A few years ago, I decided that I wanted to renovate a farmhouse in the Spanish countryside and so I moved to Malaga. I dreamt of living on a plot and rescuing some donkeys, growing my own vegetables and spending most days outside. I’m an interior designer so the house renovation part doesn’t scare me but, as a city girl from London with no experience of living in the countryside, until now, the latter part was more daunting. I was told by many how bold this move was but I can’t say I felt particularly brave; it felt right to try something new, the right time to challenge myself in a new way.
When I moved to my rented five bedroom farmhouse five months ago, I shipped everything I own with me; in hindsight, I could have definitely got rid of a lot more but I’m a sentimental soul and like my home comforts. I took this house for the hilltop views and because when I met with the owner, we had a lot of parallels which convinced me it was the right place for my first chapter of countryside living. It may have more bedrooms than I technically need but they've already proved useful for hosting – turns out a lot of people want to visit when you live in Spain.
While there are plenty of people I miss from my London life, there's not much else from the capital that I'm pining after. At first I missed the convenience and having everything you could want at the push of a button. I’m almost ashamed to admit this now (although I used to wear it like a badge of honour at the time) but it was not uncommon for me to Deliveroo breakfast, lunch and dinner to my basement flat in south London in a single day. A craving for sushi was satisfied within 20 minutes and crispy chicken burgers for a Sunday hangover cure delivered to my front door. I've ordered all kinds of things directly to my apartment: medicine, massages and same-day deliveries for all sorts of niche whims. Now, sat on my little bamboo sofa on my terrace 40 minutes outside of Malaga I can’t order anything. Even standard post won’t find me here, I need a post box in town – I’ve adjusted surprisingly quickly.
Living in Malaga City for a year and a half before this move definitely helped me prepare. Malaga is quite small compared to London and I rented in the historical centre where I could walk everywhere I needed within about 20 minutes. Yes, I still had access to deliveries but things were so close and I was so enamoured with the city that I preferred to venture out to bustling terraces and sunny rooftops. Now, looking out over the vast surrounding olive groves I wonder, what is convenience really? And who is it serving? Heading into town to collect my post includes a chat with Spanish locals to practise the language and waiting in a very slow queue while each person chats to the staff at length (or so it would seem when compared to a London interaction). There is no sense of urgency and why should there be? In London, I would pay subscriptions for the fastest deliveries, eat a sandwich on the go, grab a drive-thru when on the road, multitask about six things at once and have anxiety dreams about the most efficient way to run all my errands that day.
Slowing down to pick my homegrown herbs, cook each meal from scratch and eat outside, I’ve realised there’s an inner peace that I’ve cultivated from the inconvenience of this new life. Never one for meal prepping before, now I have to plan shopping trips to far-flung stores for more unusual ingredients – which I could have sourced from a store walkable from my London apartment but never did because why make ramen when it can be delivered?
A slower life for me has meant feeling a lot more embodied and present in each task at hand. It’s not to say I’ve become lazy because I still have long lists of things to do and goals I want to achieve, but I’m far less hung up on the timeframe. It's about slowing down to value the small moments in every day and to inject joy into each task. I feel more of a sense of achievement if I’m doing tasks with more awareness of how things feel, look, smell, the language used and connections made, which are markers that passed me by when I moved through spaces at speed.
I’m finding that Spanish people value family above all else and they really make time for one another. I get the feeling that people go out of their way for each other here. It’s a great thing to be entwined in. I try hard to play my part in this too in my own way despite being here without my family. For me, it’s meant talking to more strangers, helping newly made friends with tasks, working with my neighbours to fix things after the floods and generally finding time for the unexpected. And that’s come at the expense of my efficient tendencies. Of course, the most inefficient and inconvenient thing is that I don’t speak fluent Spanish. I am learning and taking lessons but I have to concentrate quite hard to understand the strong Andalusian accent. It’s humbling to learn a language and I quite enjoy the errors I make sometimes. Luckily my neighbours and people I meet in town are very patient with me, taking the time to teach me new words or explain with gestures and simplified language things I have misunderstood.
In short, I’ve come to realise that embracing inconvenience is the key to living slowly and living well in the Spanish countryside. Planning in advance, waiting for things, going out of my way to source items, asking for local knowledge and celebrating the small wins. It’s all been quite an inconvenience and something I am quite content with.
