WE DID IT!!
But let me rewind a bit so you get the whole story. If you have read my previous blog posts, you may know that we, as a family of 5, are looking for a new life. Preferably outside the 9-5 matrix as much as possible. Last year (2024) in February we came to FamiliaFeliz for the first time to see if a community life in Spain would be something for us (read about our journey here). Now, a year later, we have just returned from our 5th visit to Spain and we returned as homeowners!
This time we went to Spain to buy our house. After the summer, back in Belgium, we thought carefully about what we wanted. The house in Cervera that we were interested in turned out to be sold. And there was no other house in Cervera that matched our wishes (and budget). In the end we came to the conclusion that we wanted to move to Spain. And if not in Cervera, than we could also broaden the radius in which we were looking for a house. So that’s what we did. In November we flew to Spain for a few days to visit a number of houses. And this was when we found it, our home. It is located 25 minutes drive from Cervera in the lovely village of Rossell.
We bought an old house that the previous owners had already started renovating but were far from finished. The advantage of this is that the house is now technically habitable. It has a new roof, new terraces, a bathroom and a kitchen. On the other hand, we still have to do some work with the electrics, a beam or 2 in the ceiling of the ground floor and a lot of finishing touches.
One of the nice things about buying a house in Spain is that you often buy the house with all the furniture still there. We have already found some hidden treasures including an old wood stove, a small old bible, 2 cupboards with small drawers and a cement mixer 😉
There is stil A LOT of work to be done but this house has such a lot of potential and it is still a blanc canvas we can make into our dream home.
How we will be part of FamiliaFeliz from this distance, that will be elaborated in the future. We are at least close, I mean, half an hour drive vs 16 hours is an improvement anyway. So, the first step towards our new future has been taken. It was the most important, but certainly not the biggest step. Now we will gradually make the transition from Belgium to Spain. And that, that is going to be the biggest step. Everything is going to change. The simple things like where do you do your shopping and what time do we eat? The way we spend our time. We are half an hour from the beach and half an hour from a nature park. But also, where will our income come from? Can my husband continue his job part-time as a freelancer or will we have to find something else in Spain. In addition, we have to figure out so much. How do we move our stuff? How do you renovate a house? How do we arrange insurance? Can we rent a piece of land nearby? What are the customs of the country and the village? AND, of course, we also have to master the language. We practice every day, but it’s not going that fast. I think we’ll practice a bit more fanatically in the coming weeks so that in about 10 weeks, when we return to Spain, we’ll be able to express ourselves better in Spanish. A conversation with our new neighbours is still quite a lot of hands and feet. It would be nice if we could have a conversation with them without too much effort.
Ultimately, we want to spend as much time as possible in Spain during the holidays for the next year and a half, so that we can actually move in the summer of 2026. For our children, this means that they can quietly say goodbye to their familiar life here while they can slowly build a life in Spain. We hope to make our house more and more a home with every visit, so that the transition for them, but also for us, will be as gradual as possible.
Still… I actually want to go back now and get started. So I’m curious how much patience it will require from us. Plans are there to be changed, so who knows… 🙂