Another returning at Malaga airport today was Shaun Cromber who despite voting for Britain to leave the EU, didn’t believe it would end his Spanish lifestyle, he said: ”Yes I voted out, but I didn’t realise it would come to this ... long term I think the Spanish will regret chucking us out of Spain”
Among expat Britons in Spain who voted for Brexit, was this a common attitude that they would be allowed to stay? Or were they told they would be allowed to keep residency rights?
They probably would be allowed to stay if they bothered with residency requirements. All across EU the requirement for applying for local citizenship was living i the country for 5 years.
The article says some were denied residency, the others simply don't want to pay taxes that come with residency.
But, jeez. Kinda hard to feel sorry for somebody from the UK, who doesn't want to live in the UK, who has lived in Spain for 7 years, but voted for brexit and is suddenly surprised that he's lost privileges reserved for EU citizens. And then the best he can say is that the Spanish will regret this?
> Among expat Britons in Spain who voted for Brexit, was this a common attitude that they would be allowed to stay? Or were they told they would be allowed to keep residency rights?
https://ig.ft.com/sites/expats-on-brexit/ has some pre-referendum views of British emigrants. One says "I want practical facts. The Government and Brexit campaigners have been silent on what will happen to Britons abroad if we leave.".
Schadenfreude seems to be the prevailing take in these kinds of threads, but as a Brit living in Spain I can tell you that the people in the article are not representative of most Brits in Spain. There are plenty of young Brits living in cities around Spain; it's not all just pensioners in the costas.
The vast vast majority voted against Brexit and are devastated, if not surprised, by how it has played out.
Luckily, getting residency was fairly straightforward, with the requirements basically being that you live and work / are retired in Spain.
The hardest part though is knowing that further generations are not able to exercise the same freedoms that we were able to. So many unlived experiences, friendships, marriages, children. That truly is the greatest shame of all.
I am curious to hear some estimates from HN readers from the UK about whether they think that the UK might rejoin the EU in a couple of years. Is that realistic?
In a couple of decades, maybe; but still very unlikely (if anything because the EU is now much stricter on criteria for new entrants, and this is only going to increase over time).
I’d say chances are 90% that the UK will never re-join. Uk gov might find some hack to get into a Norway-shaped position, but full membership is gone for good.
Another referendum anytime soon would be a political nightmare for both Labour and the Tories, it's such a contentious issue that they're both better off avoiding it. The only parties seriously advocating for rejoining are either full of nutters (Greens, unfortunately) or increasingly losing touch with reality to the point of irrelevance (Lib Dems).
Things may change a lot over the next few years, but I suspect people will become increasingly apathetic towards the issue as time passes and people realise Brexit isn't exactly the apocalypse that was described by most of the media here.
I would bet good money that before 2016, ~90% of people in the UK—remainers and leavers both—couldn't have named a single MEP other than Farage. I suspect the vast majority will revert to their pre-referendum state of political indifference. Rejoining would be immensely complicated, people will just not have the appetite for it.
That study was voluntary and appears to have been advertised in a few Facebook groups. It seems quite plausible that the 95% number is artificially high due to sampling bias.
They were indeed allowed to keep residency rights, but they had to register for them - which would mean their less-than-transparent tax arrangements would have come to light. I’d be willing to bet most of these used to draw income or pensions in the UK, recorded their state there as “non-dom” or other living-abroad type, and then never registered in Spain; hence avoiding taxes both in UK and Spain.
But yea, loads of uk expats in Spain (who demographically trend over-50s) specifically voted for Leave while thinking nothing would really change for them. The exceptionalist mindset spread by UK tabloid media is incredible. Now they’ve lost their little tax-free paradise in the sun, and they’re back with us under they grey Albion skies. As an EU expat in UK, I will make sure to play the tiniest violin for them every day.
>> recorded their state there as “non-dom” or other living-abroad type, and then never registered in Spain; hence avoiding taxes both in UK and Spain.
I mean, while I enjoy this idea as much as anyone, I don't think it's possible. If you tell HMRC that you don't have a British tax residency, then they will insist(very persistently) that you tell them which tax residency you do actually have, and with EU countries they absolutely do exchange information on taxpayers. It might take a few months or even years but they absolutely will catch up with you eventually.
You have a very optimistic consideration of the capabilities of HMRC and of their priorities. There is a lot that just flies under the radar, because it’s just not worth anybody’s time to pursue it and it’s hard to impossible to actually identify. Information exchange with other countries is very, very limited, and likely decreased since 2018 as well.
Let’s say I move to Spain and start a business there cash-in-hand. I declare to HMRC that I earn nothing and I reside in UK. I proceed to collect UK subsidies, discounts on council tax, and various other benefits. I might rent out my house as well, either legally or illegally. Would I pop up on any radar? Unlikely. HMRC has no visibility of Spanish transactions and I don’t appear in any UK transaction, as far as they know I’m just a bum. If pressed by Spanish authorities (big if) I can just say I pay taxes in UK - which is “true”. If business in Spain does well enough I might just stop taking UK subsidies, to avoid scrutiny even more. If I never had to file self-assessment before I shipped out, I’m basically off the radar.
The EU-UK Withdrawal Agreement allows for existing residency to continue on the same terms as EU residency, i.e. no language testing.
The group of people in the article either: have chosen not to apply for residency in Spain (noting that the technical deadline to apply is not until July 2021); were not resident in Spain before February 2020; and/or were not meeting EU rules for residency in Spain anyway.
I'd suspect the latter. I'm surprised the language test isn't an issue, I'm told it's been a significant issue in times past.
Edit: I went reading. If you didn't get a padron (local residency certificate for your municipality) and hadn't formalised your status before brexit, (which, if you were working cash in hand is very likely), you would be behind a wall of prove-it processes which are based in paperwork, in Spanish. Where's your spanish drivers licence. Where's your tax file number. Where's your pre brexit registration. Prove you've been here.
Various expat assistance agencies have spent months offering people $ services to help them get through, including handy advice like be polite and dress smart and don't shout at the officials..
The overwhelming majority of longterm residents will have gone through the steps. The newspaper story is about the people who were never going to get over the line I suspect.
>If you didn't get a padron (local residency certificate for your municipality)
Worth noting that local registration (padrón) is a requirement in Spain for all residents, including EU resident citizens, and also that there was 11+ months notice before this agreement came into force (if you don't want to count the 4.5 years notice since the referendum).
Meaning, people who were present in Spain but not legally resident could have chosen to "move" from the UK to Spain at any point until Dec 31, 2020, just by registering at the town hall like they were supposed to all along.
Your description of heavy paperwork seems to be a highly exceptional case which allows people who didn't register (but can prove they were resident) to now appeal.
The dictionary: "immigrant: a person who comes to live permanently in a foreign country". Note: permanently. But expat can be temporary.
So, if you haven't decided that you'll stay permanently in the new country, but maybe instead you'll move to a 2nd new country, a 3rd and so on, then you might consider yourself an expat, but not an immigrant. At least that's how foreign students here, seem to refer to themselves: They're here for a few years, and then will probably leave, and they call themselves "expats".
And also, what about this: If you still have your identity in your home country (e.g. the culture there?), you'd think of yourself as someone from that country: "I expatriated from Home-Country". But if your identity is in the new country, then you'd think of yourself primarily as an immigrant to country New-Country?
Historically, it was the other way round. An immigrant only became an expatriate if they took on the citizenship of their host county.
I know that expatriate can colloquially mean a person temporarily abroad, but in this context, it refers to immigrants to Spain who generally intended to stay permanently.
In practice, nothing; but if brits can call themselves expats abroad (which they do even when they’ve no intention to ever go back, the attempts at language sophistry are a laughable attempt at justifying exceptionalism and casual racism), then I can call myself expat here.
Yes, that's certainly fair. Hopefully I didn't offend.
I'm Irish, but once was an immigrant/expat in the US (in that I intended to stay permanently and to become a citizen, but things ended up not working out that way). I always thought of myself as an immigrant, but there were a lot of people I met who called themselves expats and never immigrants. Some almost seemed offended by the word. I think your comment about exceptionalism probably captured the reason why.
I think one of the issues is that you must prove that you have an income and can support yourself.
A certain amount of amount of British people were working "cash in hand" and not paying any tax, so they won't be able or willing to register now. This is referenced by an interviewee on the article.
Why you would live in the EU, vote for Brexit and then cry when leaving the EU to return 'home' is beyond me though.
Or Spain has a history of leniency towards undocumented immigrants and they thought they'd get the same treatment.
If course the problem with breaking the law is it opens you up to selective enforcement if Spain decides it wants to thumb its nose at the Brits in particular.
They thought it would only happen to others, as usual... They were so deep in disinformation that they called “project fear” any attempt to explain them what the situation would actually be. Because of course, who in their right mind would avocate for leaving the EFTA? Surely, brits spend money locally, so why wouldn’t the local governments bend the rules whilst the British government gets all jingoistic about continental queue jumpers?
It’s all fun and games until the borders get closed.
In the end, real people from both sides of the referendum pay the price.
> Why you would live in the EU, vote for Brexit and then cry when leaving the EU to return 'home' is beyond me though.
I was going to hastily comment that surely the Brits living abroad were not the ones voting for Brexit but then right there in the article:
> ”Yes I voted out, but I didn’t realise it would come to this, my application has been rejected and we are on our way home – the wife is in tears, she’s distraught if I’m honest and I’m not too happy at the prospect of returning back to the UK.”
This is exactly like that meme on Twitter:
> 'I never thought leopards would eat MY face,' sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party.[0]
Which begs the question what did this person think they were voting for if not that?
I get that sometimes people aren't sure what the fine details of something might be on a complex issue, but it's right there in the slogan: "out of the EU"
Someone I know recently lamented that their daughter (who has a physical disability) would no longer qualify for certain subsidies for a prosthesis because they don’t have a job. However the daughter’s husband does have a full time job, and the daughter home schools her daughter. They still qualify for some SNAP benefits (food stamps). The idea that The State wouldn’t make an allowance for this situation was galling to them. I agreed. But within 5 minutes they were back to complaining about welfare queens who don’t have jobs.
They are people driven by the same bullshit nativist propaganda.
I live in a very democratic city. My neighbor down the block is a ~45 year old retired first responder due to a disabling knee injury. He’s mostly at home watching cable news during the week and transformed into a die-hard “conservative”, with the flags, stickers, etc.
Great guy, but deluded by propaganda. We usually talk fishing and baseball, as our sons play together. I avoid political talk at all times as the irony of a young, disabled former unionized government employee with free healthcare is both anti-gov and anti-union is too much for me.
Yeah, and I'm sure the author of this article worked hard to find that one paydirt quote which feeds its audiences' preconceptions... especially if the stats about how expats voted in the Brexit referendum someone else posted are correct. (Or maybe they didn't even bother? I've never heard of this news site, it looks like a generic WordPress theme and it's registered anonymously. All the usual fake news warning signs are there but it just fits everyone's preconceptions so well...)
If this is a fake news article, the Daily Express indeed also fell for it because it's clearly where they copied that from: 'Anthony Cook, who has lived in Spain for seven years, told Global247news: “The Spanish dream is over for me, it’s time to go back to Cardiff."' This happens a lot more with fake news than it really ought to, and with publications a lot more respectable and trusted than the Express.
It's good for clicks - the thick-as-pigshit expat Leave voter sawing the branch underneath themselves. In reality most Brits in Europe did not vote Leave, but of course the media have to two-sides everything for "balance".
I'd disagree mildly. I remember that around the time the UK actually left the EU, a newspaper in Dubai (strongly against Brexit) interviewed a group of British expats. Out of the responses, only a quarter were mildly against Brexit while the rest were actively in favor of it. The numbers were even further skewed if I were to incorporate personal conversations.
In general, I've found Brits outside the UK in touristy/retiree expat hotbeds like Spain, Portugal or Dubai to be extremely in favor of Brexit, and mostly racist. Britons in the Isles or in other countries tend to be really friendly and open minded. This could be a reflection of the kind of expats who move to places - older expats might choose sunny places like Spain or Dubai while younger expats might prefer to settle down in the US or Germany, where there are better career opportunities.
yes but if you flip the numbers is gets weird. a third of expats in Italy wanted the UK to leave the EU? that doesn't mean it would be hard to find someone to interview for "entertainment". Every third group should have someone.
Find someone that wanted to leave the EU and is fine with the new situation isn’t enough, they needed to find people who voted to go and then where significantly negativity impacted.
I guess it could be said that 1800 of the demographic which reads the Evening Standard is not an accurate reflection of the British expat population too. Unless we have demographic data on how they were polled, it can't be taken at face value. My data was also mostly a reflection of the expat demographic I was in touch with most (45+ male and female), so I guess that observation too cannot be taken at face value without a more randomized set.
> A certain amount of amount of British people were working "cash in hand" and not paying any tax
This was a grey area already when UK was still an EU member. EU was based on "free movement of workers, services and capital", but the residency rights of non-economically active citizens of other EU countries are ...complicated. You have the right to reside the first 6 months in another country as a jobseeker. In practice, nobody would know when you have entered the country, so you could always claim that you are within your 6 months and you are a jobseeker, so in practice deporting EU citizens was close to impossible, so countries didn't even try. But those Brits probably weren't staying in Spain strictly legally, even when they were EU citizens.
A EU citizen may also stay longer than 6 month in another member state, if she has sufficient resources and comprehensive health insurance cover. There is also a right of permanent residence after five years of legal residence.[1]
I think the sad reality is a lot of folks vote based on a sort of instinct / sentiment. They hear truisms / sentiment that they like and someone convinces them X is that sentiment too. So they vote for X with little to no knowledge of what X is or means or how it plays out in any kind of reality.
Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here? Your account has been sliding into flamewar repeatedly already, including nationalistic and regional flamewar. We're trying for something other than that here.
British food these days seems fine to me as a visitor but certainly somewhat different from Spain. Sunnier/warmer weather, lower prices, and generally more laid-back lifestyle would make sense to me however.
My experience of British pensioners on the continent is that they are overall very pleasant people to be around and do contribute to local life, even if it sometimes includes opening a pub next to the local café. Not all of them are living caricatures in Benidorm, far from it.
Yes, in my other comment I make fun of their cuisine but it’s all good sport.
I grew up in south west France. A lot of properties or village even would have disappeared without rich Londoner. I don’t resend them a bit.
Even the more obtuse one.
Most of them are retired. I think if you're a relatively poor pensioner in a higher cost-of-living rich country like the UK it can make sense to move to a lower cost-of-living country to make the same pension go further. With the cheap flights that we got in the 2000s it wasn't really much different to being in a different town in terms of how far away you were.
This Brexit thing - it's almost as if the British people didn't know anything at all when they voted for it. So many of them are genuinely surprised at what is happening.
Brexit in general. I have been following what looks like an absolute clusterfuck: From the exporters at the border who didn't know they had to have the right paperwork to the Northern Ireland protocol. It looks too awful to be true.
As much as I regret that Brexit happened, I don't really think this is the direct fault of the voters that they didn't understand all the issues when voting for Brexit.
We have a representative democracy. Generally, you would assume if you're being asked to vote in a referendum, that either outcome would be implementable. Turns out that the referendum was really just David Cameron's plan to unify the conservatives, and he expected remain would win by a landslide, so didn't have a plan for if leave won.
Of course, we did vote for those representatives in the first place, so it's indirectly our fault either way.
That being said, given the enormity of this change, it was always going to be a challenge for the first year or two after it went into effect. In principle, EU scepticism is a perfectly reasonable view to have, our politicians just let us down.
David Cameron is absolutely going to end up towards the bottom of that list of famous/infamous leaders you get ranked against at the end of a game of Civilization.
What you said is correct. The UK doesn’t have a system for referendum, so they hacked an opinion poll with the question: “do you want to leave the EU?”
In a normal democracy with a referendum system, the people vote on a text in place of having the politicians do it. The question is always “to you approve the text such and such.” The first problem is that the UK constitution doesn’t have this system I think, the second problem is what to vote on. They could either negotiate a treaty first and then ask people to approve it, or they could ask people to vote on the mission of the negotiators (but it’s tricky since the outcome is not known)
I've often thought referendums need a reconciliation process. My tri-county area in the US voted overwhelmingly for a tax and program package to build light rail transit.
Within 4 years they passed another referendum cutting the taxes they voted in to pay for the trains without repealing the referendum requiring the transit authority to build the trains. Doh!
Build the trains without paying for them. California is much the same way, you have dozens of fantastic niche taxes to fund programs, but next thing you know you're paying $500,000 to house a single homeless family.
It would be easier to give said family $10,000 and exile them from the state, but then you'd have to face a very frank realization, California is not a good state for most working class people.
That's besides the point, let me know when this train gets built. More cities need public transit
I guess that’s what happens when you let people vote on issues they know nothing about.
Referendums should be preceded by fact-checked pros and cons of each decision, side by side. But no, let politician sh*t-talk on TV and buses with nonsense instead.
Democracy works when the voters are informed. With disinformation, the loudest voice wins. That’s not democracy.
It's worse than this. A skilled politician will be able to lie about a "fact" and get away with it. He only needs to appeal to people's own twisted views. The media can help build a false narrative. And public media is controlled by the gov't so that too can be biased. Just remember all the talk about the "experts" during the referendum. As if their opinion was automatically invalid because they were "experts". It's quite hopeless..
This is not unique to this issue or populace. I know loads of people in the US who benefit massively from Obamacare and constantly advocate repealing it.
A lady I know who thinks the law is terrible was complaining the other day that her daughter had to get off her insurance at 26. I had to bite my tongue so hard to not be like, ya know, without Obamacare she'd have been booted 8 years ago.
You'll get a hundred different hot takes on this as it's a very touchy subject but in essence:
Conservative backbenchers have wanted out of the EU for a while. To keep the peace within his own party, David Cameron (the former PM) promised them a referendum figuring it was a straight-forward (and safe!) lay-up that put the matter to bed, and that would then be the end of it. Essentially, "Remain" would easily win by a landslide and the matter would be settled for good.
The plan didn't pan out.
Because it was essentially intended as a rhetorical question when it was devised, no great amount of time was spent figuring out what a Leave vote would mean in practice as it was not expected to happen. Unfortunately, the upper echelons of both political parties spent so little time and effort explaining the implications that it left that role wide open for media outlets to fill in the many blanks - meaning that people on the Left were told it would be the end of days and those on the Right that it was a free ticket to the promised land with no downsides. The Right vote carried.
>"...I don’t have enough credentials to become a resident, it was so easy before, get your funds in from the UK, do a bit of cash in hand around the likes of Benidorm and bob was your uncle, but that’s all changed now – hey, don’t be fooled thousands of Brits in some guise or other have been doing the same thing, especially in the entertainment industry!"
Could someone say what this means? I know Benidorm is a resort area popular with Brits but why was cash important if they were legally there anyway pre-Brexit? What's the angle?
He's saying that life in Spain was easier when you could have your pension/unemploment benefit paid into your account from the UK whilst also earning money doing cash in hand jobs locally.
Does anyone know why some were denied residency? Is there a threshold for professional credentials or proof of financial self-sufficiency they didn't meet?
I don't know the rules but maybe they wanted to keep their UK citizenship?
Edit: okay I actually read a bit of what is going on. They have zero income so can't stay. In reality they did have an income but didn't declare it to avoid taxes. No-one to blame but themselves in most cases it seems.
Not having a Facebook profile or not having been on the news before does not mean you don't exist[0]. There are a good few people named "Shaun Cromer" on Facebook.
It could well be made up but in my view the domain name and the "Powered by Wordpress" banner in the bottom are stronger indicators.
Exactly. Don't have Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. etc. accounts. And never will. It all sounded like a raw deal from the get go. I grew up during the Cold War and traveled to East Berlin back then - FB seems far too much like a Stasi system. So never was interested.
I generally avoid having an online presence anymore even though I was online back when it was called the Arpanet!
Every once in a while, I Google the names of my classmates back in elementary, middle, highschool, and college.
There are no crumbs to be found of them for the vast, vast majority.
If these people are older than their mid fourties, as they almost certainly are, I’d expect that to be the case just the same.
Especially for countries with stronger privacy protections. (IOW: no “find out about the petty crimes that your neighbor committed 35 years ago” websites.)
For any brits unhappy about the spanish red tape and looking for alternatives. Check out Cuenca , Ecuador (South America).
Its a very big US retiree expat community, from what I understand, that may be the largest worldwide. They even have an expat newspaper. Unlimited long term residency, tax free. Very nice weather and a few hours away from the beach. Very affordable.
Does it have no taxes at all? Because without a deal with the UK residents would have to pay full tax in the UK plus any local tax if they have income from there.
I'm not sure a lot of Americans is a bonus to attract Brits though.
All this is down to the steady drip drip effect that British mass media has on the population which has brought us to this situation. As a life long EU supporter I was dismayed by the results of the referendum and the recent general election. Even worse it broke my heart when the EU took action over its dismal failure to vaccinate their people as the UK had done rather well. This does not bode well for the future.
Here's the text of a paywalled article from the times with better example info of how people get in this situation: not having health insurance for instance.
Your 90 days are up, Europe tells holiday home Britons
Charlie Devereux, Malaga | Tom Kington, Rome | Charles Bremner, Paris - Saturday March 27 2021, 12.01am GMT
John Price and Elaine Wilson may have to abandon their home in Spain after their post-Brexit residency application was rejected.
The couple were told that their claim failed because they had not bought private medical insurance before the end of last year, when the transition phase of Brexit ended.
Wilson, 53, a former paramedic, was waiting for the all-clear on breast cancer before buying insurance and the couple had been advised that they had until March 31.
Lawyers have told them that their appeal will probably fail. They are checking a Spanish government website daily to see if their appeal has been recorded. So far it has not, and they do not know if they will wake up on April 1 as illegal aliens.
“We’re on tenterhooks,” Price, 51, said. “We don’t know if we face fines, a bad stamp in our passports and being banned from entering the Schengen area. A rock and a hard place springs to mind.”
Britons across Europe are slipping into a post-Brexit limbo as red tape confounds their efforts to establish residency under new rules.
In Italy Britons who have residency are being refused jobs, healthcare, bank accounts and car purchases despite those rights and services being guaranteed under the EU Withdrawal Agreement.
In France like Price and Wilson in Spain, those living in their holiday homes since January 1 must leave the country by Thursday or face possible deportation and a ban on re-entering the country. April 1 marks the 90-day maximum that UK citizens are allowed to stay in any EU state within a six-month period without residence papers or a visa.
Before Wilson’s illness the couple spent their time shuttling between Spain and Shropshire, were they manage properties and a bed and breakfast business. But she says the cancer both made up her mind that she wanted to settle in Spain but also to delay the permanent move to Spain in order to complete her treatment in the UK for the sake of continuity.
In Spain thousands of Britons have rushed to legalise their status. Confusion and misinformation about the rules, which are interpreted differently in each region, has left many fearing that they will be ejected from a place they consider home.
Spain’s byzantine bureaucracy has spawned a parallel business of administrators or gestores to help foreigners to interpret the requirements. When Jeff Lunn and his wife, Deborah, applied for residency in August using a gestor recommended by friends they expected few problems. Seven months later they are h awaiting an appeal decision after their initial application was rejected.
The gestor had failed to include the terms and conditions for their medical insurance and the error has left them in limbo. They sold their home in Yorkshire and moved to a three-bedroom villa in Murcia.
The Lunns, who voted leave in the EU referendum, have had to hand in their British driving licences but will not get Spanish ones unless their residency is approved. They say they “have invested a lot of money here in Spain”.
Liza Hartley got her residency in December but her daughter, Anya, 12, did not. Hartley moved to Marbella to give Anya a bilingual education. She has been told her daughter’s application failed because of suspicions that she could have been kidnapped by her mother. The authorities need Hartley’s partner, Jimmy, who runs a construction business in Lancashire, to come to Spain and sign papers saying he gives consent. He cannot make it before the March 31 deadline because of Covid restrictions.
Thousands more face becoming illegal aliens in Spain on Thursday. Many have been living under the radar to avoid paying taxes, Anne Hernández, the president of Brexpats, which advises Britons in Spain on how to navigate ...
What I noticed with British expats in my country they one of the most vocal group against anything local including government policy and culture. Something that I find extremely weird considering they chose to move here but at the same time it makes sense for them to vote for brexit.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 208 ms ] threadAmong expat Britons in Spain who voted for Brexit, was this a common attitude that they would be allowed to stay? Or were they told they would be allowed to keep residency rights?
But, jeez. Kinda hard to feel sorry for somebody from the UK, who doesn't want to live in the UK, who has lived in Spain for 7 years, but voted for brexit and is suddenly surprised that he's lost privileges reserved for EU citizens. And then the best he can say is that the Spanish will regret this?
Well, 5 years implies paying taxes i the country too. So if they were not paying taxes there then obviously why would Spain give them the citizenship?
https://ig.ft.com/sites/expats-on-brexit/ has some pre-referendum views of British emigrants. One says "I want practical facts. The Government and Brexit campaigners have been silent on what will happen to Britons abroad if we leave.".
Apparently 95% of expats were AGAINST brexit[0], but of course in any group large enough it's easy to find idiots like Mr Cromber above.
[0] http://www.sussex.ac.uk/broadcast/read/52513
The vast vast majority voted against Brexit and are devastated, if not surprised, by how it has played out.
Luckily, getting residency was fairly straightforward, with the requirements basically being that you live and work / are retired in Spain.
The hardest part though is knowing that further generations are not able to exercise the same freedoms that we were able to. So many unlived experiences, friendships, marriages, children. That truly is the greatest shame of all.
In a couple of decades, maybe; but still very unlikely (if anything because the EU is now much stricter on criteria for new entrants, and this is only going to increase over time).
I’d say chances are 90% that the UK will never re-join. Uk gov might find some hack to get into a Norway-shaped position, but full membership is gone for good.
Another referendum anytime soon would be a political nightmare for both Labour and the Tories, it's such a contentious issue that they're both better off avoiding it. The only parties seriously advocating for rejoining are either full of nutters (Greens, unfortunately) or increasingly losing touch with reality to the point of irrelevance (Lib Dems).
Things may change a lot over the next few years, but I suspect people will become increasingly apathetic towards the issue as time passes and people realise Brexit isn't exactly the apocalypse that was described by most of the media here.
I would bet good money that before 2016, ~90% of people in the UK—remainers and leavers both—couldn't have named a single MEP other than Farage. I suspect the vast majority will revert to their pre-referendum state of political indifference. Rejoining would be immensely complicated, people will just not have the appetite for it.
But yea, loads of uk expats in Spain (who demographically trend over-50s) specifically voted for Leave while thinking nothing would really change for them. The exceptionalist mindset spread by UK tabloid media is incredible. Now they’ve lost their little tax-free paradise in the sun, and they’re back with us under they grey Albion skies. As an EU expat in UK, I will make sure to play the tiniest violin for them every day.
I mean, while I enjoy this idea as much as anyone, I don't think it's possible. If you tell HMRC that you don't have a British tax residency, then they will insist(very persistently) that you tell them which tax residency you do actually have, and with EU countries they absolutely do exchange information on taxpayers. It might take a few months or even years but they absolutely will catch up with you eventually.
Let’s say I move to Spain and start a business there cash-in-hand. I declare to HMRC that I earn nothing and I reside in UK. I proceed to collect UK subsidies, discounts on council tax, and various other benefits. I might rent out my house as well, either legally or illegally. Would I pop up on any radar? Unlikely. HMRC has no visibility of Spanish transactions and I don’t appear in any UK transaction, as far as they know I’m just a bum. If pressed by Spanish authorities (big if) I can just say I pay taxes in UK - which is “true”. If business in Spain does well enough I might just stop taking UK subsidies, to avoid scrutiny even more. If I never had to file self-assessment before I shipped out, I’m basically off the radar.
Some of them said that they did apply for that residency but were denied. Wonder why?
The group of people in the article either: have chosen not to apply for residency in Spain (noting that the technical deadline to apply is not until July 2021); were not resident in Spain before February 2020; and/or were not meeting EU rules for residency in Spain anyway.
Edit: I went reading. If you didn't get a padron (local residency certificate for your municipality) and hadn't formalised your status before brexit, (which, if you were working cash in hand is very likely), you would be behind a wall of prove-it processes which are based in paperwork, in Spanish. Where's your spanish drivers licence. Where's your tax file number. Where's your pre brexit registration. Prove you've been here.
Various expat assistance agencies have spent months offering people $ services to help them get through, including handy advice like be polite and dress smart and don't shout at the officials..
The overwhelming majority of longterm residents will have gone through the steps. The newspaper story is about the people who were never going to get over the line I suspect.
My language test theory has little to do with it.
Worth noting that local registration (padrón) is a requirement in Spain for all residents, including EU resident citizens, and also that there was 11+ months notice before this agreement came into force (if you don't want to count the 4.5 years notice since the referendum).
Meaning, people who were present in Spain but not legally resident could have chosen to "move" from the UK to Spain at any point until Dec 31, 2020, just by registering at the town hall like they were supposed to all along.
Your description of heavy paperwork seems to be a highly exceptional case which allows people who didn't register (but can prove they were resident) to now appeal.
So, if you haven't decided that you'll stay permanently in the new country, but maybe instead you'll move to a 2nd new country, a 3rd and so on, then you might consider yourself an expat, but not an immigrant. At least that's how foreign students here, seem to refer to themselves: They're here for a few years, and then will probably leave, and they call themselves "expats".
And also, what about this: If you still have your identity in your home country (e.g. the culture there?), you'd think of yourself as someone from that country: "I expatriated from Home-Country". But if your identity is in the new country, then you'd think of yourself primarily as an immigrant to country New-Country?
I know that expatriate can colloquially mean a person temporarily abroad, but in this context, it refers to immigrants to Spain who generally intended to stay permanently.
I'm Irish, but once was an immigrant/expat in the US (in that I intended to stay permanently and to become a citizen, but things ended up not working out that way). I always thought of myself as an immigrant, but there were a lot of people I met who called themselves expats and never immigrants. Some almost seemed offended by the word. I think your comment about exceptionalism probably captured the reason why.
A certain amount of amount of British people were working "cash in hand" and not paying any tax, so they won't be able or willing to register now. This is referenced by an interviewee on the article.
Why you would live in the EU, vote for Brexit and then cry when leaving the EU to return 'home' is beyond me though.
They may have expected a right-to-residency that had different terms.
This article doesn't go into such details, however, so it'll be difficult to tell.
If course the problem with breaking the law is it opens you up to selective enforcement if Spain decides it wants to thumb its nose at the Brits in particular.
It’s all fun and games until the borders get closed.
In the end, real people from both sides of the referendum pay the price.
I was going to hastily comment that surely the Brits living abroad were not the ones voting for Brexit but then right there in the article:
> ”Yes I voted out, but I didn’t realise it would come to this, my application has been rejected and we are on our way home – the wife is in tears, she’s distraught if I’m honest and I’m not too happy at the prospect of returning back to the UK.”
This is exactly like that meme on Twitter:
> 'I never thought leopards would eat MY face,' sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party.[0]
Nope, I can't beleive it's come to this either.
[0]: https://twitter.com/cavalorn/status/654934442549620736
I get that sometimes people aren't sure what the fine details of something might be on a complex issue, but it's right there in the slogan: "out of the EU"
Someone I know recently lamented that their daughter (who has a physical disability) would no longer qualify for certain subsidies for a prosthesis because they don’t have a job. However the daughter’s husband does have a full time job, and the daughter home schools her daughter. They still qualify for some SNAP benefits (food stamps). The idea that The State wouldn’t make an allowance for this situation was galling to them. I agreed. But within 5 minutes they were back to complaining about welfare queens who don’t have jobs.
I live in a very democratic city. My neighbor down the block is a ~45 year old retired first responder due to a disabling knee injury. He’s mostly at home watching cable news during the week and transformed into a die-hard “conservative”, with the flags, stickers, etc.
Great guy, but deluded by propaganda. We usually talk fishing and baseball, as our sons play together. I avoid political talk at all times as the irony of a young, disabled former unionized government employee with free healthcare is both anti-gov and anti-union is too much for me.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1415577/Brexit-news-...
Edit: Saw too late to delete that The Express also got it from Global247news, which seems to be less than a year old according to https://whois.domaintools.com/global247news.com
It’s just another case of a news agency focusing on entertaining people even if it’s misleading them.
In general, I've found Brits outside the UK in touristy/retiree expat hotbeds like Spain, Portugal or Dubai to be extremely in favor of Brexit, and mostly racist. Britons in the Isles or in other countries tend to be really friendly and open minded. This could be a reflection of the kind of expats who move to places - older expats might choose sunny places like Spain or Dubai while younger expats might prefer to settle down in the US or Germany, where there are better career opportunities.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/eu-referendum-three-quart...
In France, Germany and Portugal, Stay was on just over 77 per cent, below Austria on 85 per cent.
In Sweden, the figure was 59 per cent, 60 per cent in Cyprus, 66 per cent in Italy, 73 per cent in Spain and 74 per cent in Belgium.
This was a grey area already when UK was still an EU member. EU was based on "free movement of workers, services and capital", but the residency rights of non-economically active citizens of other EU countries are ...complicated. You have the right to reside the first 6 months in another country as a jobseeker. In practice, nobody would know when you have entered the country, so you could always claim that you are within your 6 months and you are a jobseeker, so in practice deporting EU citizens was close to impossible, so countries didn't even try. But those Brits probably weren't staying in Spain strictly legally, even when they were EU citizens.
[1] https://www.bmi.bund.de/EN/topics/migration/law-on-foreigner...
Every mediterranean country is littered with Brits, especially retirees / pensioners.
"Littered"? If you replace "Brits" with other groups, are you still happy with the tone of the sentence?
It's not necessarily like saying 'trashed'.
Britain: https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/in-your-area/new-mcd...
Spain: https://fineartamerica.com/featured/mcdonalds-madrid-spain-p...
I grew up in south west France. A lot of properties or village even would have disappeared without rich Londoner. I don’t resend them a bit. Even the more obtuse one.
What happened?
So many?
https://whatukthinks.org/eu/questions/in-highsight-do-you-th... tracks the UK's evolving view on whether Brexit was the correct decision.
We have a representative democracy. Generally, you would assume if you're being asked to vote in a referendum, that either outcome would be implementable. Turns out that the referendum was really just David Cameron's plan to unify the conservatives, and he expected remain would win by a landslide, so didn't have a plan for if leave won.
Of course, we did vote for those representatives in the first place, so it's indirectly our fault either way.
That being said, given the enormity of this change, it was always going to be a challenge for the first year or two after it went into effect. In principle, EU scepticism is a perfectly reasonable view to have, our politicians just let us down.
In a normal democracy with a referendum system, the people vote on a text in place of having the politicians do it. The question is always “to you approve the text such and such.” The first problem is that the UK constitution doesn’t have this system I think, the second problem is what to vote on. They could either negotiate a treaty first and then ask people to approve it, or they could ask people to vote on the mission of the negotiators (but it’s tricky since the outcome is not known)
Within 4 years they passed another referendum cutting the taxes they voted in to pay for the trains without repealing the referendum requiring the transit authority to build the trains. Doh!
It would be easier to give said family $10,000 and exile them from the state, but then you'd have to face a very frank realization, California is not a good state for most working class people.
That's besides the point, let me know when this train gets built. More cities need public transit
this isn't true, the UK doesn't have them very often but we had had two country-wide referendums prior to the EU referendum
and at the council/district level they are frequent, even being required by law for certain proposed changes
Referendums should be preceded by fact-checked pros and cons of each decision, side by side. But no, let politician sh*t-talk on TV and buses with nonsense instead.
Democracy works when the voters are informed. With disinformation, the loudest voice wins. That’s not democracy.
A lady I know who thinks the law is terrible was complaining the other day that her daughter had to get off her insurance at 26. I had to bite my tongue so hard to not be like, ya know, without Obamacare she'd have been booted 8 years ago.
Why not politely inform her that the extension is a provision of the ACA?
Conservative backbenchers have wanted out of the EU for a while. To keep the peace within his own party, David Cameron (the former PM) promised them a referendum figuring it was a straight-forward (and safe!) lay-up that put the matter to bed, and that would then be the end of it. Essentially, "Remain" would easily win by a landslide and the matter would be settled for good.
The plan didn't pan out.
Because it was essentially intended as a rhetorical question when it was devised, no great amount of time was spent figuring out what a Leave vote would mean in practice as it was not expected to happen. Unfortunately, the upper echelons of both political parties spent so little time and effort explaining the implications that it left that role wide open for media outlets to fill in the many blanks - meaning that people on the Left were told it would be the end of days and those on the Right that it was a free ticket to the promised land with no downsides. The Right vote carried.
Could someone say what this means? I know Benidorm is a resort area popular with Brits but why was cash important if they were legally there anyway pre-Brexit? What's the angle?
As such, they were claiming welfare benefits in the UK, meanwhile working in Spain, and not declaring their income for tax in either country.
Edit: okay I actually read a bit of what is going on. They have zero income so can't stay. In reality they did have an income but didn't declare it to avoid taxes. No-one to blame but themselves in most cases it seems.
It could well be made up but in my view the domain name and the "Powered by Wordpress" banner in the bottom are stronger indicators.
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkSoAE1bizs
I generally avoid having an online presence anymore even though I was online back when it was called the Arpanet!
There are no crumbs to be found of them for the vast, vast majority.
If these people are older than their mid fourties, as they almost certainly are, I’d expect that to be the case just the same.
Especially for countries with stronger privacy protections. (IOW: no “find out about the petty crimes that your neighbor committed 35 years ago” websites.)
Its a very big US retiree expat community, from what I understand, that may be the largest worldwide. They even have an expat newspaper. Unlimited long term residency, tax free. Very nice weather and a few hours away from the beach. Very affordable.
https://expatsecuador.com/cuenca/cuenca-moving-guide/
I'm not sure a lot of Americans is a bonus to attract Brits though.
The economy is informal enough that if you work for cash and get paid cash and its not big figures, no one is going to come looking for you, either.
That includes retirement income, and any foreign wires.
Wasn't stating having Americans around was a bonus, simply, that US expats seem to be making that decision, make of that what you will
Your 90 days are up, Europe tells holiday home Britons
Charlie Devereux, Malaga | Tom Kington, Rome | Charles Bremner, Paris - Saturday March 27 2021, 12.01am GMT
John Price and Elaine Wilson may have to abandon their home in Spain after their post-Brexit residency application was rejected.
The couple were told that their claim failed because they had not bought private medical insurance before the end of last year, when the transition phase of Brexit ended.
Wilson, 53, a former paramedic, was waiting for the all-clear on breast cancer before buying insurance and the couple had been advised that they had until March 31.
Lawyers have told them that their appeal will probably fail. They are checking a Spanish government website daily to see if their appeal has been recorded. So far it has not, and they do not know if they will wake up on April 1 as illegal aliens.
“We’re on tenterhooks,” Price, 51, said. “We don’t know if we face fines, a bad stamp in our passports and being banned from entering the Schengen area. A rock and a hard place springs to mind.”
Britons across Europe are slipping into a post-Brexit limbo as red tape confounds their efforts to establish residency under new rules.
In Italy Britons who have residency are being refused jobs, healthcare, bank accounts and car purchases despite those rights and services being guaranteed under the EU Withdrawal Agreement.
In France like Price and Wilson in Spain, those living in their holiday homes since January 1 must leave the country by Thursday or face possible deportation and a ban on re-entering the country. April 1 marks the 90-day maximum that UK citizens are allowed to stay in any EU state within a six-month period without residence papers or a visa.
Before Wilson’s illness the couple spent their time shuttling between Spain and Shropshire, were they manage properties and a bed and breakfast business. But she says the cancer both made up her mind that she wanted to settle in Spain but also to delay the permanent move to Spain in order to complete her treatment in the UK for the sake of continuity.
In Spain thousands of Britons have rushed to legalise their status. Confusion and misinformation about the rules, which are interpreted differently in each region, has left many fearing that they will be ejected from a place they consider home.
Spain’s byzantine bureaucracy has spawned a parallel business of administrators or gestores to help foreigners to interpret the requirements. When Jeff Lunn and his wife, Deborah, applied for residency in August using a gestor recommended by friends they expected few problems. Seven months later they are h awaiting an appeal decision after their initial application was rejected.
The gestor had failed to include the terms and conditions for their medical insurance and the error has left them in limbo. They sold their home in Yorkshire and moved to a three-bedroom villa in Murcia.
The Lunns, who voted leave in the EU referendum, have had to hand in their British driving licences but will not get Spanish ones unless their residency is approved. They say they “have invested a lot of money here in Spain”.
Liza Hartley got her residency in December but her daughter, Anya, 12, did not. Hartley moved to Marbella to give Anya a bilingual education. She has been told her daughter’s application failed because of suspicions that she could have been kidnapped by her mother. The authorities need Hartley’s partner, Jimmy, who runs a construction business in Lancashire, to come to Spain and sign papers saying he gives consent. He cannot make it before the March 31 deadline because of Covid restrictions.
Thousands more face becoming illegal aliens in Spain on Thursday. Many have been living under the radar to avoid paying taxes, Anne Hernández, the president of Brexpats, which advises Britons in Spain on how to navigate ...
Seriously, EU ganging up on poor Britain.