Thirty Years in Spain. Too Spanish for England. Still Too English for Spain.

Thirty years in Spain. Too Spanish for England. Still too English for Spain. So where the hell do I belong?

I’m 37. I’ve lived in Spain for 30 years. And people still ask me whether I’m enjoying it here.

I hope so. It would be a bit awkward to discover this was just a phase.

Then comes the next question. “Would you ever go home?”

Home? I know what they mean. England. But I’ve got things in the washing machine here. There’s food in my fridge. I’ve got a normal Tuesday to get through.

At what point does the place where you actually live your life become the place people accept you’re from?

Welcome to the guiri point of view. Bring a chair. We’ll probably still be discussing this after the waiter has tried to clear the table three times.

I arrived in Spain as a child. I didn’t come looking for cheaper beer, a retirement apartment or a fresh start after an awkward divorce.

I came because the adults were coming, and at seven your influence over international relocation is fairly limited.

Then I grew up. Here.

The language stopped being something I was learning and became the thing I used to get through the day. To make friends. To argue. To take the piss. To understand when someone was joking and when I should probably stop talking.

That’s a different relationship with a country from knowing how to order two beers.

Although, obviously, useful foundations.

Spain is in the little things I barely notice until someone points them out.

Saying “buenas” when I walk into a waiting room. Asking “¿Quién es el último?” and remembering a person’s face instead of standing in a neat British queue.

Knowing that “ahora” requires context, and that “ahora mismo” is encouraging but still shouldn’t make you switch the engine on.

It’s going out for one errand and finding yourself having three conversations.

It’s ordering breakfast without looking at the menu. It’s hearing someone call your name across the street and knowing your quick trip has just acquired another twenty minutes.

This is the coast I know. The ordinary one.

The coast where people work, lose their keys, pick up prescriptions, worry about rent and realise they’ve arrived at the wrong municipal office with an impressively organised folder.

The sea is still beautiful. You just don’t always have time to look at it because you need a parking space.

And yes, I know this coast inside out. But knowing where you’re going and explaining where you belong are two very different skills.

My mouth opens and Spanish comes out naturally. Sometimes the English word takes longer.

Sometimes a sentence starts in one language and finishes in the other because my brain has decided everyone present should make an effort.

Put me in England and I’m the bloke who lives in Spain. The one whose life apparently requires a weather report.

“Bet you’re missing the sunshine.”

Mate, I’m visiting. I haven’t been evacuated.

Put me back in Spain and I’m English.

Thirty years. Still the guiri.

Usually, it’s affectionate. Often, it makes me laugh. I’ve built a whole point of view around it, so I can hardly demand everyone stop saying it.

But sometimes a harmless question catches something underneath.

“Where are you really from?”

That little word. Really.

As though the first answer was the tourist version and now we’re getting to the truth.

The truth is that I feel more Spanish than English in so many everyday ways.

The rhythm of my life. The language of a joke. What feels familiar. What feels strange.

But I still feel there’s a doorway I can stand in forever without quite being invited all the way through.

And England doesn’t automatically fix that feeling. Having a British passport doesn’t give me a childhood there that I didn’t live.

On TikTok, I can turn that awkward space into something funny.

The misunderstandings. The things visitors say. The daily situations that make perfect sense until you try explaining them to someone from somewhere else.

People watch, laugh and recognise themselves. That connection matters to me.

Because behind the jokes is a question I suspect quite a few of us carry around quietly: how can somewhere be so completely your home while you still feel you have to justify being there?

I love Spain. I can also get annoyed with it.

Surely thirty years should at least qualify me to complain about the paperwork without someone suggesting I leave.

I don’t need a postcard version of this country. I’ve got a life here.

A complicated, ordinary, funny, sometimes frustrating life, in the place that raised me.

Perhaps I’ll always be the guiri. Perhaps I’ll always have to give the slightly longer answer.

But when someone asks me whether I’ll ever go home, mine is getting shorter.