A leading international property service provider has recently made an interesting comment on British buyers in the Spanish property market; but interestingly, those comments have strange synchronicities with what we observe about immigrants here and, indeed worldwide.

The company has pointed out that there are two discrete markets for Britons moving to Spain…both reflect the philosophy of those involved and also the lifestyle they wish to pursue.

The first of these groups move to Spain wishing to try a different type of lifestyle to that in Britain; they generally try to become well acquainted with the Spanish language, integrate as much as possible with the local Spanish community and, therefore, tend to be concentrated in more inland areas, as are the Spanish themselves.

The second of these groups move to Spain wishing to have a better lifestyle but within a British framework; they tend, therefore, to congregate around large ex-pat communities around the costal regions of the ‘costas’, and may make only a cursory attempt at learning the Spanish language or integrating with the locals.

As mentioned previously, this duality can be seen within all groups of people who immigrate to other countries as can a strange duality in semantics with regard to moving to other countries: Has anyone else noticed that when we move abroad permanently, we tend to call ourselves ex-pat’s, but that we label ex-pat’s coming here as immigrants? Comments?