Thread by @redalphababe

I have been in Spain for about 18 months. Nobody Spanish ever mentions Brexit to me except in relation to bureaucratic procedures. My neighbours have never mentioned it. It’s certainly not an oft discussed media topic. 1/

The only people who talk about Brexit are the British communities here whose lives have been made complicated and difficult by the whole thing. For example there has been no agreement to date on swapping of driving licenses for Brits. 2/

As it stands right now, if you have notified your intention to swap your licence before end of 2020, there has been an extension allowed to year end to get that done. However if you haven’t swapped it or registered intent to, people must take a Spanish driving test 3/

within 6 months of getting residency in order to continue driving legally. Also appointments to get residency cards or driving licence swaps aren’t always easy to get, an issue faced by all 3rd party nationals living here btw. 4/

People coming in on the new NLV - a retirement visa, are finding that they need to show a lot more income and have to pay for expensive health insurance which may not cover pre existing conditions. 5/

In year 2 of an NLV they have to show 2 years money which I think is about 65k for a couple. So anybody without a good pension or nest egg really won’t qualify. 6/

There are all sorts of circumstances which have been made difficult to navigate. For example say you have an elderly parent who lives in Spain and you want to go and care for them there in their house. There is a complex bureaucratic soup to negotiate to be able to do this. 7/

There is an issue with receiving items in the post. I have seen stories of people having to pay fees to receive their bank cards from British accounts and all sorts of crazy amounts charged on low value parcels. 8/

IMO the pandemic has masked some of the potential effects of brexit on tourism here so I think we won’t know about that properly until next year but having said that, I still see upbeat reports from estate agents down here in the south. Second homes are still selling. 8/

But I guess we may see lobbying from the tourist industry if they feel more agreements need to be done to mitigate the knock on effects of brexit on their businesses next year. So will be interesting to see what happens there. 9/

These are just a few of the complexities caused by Brexit but very few of them are really discussed by the Spanish press in any detail, because most Spanish voters are simply not affected. That’s the #BrexitReality

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