Why Buy Spain?

 

Spain has long been a favourite destination for British buyers. The weather is warm all year, but the summer heat is more bearable than further south. Plentiful cheap flights from all over the UK are also why more than 30,000 Brits live in Alicante province: it has the highest concentration of Brits in all of Spain.

In reality, the Costa Blanca is made up of two very different coasts. South of Alicante, including places such as Torrevieja (or “Torry” as the resident Brits call it), there are huge swathes of good qaulity cheap housing built to suit.

Inland and around towns like Orihuela, it’s a similar story. Flats start at £60,000 and detached properties at £180,000.

North of Alicante, especially above Benidorm, you enter a different world. It’s the posh Costa Blanca, where quality apartments start at £230,000 and villas at £370,000. Buyers are affluent Spaniards and northern Europeans.

In keeping with other southern coasts, the market is down from the highs of 2003 but property prices are increasing and many econamsists predict it to continue. Phillip Brown Director of Bentley International said ” Clients often ask when is the best time to buy overseas property, I would always advise them to buy when the market is low, so if people would like to see great returns on there investment now is the time as the market has bottmed and is now on a steady increase upwards”

 

At 504,782 km² (194,897 sq mi), Spain is the world’s 51st-largest country. It is some 47,000 km² (18,000 sq mi) smaller than France and 81,000 km² (31,000 sq mi) larger than the U.S. state of California

On the west, Spain borders Portugal; on the south, it borders Gibraltar (a British overseas territory) and Morocco, through its cities in North Africa (Ceuta and Melilla). On the northeast, along the Pyrenees mountain range, it borders France and the tiny principality of Andorra. Spain also includes the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean Sea, the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean and a number of uninhabited islands on the Mediterranean side of the strait of Gibraltar, known as Plazas de soberanía, such as the Chafarine islands, the isle of Alborán, the “rocks” (peñones) of Vélez and Alhucemas, and the tiny Isla Perejil. Along the Pyrenees in Catalonia, a small exclave town called Llívia is surrounded by France. The little Pheasant Island in the River Bidasoa is a Spanish-French condominium.

Mainland Spain is dominated by high plateaus and mountain ranges, such as the Sierra Nevada. Running from these heights are several major rivers such as the Tagus, the Ebro, the Duero, the Guadiana and the Guadalquivir. Alluvial plains are found along the coast, the largest of which is that of the Guadalquivir in Andalusia.

Climate

Due to Spain’s geographical situation and orographic conditions, the climate is extremely diverse; discounting the mountain climate, it can be roughly divided into five areas:

• A Continental Mediterranean climate in the inland areas of the Peninsula (largest city, Madrid).

• An Oceanic climate in Galicia and the coastal strip near the Bay of Biscay or (largest city, Bilbao). This area is often called Green Spain.
• A Semiarid climate or arid Mediterranean in the southeast (largest city, Murcia).
• A Mediterranean climate region extends from the Andalusian plain along the southern and eastern coasts up to the Pyrenees, on the seaward side of the mountain ranges that run near the coast. Also in Ceuta and Melilla (largest city, Barcelona). Localized Subtropical climate areas exist in the coasts of Granada and Málaga (Costa Tropical).
• A Subtropical climate in the Canary Islands (largest city, Las Palmas).

The rain in Spain does not stay mainly in the plain. It falls mainly in the northern mountains!

Travel

Once away from the holiday costas, you could only be in Spain. In the cities, narrow twisting old streets suddenly open out to views of daring modern architecture, while spit-and-sawdust bars serving wine from the barrel rub shoulders with blaring, glaring discos.

Travel is easy, accommodation plentiful, the climate benign, the people relaxed, the beaches long and sandy, the food and drink easy to come by and full of regional variety. More than 50 million foreigners a year visit Spain, yet you can also travel for days and hear nothing but Spanish.

Geographically, Spain’s diversity is immense. There are endless tracts of wild and crinkled sierra to explore, as well as some spectacularly rugged stretches of coast between the beaches.

Culturally, the country is littered with superb old buildings, from Roman aqueducts and Islamic palaces to Gothic cathedrals. Almost every second village has a medieval castle. Spain has been the home of some of the world’s great artists – El Greco, Velázquez, Goya, Dalí, Picasso – and has museums and galleries to match. The country vibrates with music of every kind – from the drama of flamenco to the melancholy lyricism of the Celtic music and gaitas (bagpipes) of the northwest.