One year in Spain
How much can we really know after a year of living in another culture?
Greetings from the Barcelona airport—
I’m about to fly back to the U.S. for the first time in a year.
I’ve never been out of the country for even a fraction of this much time. A few month-long trips to Europe, sometimes nearly a whole Summer. But a year?
The time has been measured by the reactions of my clients in the U.S. One who was lamenting the sad state of American politics told me a few weeks ago that I was lucky to be here (true). Another asked whether the anti-tourism protestors in Barcelona had sprayed their water guns at me (I wasn’t in the city at the time, but more on that below).
It’s also been measured by visits from friends and family. In October, while the novelty and romance were still sinking in, then in January, when I was happy to get a bit of a break from single parenting when my mom came, and then in April and May, when finally I felt enough like a local to start taking friends to my favorite spots around the city.
And then in June, when I said a teary goodbye to my son here at the airport. He was happy to be starting his Summer vacation; I was gutted our year abroad was actually over.
After a year in Spain, there is a lot more I could say, about life and learning and love and all of it. I’ll say some of it below.
But for now: what a nice adventure this has all been, with more to come.
I. What can you learn in a year of living abroad?
Earlier in June,
touched on a lot of what I’ve been writing about here:…a trip of a week or even three weeks doesn’t give you enough time to learn much about a place. Living overseas, especially for multiple years, will allow you to develop deep relationships with the people there — work colleagues, close friends, long-term romantic partners, etc. It will also let you see how people live in their day-to-day life — what their workday looks like, what their house looks like. You’ll experience the frustrations and the inefficiencies as well as the conveniences. You’ll understand the dreams and the heartbreaks and the day-to-day pleasures.
As a tourist, you will learn very little about any of those things. You’ll walk around and see the buildings but you won’t know who lives or works there. You’ll chat with people in restaurants and bars but you won’t learn their secrets. You’ll experience the surface of a place but you won’t perceive the depths.
It’s all true.
I once went to India for three weeks, moving from city to city almost every other day. It was a whirlwind of cold, stuffy trains, holy sites, architectural wonders, mosques and mausoleums.
Did I truly learn something about India? I learned roughly what the tuk-tuk drivers in Delhi cared to share, and also that the roads are treacherous, people are literally everywhere, the food is truly wonderous, that everyone should visit at least once in their life, and also that my brief stay was like looking through a narrow slit into a vast world I couldn’t possibly hope to ever understand.
In contrast, in Spain, I really did learn something of what normal, everyday life is like. was able to explore Catalunya about as much as I could, on the weekends, from my base in Barcelona. I was invited into people’s homes, witnessed their frustrations, and had more than a few of my own. I dealt with bureaucratic craziness and also developed great gratitude for all the qualities which lead so many from around the world to want to make their home here.
And I was able to renew some of my appreciation for the special qualities that make the U.S., well—special.
As Smith wrote:
…travel helps you appreciate your own country more. If you think the average American lives a life of material poverty, a trip to Europe or Japan might make you realize that even most other rich countries’ living standards are far behind the United States. If you never stopped to think about how amazing American grocery stores are, in terms of both quality and selection, a visit to a supermarket in another country may increase your appreciation of Safeway, Kroger, and (especially) H-E-B. If you think America is an unruly country full of disruptive riots and protests, you should spend some time in France.
America is sometimes good, sometimes bad, but always you should be rooting for it. You should be rooting for America to live up to its highest ideals, however far away they may be. Without us, and the pursuit of those ideals, the world would undoubtedly be a darker place.
II. The truth about Barcelona’s housing affordability “crisis”
Let’s get back to the water guns being sprayed at Barcelona tourists.
The city I’ve called home for the past year has made a lot of news recently with its backlash to mass tourism.
I have mixed feelings.
It’s true that parts of Barcelona are completely overrun. La Rambla, obviously. Most of the Gothic Quarter and El Born. Plus the waterfront, especially when a cruise ship docks.
But beyond the historic medieval center, Barcelona looks basically like a standard international European city. It’s not hard to get away from tourists. In fact most of the neighborhoods I would recommend have few tourists in them, though there are a lot of English-speaking expats and international students.
Meanwhile, the cost of housing in Barcelona has indeed skyrocketed.
Rents have risen 14 percent in the past 12 months, and they have been rising rapidly for years. In response, the city will essentially ban all short-term rentals as of 2028. The ban launched an international conversation about short-term rentals and mass tourism—the BBC mused about “a world without Airbnb.”
On the other hand, tourism brought €9.6 billion to the Barcelona economy in 2023. Meanwhile, the city’s own rent caps that took effect in March 2024 have reportedly reduced permanent rental stock by 13 percent.
So…
There is blame to go around.
Meanwhile, as my friend Nate Murphy (who renovated an old Spanish house two hours from Barcelona) points out in his new book, there are nearly 4 million empty homes in Spain, including 500,000 empty new homes.
The idea that “there is a housing affordability” crisis in Spain might need some revising. The truth is that a lot of people just really like visiting and living in Barcelona (it is a great city). They just don’t want to live out in the country.
Fortunately, this creates a nice triage opportunity for people like me—I bought an old 4-level townhouse in a Spanish climbing mecca for €43,500. It needs a complete renovation, but at least there is a working bathroom and electricity. I plan to continue renovating the property when I get back from the U.S., poco a poco.
Anyway, my suggestion for Barcelona town hall: ban the cruise ships, phase out short-term rentals, raise lodging and airport taxes, and use the revenue to incentivize 100,000 new rental units. And drop the rent controls—they’re not good for anyone.
III. How are you writing the story of your life?
I’ve been reading a great book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life, by Donald Miller. It’s about what happens when two filmmakers ask to adapt the author’s first memoir, Blue Like Jazz, into a movie.
It sounded to me like a kind of boring premise, but in fact it’s a pretty profound reflection on how one should think about the story of one’s own life (or even if it should be thought of as a story).
Miller writes:
I thought about the elements of our screenplay, then, knowing the elements that made a story meaningful were the same that made a life meaningful. If Steve was right about a good story being a condensed version of life—that is, if story is just life without the meaningless scenes—I wondered if life could be lived more like a good story.
I’ve always resisted this kind of thinking. One of my early, formative posts is about how the “life path” metaphor is basically wrong, or at a minimum misleading.
Life doesn’t have “paths” that we happen upon, and to use that metaphor to write the story of your life is to essentially construct a false narrative. I wrote this almost five years ago:
If you are wondering what your path in life is, or what your purpose should be, perhaps you should rethink the metaphor itself: life doesn’t have paths. We are not on a road to Damascus; we are wandering through the wilderness, and there is no promised land on the other side. We are not choosing the road less taken; we are simply choosing how to spend our time, and there are infinite possibilities.
But Miller’s book is making me give a second look to the idea that you might perhaps think of yourself as the hero in your own story. It goes against all my instincts to be so self-indulgent. And I never cease to be amazed at how capable we all are of distorting reality in favor of a good story.
But Miller does have a point here:
I’ve never walked out of a meaningless movie thinking all movies are meaningless. I only thought the movie I walked out on was meaningless. I wonder, then, if when people say life is meaningless, what they really mean is their lives are meaningless. I wonder if they’ve chosen to believe their whole existence is unremarkable, and are projecting their dreary life on the rest of us.
This at least I can get on board with. We give meaning to our own lives. So, why not try to make it a meaningful life? A life that is like a good story.
How? Start by going toward what is interesting to you.
In the end, I imagine you’ll feel pretty satisfied with the choices you made.
Loved all three parts of this post. Thanks Russell.
I found myself nodding in agreement to much of this. I lived in Switzerland for five years and then another year in the Netherlands. Living out of a suitcase is vastly different. I learned the language (required!) and came to know my neighbors. I recommend the experience.