Although retiring to Gran Canaria might sound like a good plan, don’t start packing your bags just yet. When you choose where to retire, you are making a decision for life. You are going to buy a home and spend the rest of your days in the location of your choice, which means it is crucial to choose the right location for you.
If you have visited Gran Canaria many times on holiday and fallen in love with it, you should bear in mind that retiring and living somewhere is very different from visiting there as a tourist. Here are 7 cons to weigh in with your pros:
1) YOU’LL BE FAR FROM HOME
Retire to the coast and you can get home (if there is an emergency or if your friends or family need you) in an hour. Retire to mainland Spain and you can be home in 2 hours. Retire to the Canaries, which are located just off the north coast of Africa, and the flight alone is 4 hours.
When my Dad had an accident I discovered there was just one flight a week from Gran Canaria to Exeter. If your children visit you often (or vice versa) that won’t be happening after you retire to Gran Canaria. Can you really bear to swap your weekly visits for a one-week holiday in the summer and a few phone calls? You will be far from home and you will feel like you are.
2) SUMMER CAN BE UNBEARABLY HOT
Visit Gran Canaria in different seasons to make sure you can cope with the sometimes extreme weather. If you usually spend the winter in Gran Canaria and the summer in the UK (I know a few couples who do this) the summer might come as a shock. 40 C is not unheard of during August. 50 C can happen during a sirocco. I even suffered 60 C during one sirocco (calima).
If you can afford air conditioning (a fan is useless during sirocco) at least you can stay indoors. If not, your usually cool swimming pool will be hot, the “cold” water coming out of your shower will be hot and popping to the shop to pick up more ice and bottled water will be an ordeal. Likewise, when it’s 13 C in the winter and you don’t have central heating or double glazing you might dream of being next to an open fire back in the UK. You will miss the seasons, you’ll miss the “fresh” weather, you will miss the rain, you will miss the Autumn colours. You will miss the summer nights being light until 10pm. This far south it’s dark by 8pm even in the summer. Maybe you don’t believe such things are miss-able but just wait and see.
3) THE CULTURE IS VERY DIFFERENT
Canarians are nothing like the Brits or Irish (or any other nationality I know) and I’m saying that after 12 years of living here. Some things that seem normal to you seem strange to them, and vice versa. The Canarians like different food and different entertainment. They hold different values and have different hobbies. They even speak a different language! Canarians don’t understand sarcasm. They don’t get British humour. They don’t identify with British customs or etiquette.
They don’t know what’s going on in EastEnders or Coronation Street, they don’t know anything about the UK (apart from the absolute basics) and they don’t want to know either. You will find the odd exception but prepare for the worst. I’ve been here for 12 years and, although I have plenty of friends, I don’t have one Canarian friend. We’re just too different, I guess. I’m not anti-Canarian but I have 50 non-Canarian friends and no Canarian ones. Fact.
Photo by Hector Garcia
4) WHAT WILL YOU MISS?
Think about this one. What will you really miss? What do you like to do at the moment? What makes up the larger part of your day? Do you have a local pub where everyone knows you? Do you like to visit your children or grandchildren? Do you like High Street shopping? Do you enjoy eating out at good restaurants? Do you like British food and drinks at reasonable prices? You can forget most of that when you retire to Gran Canaria.
You can find a new local pub but that will take time. You won’t find as many shops as in the typical UK shopping centre or High Street. You can get imported British food and drink at super-inflated prices or learn to like Canarian food. You will miss your children and grandchildren. Spending an hour on Skype or MSN Messenger is not the same as living a 10 minute drive away. Your grandchildren will visit you in the summer and you will be shocked to see they’re a foot taller.
Photo by Mr Bill
5) INTEGRATION CAN BE HARD
Living in a place where they speak a different language, have different beliefs, customs and more can be difficult. Moving from the North of England to the South can be hard enough but moving from the UK or Ireland to the Canaries can present even more problems.
Not only do you have to deal with all the day-to-day things but you will also need to open a bank account, buy a house, work out how to get your UK pension, buy a car and more. You will need to learn the language or afford an English-speaking lawyer. There will be misunderstandings, delays (what is important to you will be “yeah, manana, whatever” in Gran Canaria). Half my mail doesn’t arrive. Half of what I send doesn’t arrive either. The shops close for “siesta” from 1pm until 4pm or 5pm. The locals like to stay up until 2am (with their kids) and make as much noise as they can (or at least our neighbours do and so did the last ones and the ones before them).
6) THE LANGUAGE BARRIER
I’m not saying you can’t learn Spanish because of course you can if you want to. You cannot learn it overnight though. If you are determined to retire to Gran Canaria you will want to learn Spanish in the UK or wherever you are from before you come over. Some Canarians speak English but don’t expect it to be spoken outside the resorts. Don’t expect your doctor to speak English. Don’t expect your waiter to speak English (unless you’re in one of the resorts).
Photo by Claire Guzman
And don’t forget that Canarian Spanish bears very little resemblance to classic Spanish. They have different words and they pronounce things lazily, leaving off letters and sometimes omitting entire syllables. I have an A level in Spanish but it took me months to get used to the Canarian drawl. Sometimes I still can’t keep up.
7) GRAN CANARIA IS FOR TOURISTS
The island is full of tourists. If you’re on holiday you expect to hear drunk people singing outside your window at 3am. You expect the local shop to be packed with sweaty tourists in bikinis and Bermuda shorts. You might even expect to be hassled every single day by timeshare touts, reps from bars and restaurants trying to drag you in (because they’re on commission, not because the place is any good) and by other people trying to con you or sell you things you don’t want. Having to say “no thank you” every day becomes tedious.
Photo by Mr T Man
So now what are you thinking…?
If you live in one of the main resorts, it will be like being on holiday for a few weeks and that will be fun. After that it depends whether you can put up with the endless hordes of tourists and everything that goes with tourism. It is very expensive to find a house, villa or bungalow in the tourist area besides, and the shops in the tourist resorts are really expensive. Do you really want to pay one pound fifty for a half-litre of milk or eighty pence for a peach? If you plan to live outside the tourist resorts, your neighbours will only speak Spanish and you will be totally away from any other Brits or Irish.
So you have a choice to make. I strongly suggest you read the above advice and bear it in mind. There are enough articles on the internet about how great Gran Canaria is and how wonderful it is to retire somewhere sunny but you might end up thinking the sun is the only good thing about the island. And once you realise what you miss, it might be too late.
My objective with this post is to give you the flip-side. Every cloud might have a silver lining but that means every silver lining has a cloud.
Weigh up the pros and cons. Visit the island during different seasons. Spend 3 months there and see how you feel.
Perhaps retiring to Gran Canaria would suit you perfectly. Or perhaps it would be the biggest mistake of your life.
13 responses so far ↓
1 Thomas Mc Kenna // Jun 11, 2011 at 5:04 am
Most of what you say is correct not to sure about mail i think if you go to the trouble of posting it in a main P.O i think you might get a higher rate of deliverly.
2 Victoria // Jun 11, 2011 at 11:07 am
Thanks for commenting
Most of what I send arrives (not all) but about 1/3 of what my family/friends send doesn’t get to me.
3 Happy In Gran Canaria // Jun 14, 2011 at 7:52 am
I’m sorry, but what a horribly bigoted post!
I see the need to advise people that living in Gran Canaria is not the same a being on holiday nor is it like living in the UK, surely that should be obvious…
You say “the objective of this post is to give you the flip side”. This is not the flip-side, this is an ignorant and unbalanced account of life in Gran Canaria.
Surely the joy of living in another country is embracing its culture, differences, the language and its idiosyncrasies?
I think the fact that you don’t have any Canarian friends after living here so long is both very shocking and telling…
You state, “Canarians don’t understand sarcasm. They don’t get British humour. They don’t identify with British customs or etiquette.” What a ridiculous, unbalanced generalisation, yes our customs/humour are different, but we are from the UK, not bloody Mars, and my friends are always really interested in UK customs, and likewise me theirs.
Thank God for the passionate, warm, open, funny Canarians who I both work and socialise with. I adore their love of children, socialising as a family, having a siesta, enjoying the wonderful warm evenings, shopping in the cool evenings, embracing local produce and local wine… I really could go on, and on.
I have lived here for 17 years, initially in a tourist area and now in a small fishing village, with my young family.
Thank God for our differences, I say.
4 Victoria // Jun 14, 2011 at 8:01 am
Hello “Happy in Gran Canaria” and thank you for your response.
I’m sorry you feel that one person’s opinion is “bigoted” simply because it does not match your own opinion but I know quite a few people who have moved to GC and moved back to the UK again after a few years because it wasn’t working out and they weren’t happy there. So it’s not for everyone.
Before people rush into such a move, it pays to think about what could go wrong or what they might not like. I wrote the above article giving reasons not to move. I didn’t say that nobody should move over, just that it isn’t right for everyone.
The fact that you’ve lived in GC for 17 years shows that you’ve truly found your home, somewhere you are happy, and good for you. Nothing wrong with that at all.
But it’s not the same for everybody. Some people do rush into moving overseas without giving much thought to whether or not it’s the right step for them.
I’m hardly “ignorant” about life in GC, after spending 11 years on the island. Nowhere is perfect, not the UK, not the Canaries, nowhere. But it’s different strokes for different folks.
If someone is thinking about retiring to Gran Canaria and they’ve read all the reasons they should go, perhaps this article will give them some food for thought about why it might not be the right choice for them.
People have the right to decide for themselves and what suits one doesn’t necessarily suit everyone.
I’m glad you’re enjoying life in Gran Canaria but that doesn’t mean living there is everybody’s cup of tea.
Retirement overseas is something that people need to think long and hard about, and think about the possible cons as well as the pros, which is what the original article is about.
You’re entitled to your views, of course. Thanks for commenting.
Victoria
5 James // Jun 21, 2011 at 4:21 am
Hmm , it sounds as you are the one with the problem – not GC. I have lived here for many years and find the Canarians delightful and welcoming. I have many Canarian friends but avoid most Brits like the plague!
Maybe it is you who is in the wrong place!
6 Victoria // Jun 21, 2011 at 5:02 am
Hi James,
Thanks for your response. I think you misunderstood the point of my article.
First of all I am not saying anyone (either me or GC) has a “problem”.
Secondly, the article lists 7 possible reasons not to retire to the island if somebody is considering it.
Just because you like the locals doesn’t mean everyone is going to get on with them and the above article gives some examples of some things that might apply to some people, just to think about. Some people might feel out of their depth surrounded by “foreigners” (not how I think about them but how someone who’s lived in the UK for 65 years might).
Also, you say you “avoid most Brits like the plague” which is strange since you ARE one of them (I’m assuming). I don’t “avoid” Canarians (I wouldn’t “avoid” any nationality) – I simply don’t find I have much in common with many of them, perhaps because I’ve travelled so much and have a lot of wordly experiences and find it hard to find others to share these with. Who knows? Yes they’re welcoming (in general) and friendly but I find it hard to progress beyond small talk with most.
Just me? Possibly.
Perhaps someone considering retirement to Gran Canaria will find my article useful, perhaps not. It’s just food for thought anyway, James.
I’m sure there are 7 great reasons to retire in Gran Canaria as well (or more) but I wrote the above article to provide a contrast with all the “why GC is so great” posts on other travel websites, so people can weigh the potential cons as well as the pros.
I’m well aware there are thousands of long-term residents in GC who wouldn’t change a thing about where they live or their lifestyles. It just wouldn’t suit everyone though.
7 Jayne // Jul 17, 2011 at 5:45 am
Hi
I would just like to say that although many of the reasons given for not retiring to GC require careful consideration, I do have to disagree with the comments regarding the Canarians themselves. On the whole they are welcoming and friendly, they love an excuse for a party and anyone is welcome.
You will find their love of music at these parties, the Canarians love to sing and play guitar.
I find that despite the language barrier, as long as you are willing to embrace their customs you will be made more than welcome in their homes.
As for the other points made I would just like to add another one…be prepared to have screens on all your windows and doors in the evenings especially, or risk being bitten frequently by mosquitos…and don’t be afraid of cockroaches, they are part of the scenery!
8 Victoria // Jul 17, 2011 at 6:36 am
Hi Jayne, thanks for your comments. I forgot about the screen doors! Roaches are part and parcel of living somewhere warm, of course. They still make my skin crawl but that’s what the screen doors (and spray) are for.
I never said Canarians weren’t warm and friendly. Most of them are as you describe. They also like to party and enjoy themselves.
I just find it hard to get beyond small talk with them or to discuss world affairs or travel (outside the Canaries) or anything like that. For potential retirees this might be something to bear in mind, that’s all – the difference between the cultures does exist. That is a general observation but not a racist ones. Different cultures are different.
9 mary stonebridge // Feb 2, 2012 at 6:11 pm
Hi! Victoria arrived back form Gran Canaria last thursday ,after eighteen days couldn’t get the cycle hire for the price we could afford. Cheaper to hire a car. 185 euros for two cycles for a week is far to expensive. We will have to buy two cheap bikes to bring with us next time as were hoping to stay for a month, and leave them there or try and sell them on.
Mary.
10 Victoria // Feb 2, 2012 at 6:15 pm
Hi Mary! Sorry you couldn’t get a discount on the bikes. Seems silly to me that during the quiet periods shops would rather have bikes sitting around than give a discount. Not good business sense. You’re right – that is too expensive. Your idea of bringing your own next time might work. You have to pay a bit to get them on the plane I suppose but you can sell them at the end. I’m not sure where but there are some local newspapers etc you can look at. I hope you had a lovely holiday anyway! Victoria
11 Victoria // Feb 2, 2012 at 6:16 pm
The newspapers to advertise them in, I mean. Oh, and there are quite a few Gran Canaria groups on Facebook. If you don’t use Facebook I can always put an ad on for saying how much the bikes are etc
12 Aidan Maher // Apr 2, 2012 at 1:03 am
Hi Victoria – I commend you for pointing out the down side to living in GC. As you observed the Internet is full of glowing reports. My wife and I are considering moving from Seattle, USA to GC for about 4 months from Jan. to Apr. every year. We are originally from Ireland. An extended vacation or a truncated residency? We shall see. We hope to enjoy the best of both worlds.
Aidan
13 Victoria // Apr 2, 2012 at 11:52 am
Hi Aidan, well there are upsides and downsides to everything I guess, and living in GC is not going to suit everyone. I wish you luck in your extended winter-breaks. It is certainly lovely to feel the warm sun on your face during the winter
And who knows, maybe one day you might wish to retire out there for good. I know people who love life in GC.
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