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by albertoperdomo 4598 days ago
If you don't care much about a startup and tech scene (there is little) you can spend a nice time in the Canary Islands, Spain.

It's not the cheapest place in Europe, you'll find cheaper locations in Eastern Europe admittedly. Still, you can find a nice 1BR appartment for €400-500/mo in Las Palmas City near the beach or share an appartment for somewhere around €200/mo for a room.

The weather is really really nice throughout the whole year with lots of sun and there's no real winter. Temp. in the city during the winter can be approx. 18º Celsius. The summers are not extremely hot, rather nice temperatures around 25º.

There's some co-working places where you can get a desk for €100/mo (half days) or €150/mo (full days).

There's a lot of activities that you can do almost throughout the entire year: surfing, boadyboarding, scuba diving, swimming, biking, hiking, climbing and any other outdoor activity.

There's plenty of bars and clubs and the nightlife is very lively.

Please leave a comment if you want to know more.

4 comments

BTW, I was born and raised here. I spent 8 years living in Germany and 1 year living in Ireland. Afterwards I decided to move back here 8 years ago and don't have regrets. ;)
Sounds great, I would certainly like to hear more about it. Could you drop me a line via the email in my profile please?
How is the internet connection there ? Reliable ?
In the city you can get fiber in some places, 100Mbit. In other places mostly 10Mbit. I live outside of town and got 3Mbit, which is on the low end. Usually very reliable.
What do you think about raising kids there?
Well, I have no kids, but some of my friends.

Child care or kindergarten is pretty affordable, around €300/mo. If you're a legal citizen (e.g. European or w/ work permit) public schools are free, you just pay for the food, which is around €50/mo, buy materials and uniform.

If you want to pay special attention to their education regarding foreign languages and having higher chances to move elsewhere after school or at some point during school age, there are British, American, German and French schools. All of them are private or semi-private and cost up to €500/mo.

If you're considering moving here in the mid/long term, the biggest issue is work. The job market here very bad at the moment, with really high rates of unemployment.

You shouldn't care about this if you're able to work/freelance remotely. In this case, working for UK/Germany/Northern Europe/USA clients will leave margins better than any job you'll find locally and you'll be able to make a good living.

I run a company employing 8 people in total (incl. founders) and we have clients from Spain, Germany, USA. We've been doing this for 8 years.

If you or your partner are looking for a job in the local market, the biggest areas are tourism (many million visitors / year) but you can also make a good living teaching English lessons if you're native and stuff like that.

I have a 5 y.o. and wouldn't move from Tenerife (South). Private college costs ~400EUR/mo, health insurance is cheap and crime is super-low.

Oh, my kid speaks Russian and Spanish natively and they teach German and English in school. Will best me by 1 language when out of high school.

Nice to see people I know in this thread, Joel. We should meet in person at some point! ;)
I'm bound to hit the Cuban consulate at some point ;).