Six months after moving from Manchester to Orihuela Costa: the paperwork, the costs, the school run, the homesickness and the mornings that make it all worth it.
We landed in October 2025 with four suitcases, two children and a car full of optimism. Six months on, I want to write down the honest version — not the reel version — of what moving from Manchester to Orihuela Costa has actually been like.
I am Spanish-born and grew up in the UK, so I arrived with the language and half the culture already in place. Even so, plenty of this was harder than we expected, and a few things were far easier.
The first eight weeks were pure admin
Nobody warns you how much of the first two months disappears into appointments. NIE numbers, padrón registration at the town hall, a Spanish bank account, school places, healthcare registration, changing the car over. Each one needs a cita previa, and the appointment is rarely in the week you want it.
If I could give one piece of advice to anyone planning the same move: start booking appointments before you fly, and accept that the first two months are not a holiday.
School was the thing I worried about most
Both children started at an international school when we arrived. Coming straight out of the UK system, in the middle of everything else that was changing, it was the gentlest landing we could give them: an English curriculum, teachers who understood what they had just left behind, and other families in exactly the same position.
Leo is staying there. He has additional needs, and the continuity of the English curriculum and the support around him matter far more to us than how quickly he picks up Spanish. Moving him again for the sake of language would be the wrong trade.
Luna starts at a Spanish public school in September. She is younger, she is ready, and immersion is the only route we have seen that genuinely makes children bilingual. We are hopeful rather than certain, and we will write honestly about how it goes.
What surprised us most was not the language at all — it was the rhythm of the school day, the amount of homework, and how central school is to the social life of the whole family.
The cost of living, honestly
Some things are dramatically cheaper than Manchester: eating out, fresh fruit and vegetables, the weekly market, childcare activities, wine. Some are not: electricity, cars, anything imported from the UK, and school extras add up.
Overall we spend less than we did at home, but the gap is smaller than the internet promises. What has genuinely changed is what we spend it on — far more of it goes on being outside.
The bit nobody posts about
There were weeks in January when the novelty wore off, the weather turned grey and I badly missed my friends, my mum's kitchen and the ordinary boring familiarity of home. Homesickness does not care that you are living somewhere beautiful.
It passed. It comes back occasionally. Anyone who tells you it does not is selling something.
What six months here actually looks like
- Beach after school in March, because you can
- A Saturday market at Playa Flamenca that has replaced the supermarket run
- Bikes and scooters along the coastal path from Punta Prima to Cabo Roig
- Sunday lunches that last three hours
- Two children slowly picking up words we have to ask them to repeat
Would we do it again?
Yes — and we would do the admin sooner, rent for longer before committing to an area, and give ourselves a full year before judging anything.
We chose Orihuela Costa with our heads rather than our hearts. It is the easiest place we could have landed after an international move: English is spoken everywhere, the paperwork help is on your doorstep, the schools are used to arriving families and everything a child needs is ten minutes away. That convenience is also its limitation — large parts of it feel more international than Spanish, and if you are looking for old-town Spain you will not find much of it here.
So it is home for now, not forever. We spend most weekends driving inland and up the coast looking for the more traditional Spain we both want the children to grow up around, and when we find the right place we will happily say so.
Come with us
If this was useful, follow along on Instagram at @spain.withsylvia for the day-to-day, subscribe on YouTube for the longer films, and have a dig through our Costa Blanca guides — they are all written from days we have actually had as a family.
