Living in Northern Spain has both its ups and downs. I’m not going to lie and say that it’s always this super amazing experience. There are days where I absolutely love where I live and the life I have and there are days where it’s more challenging.
Almost three years ago, I moved from Granada, Spain in the South to the La Rioja region in the North. A few months into my time here, I wrote this blog post. While those points are very valid, I think that my perspective has changed the more time I’ve spent here. So if you’re considering a move to the North of Spain, I hope you find this candid post to be helpful.
I also want to clarify that I’ll be speaking of my experience living in La Rioja and working in the Basque Country. This post could very well look different if I lived in another region of the North. Luckily there are more positives than negatives.
The positives of living in Northern Spain
1. The food
La Rioja and the Basque country are known for pinchos. If you only know a little bit about Spain, tapas might come to mind when thinking about Spanish food. Pinchos are similar to tapas since they’re small plates of food. However they don’t come free with drinks like in the South.
In Logroño, the capital city of La Rioja, you can go from spot to spot trying pinchos and drinking. Calle Laurel and Calle San Juan are great spots to try some pinchos. This post is a good place to start if you want to try some pinchos in Logroño. You can get pinchos in most parts of the Basque Country as well.
The food in other parts of the North is also amazing. In Asturias, they are known for something called cachopo which is like breaded meat and cheese. They also have this amazing bean soup called fabada. In Galicia (the part of Spain that sits above Portugal), they are known for their octopus dishes.
2. The wine
La Rioja is home to over 500 wineries. So the wine is both good and inexpensive. A glass of wine will never be over 3€ and can sometimes be around 90 cents. In addition to enjoying the wine, you can also learn about the process. Many of the wineries allow you to tour their facility and try their wines. They teach you about the process and the different types of wines.
In the almost three years I’ve been living here, I’ve been to at least 10 wineries. If you’d like to explore the wine in La Rioja, I would definitely recommend checking out this blog post I wrote: 8 La Rioja Wineries You Have to Visit.
3. Spanish
The North of Spain is less touristy than the South, so less people up here speak English. You can choose to look at this as a positive or a negative. For me, it’s always been a positive. I love speaking Spanish and really wanted to practice as much as possible. Living in Northern Spain, I speak it daily simply because not as many people speak English. Now don’t get me wrong … I have met some people up here who speak excellent English. It’s just not a thing you can expect everywhere you go.
Immersion is one of the best ways to really learn a language well. Furthermore people in La Rioja have more of a neutral and clear accent that is easier to understand than other accents in Spain. So if you want to really learn and practice Spanish, the North isn’t a bad place to do so.
Related: 5 Reasons Spain is great for learning Spanish
4. Nature and green spaces
If you love to hike and get outdoors, the North of Spain is for you. It is full of beautiful mountains and green spaces. It is true that they get more rainfall up here, which you can see in how green everything is. In La Rioja, there are always new places to explore and new routes to hike. Back in April, I did a 3-day backpacking hike that was difficult but very beautiful.
In addition to La Rioja, regions like Asturias and the Basque Country are absolutely beautiful. If you enjoy the outdoors then living in Northern Spain is quite a treat.
5. Cost of living
Now this one really depends on where you are in the North of Spain. Regions like the Basque Country are known for being more expensive. However La Rioja has a lower cost of living than a lot of places in Spain. To give you an idea, in Madrid a room in a shared flat runs around 450€-500€ or more per month. In Logroño, La Rioja it would be 200-300€/month. Additionally since Logroño is a small city, you don’t need to spend nearly as much on transportation as you would in a bigger city. I love how walkable my city is.
The wine and food is also less expensive here. Since we are in the wine region, you might pay 1€ for a normal glass of wine and 2.5€ for something a bit more fancy. Eating at a restaurant overall is much less expensive than in the US as well.
The negatives of living in Northern Spain
1. The people
In my experience, people up North are polite but reserved. My first real introduction to Spanish people was in the South. I spent my first two years living in Andalucía where people are generally the same level of friendly as the Midwest in the United States (where I’m from). I’m used to befriending strangers, becoming friends with coworkers, becoming friends with friends of friends, etc. In general, the South is very much like that. When people would hear my accent in the South, it was typically met with a friendly curiosity about where I was from and what I was doing in Spain. I always felt welcome. Living in Northern Spain, my accent is sometimes met with suspicion or rudeness. It can be frustrating because I’m trying my best to speak their language.
Before I made the move up North, people in Andalucía would always tell me that people were colder up here and less friendly. However I didn’t want to be pessimistic. Moreover, most people had never been to La Rioja specifically and were saying it because of other regions they had visited or what they had heard from others. I wanted them to be wrong, but unfortunately they were not.
Staying in their comfort zone …
People up here often have a group of friends from their whole life (called a cuadrilla in Spanish) and they don’t open it. I remember an old coworker saying that she would be happy to have coffee with anyone, but she probably wouldn’t actually invite them to be friends with her friends. When you’re a long-term expat in the North, this can be a problem. Like everyone else, you want friends as well. Now don’t get me wrong, I have a handful of Spanish friends that I’ve made over the past few years. However my group ends up being mostly other expats with a few Spanish friends who enjoy making friends from other cultures.
I’ve also had several experiences of being excluded that never happened to me working in the South. For context, I’ve spent the last five years working in schools as an English Language Assistant. In the South, the teachers always included me in their Whatsapp group and invited me to their social events. However on my first day working in La Rioja, my coordinator told me it wasn’t necessary that I was in the Whatsapp group when I asked about it. My second year I asked again, and that time I was included in both the group and the Christmas dinner. I suppose they had to trust me first.
So I’ve changed my expectations
I was telling my Spanish boyfriend today that I’ve stopped expecting to make friends in situations where I would in the US. Places like work, the gym or being a regular at a bar or coffeeshop don’t seem to bring opportunities to make friends like they would back home. Northern Spain is definitely not as closed off as other cultures. I’ve heard it can be very difficult to make friends in Northern Europe.
Overall, there’s just more of a distance that people put up here in the North. I speak the language fluently and am nice to everyone. I’ve just accepted that this is how it is. I’m thankful for the friends I do have, both Spanish and expat.
2. The weather
The phrase Sunny Spain always makes me laugh because it does not apply to the North. Up here, we definitely experience all four seasons.
In La Rioja, it rains a considerable amount and occasionally it snows. I would definitely recommend buying a decent umbrella that cannot be destroyed by the wind. Also a good pair of boots or rain shoes will come in handy. Apart from the rain, it gets quite cold here. You’ll want to invest in a warm winter coat and some sweaters.
Summer does happen here, but it comes later. Right now it’s mid June and I haven’t quite packed away the sweaters. Some days are sunny and warm while others are cold and rainy.
And that’s it!
I honestly couldn’t think of any other negatives that were specific to living in Northern Spain. Of course there are negatives like the language barrier if you don’t speak Spanish and all the bureaucracy, but those are things you’d deal with almost anywhere in Spain.
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