and we’d rather pay somewhat more for a walkable Mediterranean city we can see ourselves in for years to come. We’ll be working with a cross-border tax professional before we go, and I’ll share what I learn.

Shallowness – Spain, Greece, and Italy won in this category. Have you seen the men in those countries? 🥵😜

Other Considerations – A few smaller factors rounded out the decision:

  • Safety: Spain is generally considered very safe, with low violent crime and a street life that stays lively well into the evening, which fits the walkable lifestyle we’re after.
  • Distance from home: Valencia is a long way from the US, and with few direct flights, trips back will likely connect through Madrid or Barcelona. That’s a real trade-off for staying close to friends and family, and we’ll be counting on visitors.
  • Climate risk: Californians know something about wildfires and earthquakes, but the deadly floods that hit the Valencia region in October 2024 were a sobering reminder that the Mediterranean has its own hazards, and summers are getting hotter.
  • Nerd culture: We went looking for board gaming, tabletop RPG, and other nerdy communities, and Valencia has them in abundance. Game stores, meetups, and conventions mean we won’t have to give up our hobbies, and it’s a built-in way to practice Spanish while rolling dice.
  • LGBTQIA+ community: Valencia has a visible and welcoming community, including its own Pride celebration, and we’re looking forward to finding our people there.
  • Pace of life: Long lunches, late dinners, and bureaucracy that moves at its own speed. If we want to integrate, we’ll have to learn to enjoy it (the bureaucracy, perhaps, a little less).

In conclusion…

All in all, Spain ticks more boxes than almost any other country we considered. (Italy came close, but the government there worries us.) It offers a visa that fits our situation, strong legal protections for LGBTQIA+ people, membership in the EU, a Mediterranean climate that will feel familiar to a couple of San Jose residents (just with a little more humidity), walkable cities with good public transportation, affordable living, excellent healthcare, a language I have a fighting chance of learning, and, well, the “scenery.” Taxes are the one real drawback, but Valencia checks all the city-level boxes on top of that.

Of course, nothing is settled yet. We still have documents to gather, appointments to keep, and a houseful of stuff to sort through. But if everything goes smoothly, we’ll be trading San Jose for Valencia in the spring, hopefully in time for Fallas. I’ll keep you posted!

🏳️‍🌈 San Francisco’s LGBTQ liberation history didn’t begin with Stonewall.

2026-09-16 / / 0 Comments

Long before the famous 1969 uprising in New York, LGBTQ people in San Francisco were organizing, challenging discrimination, building institutions, and fighting back.

• 1951 — Black Cat Café: The California Supreme Court rules that a bar cannot lose its liquor license simply because homosexual people gather there—an important early victory for the right to occupy public space.

• 1955 — Daughters of Bilitis: Founded in San Francisco by Del Martin, Phyllis Lyon and others, it becomes the first enduring lesbian-rights organization in the United States.

• 1956 — The Ladder: The Daughters of Bilitis begins publishing a pioneering lesbian magazine, connecting women across the country.

• 1960 — National lesbian organizing: The Daughters of Bilitis holds its first national convention in San Francisco.

• 1961 — José Sarria runs for office: The legendary Black Cat performer runs for San Francisco supervisor, becoming the first known openly gay candidate for public office in the United States.

• 1962 — Tavern Guild: San Francisco gay-bar owners and employees organize to resist police harassment and discriminatory enforcement—an early example of LGBTQ economic and political solidarity.

• 1964 — Society for Individual Rights (SIR): A major new gay organization forms in San Francisco, combining political activism, community services, social activities and publishing.

• 1964 — Council on Religion and the Homosexual: Gay activists and progressive clergy form an unprecedented alliance to challenge discrimination.

• January 1965 — California Hall: Police attempt to intimidate and disrupt a legal gay-rights fundraising ball. Clergy and lawyers witness the harassment, arrests follow, and the resulting backlash becomes a major turning point in San Francisco gay politics.

• 1965–66 — Vanguard: Queer and transgender street youth organize in the Tenderloin around police harassment, poverty, discrimination and survival—anticipating the more radical politics soon associated with gay liberation.

• 1966 — Vanguard Street Sweep: Queer youth publicly sweep Tenderloin streets in a provocative demonstration challenging the treatment of LGBTQ street people as the neighborhood’s “undesirables.”

• August 1966 — Compton’s Cafeteria: Transgender women, drag queens and queer street youth fight back against police harassment at a Tenderloin cafeteria—three years before Stonewall.

Then came Stonewall in June 1969.

Stonewall was enormously consequential, but it wasn’t the beginning of LGBTQ resistance. By 1969, San Francisco already had nearly two decades of legal challenges, lesbian and gay organizations, political campaigns, publications, business associations, demonstrations, alliances with clergy and lawyers, and resistance to police harassment.

Black Cat → Daughters of Bilitis → José Sarria → Tavern Guild → California Hall → Vanguard → Compton’s → Stonewall.

The history of LGBTQ liberation is bigger—and began earlier—than one night in New York.

Spanish Progress

2026-09-15 / / 0 Comments

I had my first full session with my Spanish tutor today. Again, it went… ok. 

I find I can understand about half of what he says in Spanish, and understand a bit more of the written material he shares. Let’s call that “input.” 

However, my “output” stinks. When he asks me basic conversational questions, I spend many cycles struggling to recall key phrases and vocabulary. I constantly botch conjugations, matching adjectives to nouns’ gender and number, and remembering which gender the nouns are in the first place. I get embarrassed when there’s something we talked about in the previous session that I know I should know but is just not coming to mind. 

I’m grateful the tutor is so patient with me, and offers hints when I appear to have McConnelled. I’m informed that at this point in my language journey, what I’m experiencing is perfectly normal. 

Nevertheless, my autistic brain is very agitated that I’m not amazingly fluent right away. Just like it does with any new hobby I pick up but am not immediately proficient at.

Anyway, I need to find ways to improve my “output” rapidly and to get more comfortable when I hit the boundaries of my current knowledge. For those who have learned a new language later in life, what tips and tricks did you use to overcome this hurdle?

Authenticity or Intentionality

2026-09-08 / / 0 Comments

There’s frequently a lot of talk in the neurodiversity community about letting go of masking (when safe and appropriate) and living openly as one’s “authentic self.” Maybe it’s my particular flavor of neurospiciness, but I’ve never quite understood that concept. The term implies that if we could identify and set aside everything society has imprinted on us, what remains would be our true, authentic core. But can we actually do that? Almost all of us have been immersed in social environments since before we developed cogent thought, so how do we discover what existed before we even had a sense of self? This concept may resonate with other neurodivergent folks, but to me it seems not just difficult but impossible.

So I’ve decided I’m not going to strive to live “authentically.” I’m going to live intentionally.

Rather than excavating some pre-social self, I’ve looked at the people around me and identified the values I most admire — the traits that, when I embody them, make me feel genuinely good about who I am. These have become the foundation of my sense of self-worth:

  • Kindness
  • Compassion
  • Dependability
  • Empathy
  • Trustworthiness
  • Rationality
  • Using my intelligence to help people, or at least entertain them — through TTRPGs, storytelling, and conversation

I often feel like I fall short of these values. But I’ve come to recognize something important: I tend to keep a running tally of my individual failures, while the people who know me are seeing the whole picture. My husband and close friends, when I’ve voiced these doubts, have disagreed with my self-assessment pretty firmly. Maybe the scorecard I’m keeping isn’t the most reliable one.

The neurodiversity advocacy message underneath “be your authentic self” is real and worth keeping — chronic masking, done under social pressure and fear, carries genuine costs. But I think the framing does us a disservice. It sets up a false binary between masking and some unmediated true self, when really the alternative to exhausting, involuntary performance isn’t the absence of all adaptation — it’s choice. Knowing which parts of yourself are worth protecting, which adaptations serve you and which ones only serve others at your expense, and building a life around values you’ve actually examined and endorsed.

That’s not authenticity. That’s something better: intentionality. And unlike authenticity, it doesn’t require you to find something that was never lost.

Moving to Spain: September 2026 Update

2026-09-02 / / 0 Comments

It’s been a while since I have talked about our move to Spain, so I thought it was a good time for an update and to share more about the details of what it takes to move there on a permanent basis.

TLDR: We missed the window to get an appointment with the consulate for this month, so the earliest we could actually submit our application won’t be until the end of November, and we probably won’t be able to move until mid-January at the earliest.

In order to move to Spain on a permanent basis on the non-lucrative visa — which is the visa we’re trying to get — one needs to apply at the most local consulate (through their contractor, BLS), which for us is San Francisco. Getting an appointment to submit that application is a significant challenge. The consulate releases only a handful of appointment slots each month (we hear it is 24 total slots per consulate), and they usually release them during the workday in Spain, which means early morning in California. Generally, the appointments are for 1½ to 2 months in the future. It really is a kind of lottery to get an appointment, and we need two of them in the same month. Quite the hurdle!

We were getting ready for our big trip at the end of July and early August, so while we did make an attempt, it wasn’t an earnest one. So we knew we would not have a September appointment. It would have been nice, because that would have allowed us to make the move on our original timeline.

We were more determined this month. We tried early in the day the last couple of days in August, but the slots had not opened up. My husband is the primary applicant, so he has to make the appointments, but he was dealing with sleep deprivation from a sleep study the previous evening and was not able to wake up as early today as he had hoped. Naturally, we learned today that the slots opened up at 1 AM our time and were gone by 7 AM. So we missed out again — no appointment in October.

So it’s looking like we won’t be moving this calendar year. We’re kind of bummed about that, but there’s nothing we can do. (Well, we can keep checking for appointments because sometimes people cancel and those slots open up. This is not something we are counting on, but we are hopeful.) We’ll try again at the end of September and early October, cross our fingers, and hopefully get an appointment for the end of November.

Of course, once we submit our application, it can take anywhere between two weeks and three months for the consulate to decide on it. They may also take longer if they decide our documents are deficient and we need to submit new ones. And since each bureaucrat working for Spain’s government is encouraged to use their own judgment in interpreting the official visa requirements, we won’t know what that particular consulate wants until they ask for it. All we can do is over-prepare and hope that we’ve thought of all the documents they are going to ask for.

As an idea of what we’re preparing for, I share this humorous (but I’m assured reasonably accurate) video:

And so, while we wait, we are continuing to gather the documents our visa preparation team thinks the San Francisco office will require:

  • ✔ Copies of our passports
  • ✔ Copies of our drivers licenses
  • ✔ Our official marriage license apostilled by the California secretary of state
  • FBI records for each of us, also apostilled (records obtained; waiting on the State Department to apostille them)
  • Bank statements for the past couple of years proving that we have enough liquid assets to support ourselves in the first year living there
  • Various letters issued by the banks (who often look at us perplexed when we ask for them in the way Spain requires) stating average balances and that the funds in the accounts can be withdrawn within 48 hours
  • ✔ Letters from our most recent employers with confirmation that we are no longer working there
  • Letters from ourselves affirming we will not seek employment while under the terms of the visa (we’ve written these letters and are just waiting for approval from our visa preparation team)
  • 3 years of tax returns
  • Current Health certificate signed by our physicians
  • Proof of having purchased a visa-compliant Spanish medical plan
  • Letters of intent from each of us

Many of those documents will need to be officially translated as well, and we are looking to our visa preparation team to help us get that done.

We are also making progress on deciding what we will be purging from the house and what we will be keeping. We’re not making as much progress on this as I had hoped, but now we have an extra month, I suppose. If you’re local and interested in books, TTRPG books, board games, art supplies, or who knows what else, keep an eye on my personal Facebook page.

Securing My Digital Sovereignty

2026-07-02 /
a laptop over a round table
Photo by Dan Nelson on Pexels.com

Ever since reading about how the Trump administration ordered Microsoft to block Outlook access to certain members of the ICC, I’ve been thinking about how few protections the US has around citizen privacy and their access to our data. And I’m looking at the EU’s efforts to enact digital sovereignty, and I’m thinking it’s time for me to make similar moves.

On February 6, 2025, Microsoft allegedly blocked the Outlook email account (and associated services) for ICC prosecutor Karim Khan, reportedly due to sanctions Trump imposed after the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over alleged war crimes in Gaza. Microsoft president Brad Smith disputed the “blocked” framing, telling reporters the company never stopped or suspended services to the ICC — he described it instead as a “disconnection” of Khan’s individual account, with Microsoft staying in contact with the ICC to keep other services running. Whatever you call it, Khan was locked out and had to switch to Proton Mail. Trump was upset because the ICC was investigating people he wanted protected. The CLOUD Act gives the US government the right to compel handing over the personal data of anyone it desires, even if the data is stored outside the US. The Trump administration will tell you not to worry, to trust them that they’re only going after the bad guys. Do you believe that? Given how they’ve been treating people exercising their constitutionally protected rights to free speech, and how they’re trying to declare people who support trans rights as terrorists, I don’t trust them one bit.

The EU has a comprehensive data protection framework primarily through the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which emphasizes strict consent, transparency, and accountability, imposing heavy fines for violations. The GDPR mandates that anyone storing data on an EU resident must come with a minimal amount of guarantees. The EU issues certifications for those who do. It should not be a surprise to learn that the US does not meet the EU’s requirements. For some time, there was an agreement between the EU and the US called “Safe Harbor,” but when it was shown that intelligence agencies routinely ignored the provisions when spying on EU residents communicating with US residents, that agreement was challenged in court and was overturned. They tried again with something called Privacy Shield, but that too was struck down in the courts. There is another agreement, the EU US Data Privacy Framework, but the recent Supreme Court ruling in Trump v. Slaughter likely means that the FTC, the current guarantor for privacy in the framework, is no longer independent, violating one of the terms of the framework. Maximilian Schrems, the man who successfully sued to strike down the previous two agreements, has indicated he plans to sue over the current one.

The EU has started urging member nations to look into digital sovereignty, to move away from software products and services that are offered by companies headquartered in the US as a way to protect its residents from the vagaries of administrations like the Trump one. Honestly, this sounds like a very good idea, and as my husband and I are working on our move to Spain, it has me contemplating how we could make a similar move.

I’m currently not looking to move away from the Apple ecosystem. At the moment, we are too tied to the ecosystem, and there aren’t many alternatives, none of which interoperate as smoothly as the Apple ones do. But I recognize that as a US company, Apple is subject to the CLOUD Act just like Microsoft is. I am much more comfortable with Apple’s privacy policies and practices than I am with Microsoft or Google (and I can vouch for how privacy is a core value that is discussed with the design of each service and product, having worked there for sixteen years). I think we’ll eventually look at other options, but we’re not ready to make that step yet.

The first step is disassociating ourselves from companies like Microsoft and Google. Microsoft is easy. Neither of us uses Outlook or Teams, and there are plenty of Office replacements in the open-source environment. While Apple’s office products are pretty good, and do a reasonable job at being able to handle Office’s file formats, they’re not awesome. I’m personally looking at OnlyOffice, the Office replacement that forms the basis of EuroOffice, but I’ll probably finalize on LibreOffice, since I much prefer that UI (I hate the “Ribbon” interface that has taken over the various Microsoft Office products). So ditching Microsoft should be simple. Ditching Google is more difficult. So many people depend on Google services like Meet, Drive, and Classroom, and if I’m interacting with them, I need a Google account. Ditching my Google account would also mean losing a lot of the customization features of YouTube. And I haven’t found a good replacement for the Google Flights website. The fact that Google is subject to the CLOUD Act is bad enough, but Google’s focus on packaging and selling user data to advertisers is just beyond the pale. I definitely want to divorce myself from them; I’m just not entirely sure how.

Beyond that, I’m looking at things like moving my web hosting to a company based in the EU and subject to the GDPR. My current hosting provider is Nearly Free Speech .Net, which has been a great service. But they’re based in the US. I’m currently looking at Hetzner. Obviously we’ll be getting phone and cable service from a local Spanish provider, but we’ll maintain a bare minimum plan in the US, probably with Tello, so we can still get 2FA texts. I’m not sure what else I’ll need to do to minimize my use of US-based digital services.

I personally feel that everyone in the US should be looking at the powers retained by the US government and how they intersect with your digital privacy rights. If what the US is allowed to do concerns you, I urge you to take action to protect yourselves as much as you can, especially if you are anything other than a straight, white, heterosexual, cisgender, Christian male. There are plenty of signs that the Trump administration is coming after us. We should all give them the smallest target possible.

Scouting Report: Final Thoughts

2026-05-22 /

As our scouting trip in Spain wraps up, it’s time to start thinking about what’s next.

We both have Barcelona at the top of our list. But Barcelona is definitely the priciest option, so we’ll need to figure out if we can make it happen (more on this in a bit). From there, it gets a bit tricky. My second choice is Valencia; Michael’s is Alicante. Alicante is my third choice, and Valencia is third on his list. We both put Málaga fourth. After lots of discussion, we’ve agreed that if Barcelona isn’t in reach, we’ll try landing in Valencia. After all, as we keep telling each other, where we land doesn’t have to be where we make home.

The first thing is to start preparing for the visa application. We’ll need a lot of documents; many of them will need to be apostilled and translated, and several have short time periods of validity. This will be complicated by the fact that the requirements published by Spain’s government really are more like guidelines, and the staff at the consulate are free to interpret them. Yay. We’ll definitely be hiring Spanish experts to help us here.

While that process is going, we’ll be finding a Spanish tax expert and hiring them to run simulations for taxes in both Barcelona and Valencia. And we’ll be putting together spreadsheets to track things like rental prices and other expenses. Once we know what the Spanish tax situation will look like, we’ll contact our financial adviser and see what effect the taxes will have on our retirement plan, whether the tax will drain our accounts faster than is safe.

We also need to radically accelerate the purging of our possessions and getting the house in shape for sale. We’ll probably be doing giveaways of books, DVDs/Blue-ray discs, art supplies, electronics, houseplants, artwork, and even furniture for local friends (keep your eyes open if you might be interested). We’ll look into donating the remainders, and for everything else, an estate sale, I suppose.

When we move will really depend on when we get our visas (assuming Spain approves them) and how fast we can get the house ready to sell. Our local consulate only has a few spots each month, and they fill up fast. We’re planning to start looking for visa appointments in mid-summer, aiming to get one in September. But it’s probably going to be in October, November, December, or even later.

So, that’s pretty much our plan for the rest of the year. We’ve got one more vacation lined up (a cruise, of course), which will give us a nice break in August. But otherwise, I’m expecting moving to Spain to be our main focus for a few months.

Scouting Report: Málaga

2026-05-21 /

The last of the four cities we are considering as a new home, Málaga is the third largest, beating out only Alicante in terms of population. Though, technically it’s the largest in terms of area. Strange.

Going in, we knew the city has some pros and cons. On the “con” side: it’s a beach city and knows it, connections to the rest of Spain go through one rail route, and the airport is small, there’s a lack of a robust public transit system (two metro lines and a bunch of bus routes), and it’s the warmest of the towns on our list. On the “pro” side: a well-known pedestrian promenade that runs along the shore, with all sorts of bougie shops and restaurants along its length, many historical sites, including some from the time of Roman occupation, and since it’s in Andalusia, it has the lowest wealth tax hit of all of the cities we’re considering.

As a reminder or the criteria we were using to evaluate the neighborhoods:

  • Walkability: we want to be able to ditch cars entirely and utilize walking and public transportation
  • Café Life: a variety of cafés and restaurants to be able to dine at, preferably al fresco when the weather allowed
  • European Charm: several story buildings (but not too many stories), with interesting architectural details, balconies (usually tiny), and painted in bright colors
  • Green Space and Public Life: parks, plazas, promenades, and other places to sit, read, observe, and socialize
  • Lots of small stores where daily shopping could occur
  • Enough people on the streets for a vibrant feeling, but not so much that it felt crowded
  • Lack of nightclubs or other facilities where loud music would be heard late into the night.
  • Proximity of stores that support our hobbies (in our case, knitting, tabletop gaming, and art)
  • A feeling of safety and comfort for a gay couple in our later years
  • Places that supported a sense of culture and lifelong learning

So, what did we think?

La Malagueta

The first neighborhood on our list was La Malagueta, a spit of land that pokes out into the sea, right up against the port, and home to the city’s bull-fighting ring. Yeah, Spain still has the “sport” of bullfighting. 🤮

On the way to La Malagueta, we walked along the Paseo del Muelle Uno, the promenade that runs between SoHo and La Malagueta. It’s definitely a port road, since there were several yachts tied up alongside it, and there were departure gantries for taller ships. Along the length of the promenade, there were all sorts of shops and restaurants aimed at tourists, including some portions that resembled a street craft fair. We also spotted a Starbucks, a Dunkin’, a Burger King, and a KFC. Bonkers! Follow the Paseo far enough and you’ll run across the Malaga cruise terminal. We did stop for breakfast at a Granier along the Paseo. It was significantly more expensive than the ones we had visited in Alicante and Valencia. No real surprise there.

Anyway, there are a lot of high-rises in the La Malagueta area, many are rather modern looking. That’s really not the European charm we have been looking for. It’s a small neighborhood so we were able to see quite a lot of it in our visit. There were sections that felt like a ghost town; no pedestrian traffic, few stores that seemed to be in business, a lot of graffiti. And then a little bit further, vibrant stores with plenty of foot traffic. Most of the foot traffic though seemed touristic in nature, and was generally concentrated in the south-eastern part of the neighborhood. My husband mentioned it felt a lot like some of the beachfront areas of Fort Lauderdale, with high-rise apartment buildings and upscale restaurants and shops. But only in a small, several block area.

La Malagueta reportedly has one of the nicest beaches in the area, but neither of us are “beach people” so we didn’t really even look. We found a nice park area next to the Fuente de Colores where we rested. I was entertained because there were people feeding the pigeons and wile parakeets there. I hadn’t seen wild parakeets in other parts of Spain be so friendly with people. After resting, we walked up the length of the neighborhood, found some nicer, yet still not European quaint, buildings and shops, then passed the Bullfighting ring on the way back to our hotel. Overall, we didn’t feel this neighborhood matched our requirements well, so we skipped checking out the night-time vibe.

Between La Malagueta and SoHo is a very lovely park, with lots of shade, beautiful plantings, and plenty of birdlife. We found a nice bench to stop and do our usual knitting and reading thing, with a steady stream of passers-by and the sound of pigeons and parakeets. My husband also took advantage of this park several times during our stay to find a bench to sit, knit, and engage in people-watching. Unfortunately, there isn’t much housing with close proximity to this park, so I’m not sure if this is something we should consider when looking for a city to live in.

SoHo

Our next neighborhood was SoHo, which was where the hotel we’re in is located. It was named “SoHo” with the intention to inspire a renaissance of art and culture in the area, inspired by New York’s area with the same name. The gambit seems to have paid off. It’s also a rather small neighborhood, so we were able to cover a good amount of it. We did find a huge comic book/gaming/collectible store (next door to our hotel) and a very nice bookstore in the neighborhood, which was good (more on the bookstore later). At the gaming store, I picked up a Spanish edition of the 20th Anniversary Edition of Brandon Sanderson’s first published novel, Elantris. Maybe it’s a silly thought, but I had the idea that a fantasy book I’m already somewhat familiar with would be a good foray into broadening my reading comprehension of the language. We also found a supermercado-style convenience store that seemed to be geared towards Russian immigrants. SoHo is filled with many smaller streets, along with a good handful of promenades, those walkable paths, often filled with cafes and restaurants. There seemed to be a fair number of restaurants with outdoor seating (something my husband is looking for), but not as many cafés as we’d like. There were several gelato stores, though.

SoHo abuts the Guadalmedina river on its western border, and we walked along that for a bit. At the moment, it’s barely a trickle of a creek, but we could see that it could get full during rainstorms. This area seemed to have several museums and theaters along it, which could be a place we’d frequent if we chose to settle in Malaga. However, just one street over, it seemed that most of the storefronts were vacant, which was quite the contrast.

We found some benches along the Alameda Principal (the main street through this part of Malaga) where we rested, read, and knitted. There was a bookstore near where we had camped out and I went to check it out. Being Sunday it was closed, but one of the displays was dedicated to a new book by a local author, “Ciudad de Sal” by David B Gil. An English translation is due to be published later this year. It intrigued me enough that later in the week, I visited the very nice store and picked up a copy.

After resting at the hotel, we found a nice italian restaurant for dinner, and then wandered around for a bit. While restaurants were busy, there didn’t seem to be much in the way of nightclubs, so it was possibly quiet in the evening. Of course, it was Sunday, so who knows what the noise level would be like on Friday evening.

Many of the buildings had the character that we are looking for, and there were some suitably sized apartments for rent here. It also had the only rainbow flag that we saw hanging from a balcony in the entire city. While we did encounter some people and couples that pinged our “gaydar”, the lack of rainbow flags in this city weighs heavily on me, especially compared to Barcelona and Valencia, where they were fairly common in the neighborhoods we are interested in. A lot of hotels in this area, so not as much residential space available. Overall, we think we could live here fairly well, especially since it’s close to both Centro and a metro stop.

Centro Histórico

Next on our list was Centro Histórico, which, as the name suggests, is the historical center of the city. Some of the city’s most known landmarks are here, including a number of very old churches and cathedrals. It is also home to the city’s largest central markets, which we wandered through and found to be very typical of these kinds of markets, even if the aisles seemed narrower than others. It definitely was livelier than other markets we’ve visited on the trip, and less touristy than some. I could see us shopping there for meats, breads, vegetables, and fruits. Oh, and spices. They had some wonderfully diverse spices.

Centro absolutely abounds with the European charm we’ve been seeking. Buildings between four and eight stories above ground, many with those small balconies, with lots of beautiful wrought iron decorations. The streets are all higgledy-piggledy, with blocks placed at odd angles compared to one another, but eminently walkable. Very little car traffic, though delivery vans were evident. Much of the middle of the district is pedestrian only, which is good because there were a lot of people wandering along those areas. There are tons of restaurants, some with patio seating when the sidewalks were wide enough. The famous Marques de Larios pedestrian mall runs south from Plaza de la Constitución, and it’s where all of the big fashion brand names have their stores. From YouTube videos, we know that street is the epicenter of Malaga’s Christmas decorations. There were also several museums (the Picasso museum is somewhere in Centro, but we were not looking for it) and theaters, so there’d probably be plenty to do. I even found what looked to be a really nice art supply store (which was closed when we walked by).

Unfortunately, there were very few parks in this part of the city, and the plazas we found were mostly tree-free, and benches were generally in the full sun. The other major problem with Centro is that it is ground zero for all of the tourists in the town. We’re in the “shoulder season” as far as tourism is concerned, and it was already a very lively part of town. Restaurants were crowded, streets were packed, and it was touristy-loud. If I knew this was the level of liveliness that Malaga experiences year round, I’d be fine with it. However, the peak season runs from June through September, and I shudder to think of what the crowds will look like then.

We did manage to find a shaded area with a bench. Well, the bench was part of a planter for a huge ficus tree, but it was still quite nice to rest there and do our usuals.

For dinner, I had located a Mexican restaurant in Centro and wanted to see what the Spanish interpretation of Mexican food was like. It was tasty enough, familiar flavors and dishes, though they were slightly different than what we are used to in California where authentic Mexican restaurants and taquerias abound. We did note that they did not offer the American-customary chips and salsa. I don’t know if we could have requested some; I don’t think they had any on the menu. After dinner we walked around trying to gauge the nightlife. There were several nightclubs, but perhaps we were there too early because most of them were closed. But if anything the neighborhood was livelier in the evening than it was during the daytime, including roving bands of 20-somethings belting out Spanish songs at quite a high volume.

If it weren’t for the crowds, Centro would definitely rate high on my list of potential neighborhoods in Málaga. But the threat of tourist crowds, and how much harder it would be to get a table at a restaurant there, is a heavy deterrent. Better to live somewhere less touristy and head into Centro when desired or needed.

La Merced

The fourth neighborhood we toured was called La Merced, and it sits on the northeast border of Centro. It was a neighborhood that was more on my husband’s list than mine.

On our way there, we passed the ancient Roman amphitheater and the path up to the Alcazaba. Since we were on a schedule and didn’t have time to play tourist, we sufficed with what we could see of both by walking by. Once we’re living in Spain, be it in Malaga or elsewhere, we both want to come back and explore these attractions. But perhaps not in a time when it was full of groups of student tours.

La Merced was much smaller than either of us had expected. There was a nice plaza with plenty of Jacaranda and Mimosa trees, with some benches in the shade, but that was about it for La Merced in terms of outdoor places where we could spend time in the shade. Otherwise, it had a strong character of a working-class neighborhood. Some stores, but many vacancies, graffiti, and weathered infrastructure. More vehicles here and fewer pedestrians. Also, as I discovered as I perused Idealista, Spain’s most used website for apartment listings (rental and sales), virtually no apartments over 100 square meters, and most with two or fewer bedrooms. Since we are looking for 3 beds and at least 120 square meters, we determined that La Merced was not a good fit for us. Ah, well. At least we got to see the ruins of an ancient Roman amphitheater along the way to the neighborhood.

We didn’t find any other resting places, but did find ourselves near the place we had rested the previous day. Since we had already decided La Merced wasn’t viable for us, we chose to spend our rest time in Centro and then find lunch as we walked back towards the hotel. We found a nice, but tiny, fast Italian restaurant, which I would definitely try again. We rested at the hotel and then found a burger joint in SoHo for dinner.

Huelin

Our final neighborhood for Málaga was Huelin. My husband was attracted to it because of its lower cost and a large park on the neighborhood’s border. But it’s outside of the central city area, so we had to use the Metro to get to it. (Which obviously means we’d need to use the Metro to get to the city center if we chose to live in Huelin.) On the way we hit up a Granier just outside the main El Corte Ingles for Malaga.

The metro station itself was very nice, and felt rather new. Very clean as all of the Metro stations we visited on the trip were. It also felt oddly spacious, like it should have a lot more going on in it, but was primarily open space with the occasional video billboards. After boarding the train, our stop was only a few stops away.

Huelin quickly revealed itself to be a working-class suburb, but one with a lot of one-story buildings surrounded by buildings that were much taller. It did have a small central market, which had all of the staples, and it is served by a good-sized supermarket (which we didn’t visit), so food shouldn’t be a problem. But there weren’t very many other “daily life” amenities. We didn’t really see any cafés and no hardware stores (they could have been on streets we didn’t visit), but we did see a couple of “lots of random Asian-made products” kinds of variety stores. There were green spaces, but mostly in the private courtyards of large apartment buildings.

We did wander around Huelin Parque, and found it to be quite nice with several kid playgrounds (segregated by the size of the children), an artificial lake, a dog park, a rose garden, and lots of benches. The park was actually quite busy with lots of families and elders. It was difficult to find benches in the shade that were not adjacent to children’s playgrounds. So that’s where we would up to read and knit. Oh, well. No-one seemed to care.

On the way back to the hotel, we found a street with a number of restaurants, so we grabbed a quick (and tasty) lunch. But in the end, we both agreed that while it had some nice points, Huelin wasn’t somewhere we wanted to live. We found a different burger joint (a sister of one that we had found in Alicante) in Centro for dinner.

The next day was a laundry day, but that didn’t take long, so we wound up venturing into Centro again to stop by a yarn store that had caught my husband’s eye, where he bought some skeins and double point needles since he had managed to snap some of the ones he had brought with him on the trip. We also stopped by a small but well stocked art store. I didn’t buy anything there but stoked my burgeoning interest in watercolor.

Conclusions

In the final analysis for Málaga, there were one and a half neighborhoods that could have made good homes, which isn’t much. We did find the kinds of stores that would allow us to continue pursuing our hobbies should we choose to live here, but the areas that had the most charm also had the most issues due to tourism. I really wanted to fall in love with Málaga, since it would be the least expensive city for us, specifically due to its much lower wealth tax. But I just didn’t love it as a home. It’s a place I’d love to visit on a regular basis, including during the holidays, but it did not feel comfortable enough to want to live here.

Scouting Report: Alicante

2026-05-13 /

Alicante is a city in the Valencia Autonomous Community, sitting a little further south on the Mediterranean coast. It’s a smaller city than Alicante, the smallest population of the four cities in our list. Unlike Barcelona and Valencia, the city’s beaches are adjacent to the city core. Its “expat” community has a low percentage of Americans, consisting largely of people from Northern Europe. After doing a lot of research online, we had narrowed our neighborhood search to four: Garbinet, Mercat, Centro, and Ensanche-Diputación.

Our hotel was situated on the main street running through town, and directly across from Mercado Central, the biggest (and only?) mercat in the city. The hotel was easy walking distance to three of the four neighborhoods, and the Tram station to the fourth was relatively close. I’d definitely recommend the Hotel Eurostars Lucentum for people wanting to check out the city.

As a reminder or the criteria we were using to evaluate the neighborhoods:

  • Walkability: we want to be able to ditch cars entirely and utilize walking and public transportation
  • Café Life: a variety of cafés and restaurants to be able to dine at, preferably al fresco when the weather allowed
  • European Charm: several story buildings (but not too many stories), with interesting architectural details, balconies (usually tiny), and painted in bright colors
  • Green Space and Public Life: parks, plazas, promenades, and other places to sit, read, observe, and socialize
  • Lots of small stores where daily shopping could occur
  • Enough people on the streets for a vibrant feeling, but not so much that it felt crowded
  • Lack of nightclubs or other facilities where loud music would be heard late into the night.
  • Proximity of stores that support our hobbies (in our case, knitting, tabletop gaming, and art)
  • A feeling of safety and comfort for a gay couple in our later years
  • Places that supported a sense of culture and lifelong learning

Garbinet

The first neighborhood on our list was a place called Garbinet. This was one that my husband really wanted to check out, based primarily, as I understand it, on the amount of green space shown on map apps in the neighborhood.

First, though, we had breakfast at a churrería, Cafeteria Churrería Calderón, I found near the hotel. The churros in this part of Spain are not covered in cinnamon-sugar; instead, traditionally, they are served with a hot chocolate dip, which is delicious! 

After that, we got to Garbinet via one of the city’s trams, and as soon as we got out of the trolley car, I was certain I would not want to live there. It felt very suburban despite all of the high-rise, very modern-looking apartment buildings. While most blocks in other neighborhoods we’ve visited on this trip had stores on the ground floors with apartments above, almost all of the areas of Garbinet we visited had no stores at ground level unless the building was on a main road. We didn’t find much green space that wasn’t in enclosed apartment building courtyards. There were very few people out and about, but a lot of cars driving around. There were also very few grocery stores, and few of the little convenience stores that we’ve seen all over the other neighborhoods. Big parking lots spotted the area, and despite the dense population, it felt very car-centric.

We did find a shaded area in the median of a wide boulevard, with several benches for our daily “knit & read” time, and it was near a dog park. There were several people out waking their dogs, some on leashes, some not. We did see a few pairs of people who might have been same-sex couples, but it’s hard to be sure. There was also constant traffic noise.

In the end, neither of us thought the neighborhood was a good fit for us, so we opted to get lunch and dinner close to the hotel.

Mercat

Second on our list was the Mercat neighborhood, which features the city’s central market, our first destination. This one was a little different from other central markets in other places in that they put all of the meat vendors (and most of the seeds/nuts/legume vendors) on one floor, and the fish market and the vegetable market in separate areas of the lower floor. Most of the fish stalls were closed since it was Monday. I think I prefer central markets where the various kinds of vendors are intermixed, though I can’t say why. My husband had hoped we’d find breakfast in the market, but there wasn’t anything that really appealed, so we wound up at a Granier, a chain of cafes we’ve seen everywhere. A safe place when we’re out of spoons.

While at breakfast we noticed a lot of people wearing green shirts headed towards the Plaça Dels Estels, a roundabout in a significant intersection. It seemed a major protest for a city of that size. At the time we couldn’t figure out what the gathering was all about, but later research said it was a school strike.

We then did our neighborhood stroll. We noticed that the Mercat neighborhood had more one-lane streets and narrow sidewalks, and little car traffic. Some of the streets were tree-lined, which we always appreciate. There were fewer open stores along the streets, and more storefronts with “for rent” signs. The buildings definitely had the European charm thing going for them, though. Small balconies were common. Also, a lot of street art on longer stretches of wall, which we liked. Very few grocery, meat, or vegetable stores, though. Perhaps the residents there were comfortable going to the central market? I don’t know. While the neighborhood had the European charm thing going on, the lack of active storefronts made the neighborhood feel less vibrant, more subdued.

We did find a nice park to spend time in, Plaza Santa Teresa. Lots of trees, a monument to a former city mayor who led the city through a time of virulent disease, and even a little grotto for private rendezvous, though it was gated closed while we were there.

After such a rich breakfast neither of us was in the mood for lunch. So we picked up some junk food at a nice supermercado/convenience store, and went back to the hotel. For dinner, I found a nice Persian restaurant, Casa Tehran, which had good reviews. The staff were very friendly, but I got the feeling that for most of our meal we were the only people in there that weren’t members of the owners’ family. The food was quite tasty though.

While it wasn’t as bad as Garbinet, I didn’t put this neighborhood high on my list.

Centro (and a little of Barrio Santa Cruz)

The next day was all about Centro. This neighborhood has quite a few streets that have been converted to pedestrian malls or promenades. (There’s one on each side of the hotel we were staying at.) There’s a lot of foot traffic through these areas and lots of food, shopping, and nightlife to be had. There is also a very active stage theatre in the neighborhood. It’s very lively, especially at dinner time. Kinda noisy, but I didn’t hear any loud “thump thump” of big nightclubs. There was also a pedestrian mall that was painted in vibrant colors with giant, whimsical (fiberglass?) mushrooms along its length. The buildings in this neighborhood are definitely full of European charm, and there were some really nice parks, including one with some very old ficus trees, Plaza Portal de Elche, where we did our usual knitting and reading. This neighborhood also includes part of the well-known Explanada de España, a marble-tiled promenade that runs over 500 meters along the shore in Alicante. We walked along a small section of it. There are also a lot of restaurants along the Explanada, including some of the big American chains, and it had a lot of tourists and a lot of crowd noise. 

After dinner in a popular pizza restaurant halfway through the neighborhood, we wandered through part of Barrio Santa Cruz, an older part of town that presses up against the hill where Castell de Santa Barbara sits. It’s one of the oldest parts of the city, and one of the most expensive. We didn’t go up into the steeper parts, but what we saw included some beautiful buildings, an ancient church that we had seen in various YouTube videos, and quite a few lively restaurants. After all that, Centro could make a good home. It’s very walkable, has many amenities and green spaces, but there are parts I’d fear being too loud in the evening and night.

Ensanche-Diputación

Finally, we spent a day in Ensanche-Diputación. Of all of the neighborhoods in Alicante I had researched, this one was the most interesting to me. It fell somewhat short of my high expectations, but not significantly so.

This is a slightly newer part of the city compared to Mercat or Cento, and this was reflected in the architecture. Not much in the way of quaint and decorative buildings (what we’ve been calling European charm), but more had balconies, and they were larger. This neighborhood was very grid-aligned but had much fewer pedestrian malls. We did find what I’m calling “geek row” with two comic book stores (one with a good selection of novels and TTRPGs), a board/war/role-play game store, and two different nerdy collectibles stores all in the same block.

We did find that more of the stores in this neighborhood were flourishing, with quite the variety of retail offerings. It just felt more vibrant. This neighborhood also features two branches of the major Spanish department store, El Corte Inglés. Think of it like Macy’s, though in this case, one of those branches features a supermarket. Many of the streets were one way, similar to Centro, but there weren’t any pedestrian promenades that we found. There were some green spaces especially towards the southern end of the neighborhood.

In the evening dinner visit, I chose a place near a couple of nightclubs, only one of which was open at that point (21:30 or so). Absolutely quiet outside, few people on the streets. Very little car traffic as well as long as we avoided the bigger streets. As far as Apple and Google Maps could tell, there’s a total of four nightclubs in Ensanche-Diputación, so I don’t think noise will be too much of a problem.

Conclusions

So, four neighborhoods, one of which was a complete dud, and two of which could work if we chose Alicante as our new home. We are of mixed opinions of the city though. I felt it small, subdued, and without a visible queer presence. My husband loves the pedestrian malls of Centro and the relatively larger number of parks compared to Valencia. While the geeky stores were definitely a plus, we could not find a yarn store in the city core, which may be a down note for him.

Overall, I’m less impressed with Alicante compared to Valencia and Barcelona. It is a smaller city, and it feels that way. Not as great of a variety as the previous cities, and it feels quieter, more subdued. It’s also on a slope, so there’s a bit of an altitude change going from one part of the city to another. I very much appreciate the flatter terrain of the areas we visited in both Valencia and Barcelona! There are also fewer interesting attractions. Other than the beautiful promenade along the beach and a couple castles, there don’t seem to be many in the way of tourist attractions in Alicante. Despite that, some of the areas we visited felt full of tourists.

The tax situation in Alicante would be pretty much the same as in Valencia, which is a concern to us.

One thing that grew more unsettling as we spent several days here was that I never saw a Pride flag hanging from a balcony, posted near store doorways, or anywhere else. The laundromat we used at the end of our visit did have a bunch of small rainbow flags hanging from the ceiling, along with a Picasso-inspired mural along one wall. We did see a small number of queer couples walking around, but otherwise, there was no gay presence we found in Alicante. Quite the contrast to the other cities we’ve visited, and one I did not like.

Addendum: while there is no official Apple Store in this city, there is an authorized reseller whose interior copied the look and feel. While I’d rather have an actual Apple Store, this reseller would do in a pinch. Yes, having an Apple Store is a selling point for me.

« Older posts

© 2026 John Kusters Jr.

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑