In the last five years programmes like “Place in the Sun” have featured companies like ourselves who have been opening up new areas to the more adventurous buyer. Whereas rural Spanish properties at the beginning of the decade meant half an hour from from the beach.

Some buyers now are even finding their ideal home is more easily reached from Madrid rather than Malaga. Extremadura for example with it’s ample lakes and houses for less than £30,000, most of which would cost ten times that on the Costa del Sol are a chance for the majority to enjoy the lifestyle of the minority. Areas like rural Almeria and Granada can also offer the property hunter wonderful opportunities including skiing.

The British buying a Spanish property, be it a holiday home, or a permanent residence have historically been wary of buying rural Spanish properties a bit like the early settlers in Australia, whether for fear of dangerous natives and wild beasts, I cannot say. The only real unknown that you will find buying rural Spanish property is that rare beast the Bargain. Rural Spanish property tends to be considerably cheaper than it’s coastal equivalent. As for the natives they tend to be far friendlier than the coastal tribes, offering home grown produce and the occasional bottle of local wine to the newcomer.

As most of us do not come from the coast in the U.K. and the reality of living in Spain is very different from the holiday fortnight. A lot of people retiring to Spain can find themselves isolated in the rootless urban sprawl that much of the coastline now consists of.

The friendliness of people in rural Spain will be much easier to live with than the ebb and flow of life by the sea. The country Spaniard has always lived better than the townie and as everyone is known to and by his neighbour crime and all the other diseases of the urban sprawl such as traffic queues are left to the less fortunate who have followed the herd to the sea.