We are moving to Granada and are looking to stay for about 6 months and learn Spanish. Does anyone know the best schools and nice locations to live? We are IT geeks taking a much needed sabbatical. Any help would be much appreciated!
We live in Monachil Barrio, about 10 mins outside of the city. Our back garden is the Sierra Nevada national park! Lovely! We?ve lived in Spain for seven years, four here. We?ve four children, the two youngest are at the local school and so far so good. They speak fluent Spanish (well they were born here) and are learning in leaps and bounds. If we can help in anyway, just yell!
Hi, we live in the Granada province near to Baza, in the mountains. We live in a spanish village called Pulpite, with Spanish neighbours, and have a rental property, with pool. It may intrest you! We have 10 acres around the property so safe for the children, and our neighbour is an ex Spanish teacher from the local school, who retired last year. Good luck.
Hello. We live in La Zubia, just outside Granada. How old are your children? What sort of school do you want - the local state school, private school, bilingual school? Please let me know and I am happy to share what I know. My children go to a lovely small private school in Granada, in the vega. My husband is a Spanish teacher also (he is Spanish), so could help with your spanish learning.
Thanks for the reply! We are presently fairly focused on how to find a nice place to live for about 6 months. We will be arriving in early March. How does one find a place to live in Spain? Do you spend a week or so in a hotel and work with some kind of local real estate agent to look at places? I’m really not sure how it works. We’ve tried looking online and there seem to be some nice rental places but we’ve no idea what kind of neighbourhood they are in or how convenient they are with respect to getting into and out of town. We plan to buy a vehicle (and bicycles) so I think we can consider places both in town and a little ways out of town. Are there particular areas in and around Granada that we might want to focus on?
Monachil Barrio sounds nice especially bordering a national park. Is it about a 10 minute drive into the city? Is parking an issue?
Hi, we live in the Granada province near to Baza, in the mountains. We live in a spanish village called Pulpite, with Spanish neighbours, and have a rental property, with pool. It may intrest you! We have 10 acres around the property so safe for the children, and our neighbour is an ex Spanish teacher from the local school, who retired last year. Good luck.
Hi - is Pulpite near to Granada city? It is clear that I don’t know anything about the area.
Hello. We live in La Zubia, just outside Granada. How old are your children? What sort of school do you want - the local state school, private school, bilingual school? Please let me know and I am happy to share what I know. My children go to a lovely small private school in Granada, in the vega. My husband is a Spanish teacher also (he is Spanish), so could help with your spanish learning.
Actually we don’t have any children. It will just be the two of us. We are looking at some spanish language schools in Granada (city) at the moment. I’m a complete novice but my girlfriend already speaks some spanish.
Sorry, by schools, I had understood schools for children, not language schools! 😖 It is hard to get a feel for where you want to live without coming here and seeing the areas, how easy it is to get into Granada etc. If you want to live where you can walk to your language school, and have lots of bars, restaurants etc around, then you would do best to live in Granada itself. But this is more expensive than living outside. So it depends how much space you want. If you don’t mind somewhere small and with no outdoor space (possibly a small balcony/terrace), with traffic noise etc but you are within easy reach of everything that Granada has to offer, then go for the centre of Granada. The Albaicin is also lovely, quieter, not good for parking, but close to everything too. Or, if you want more space, outdoor space, less noise, easy parking but don’t mind being outside of Granada and having to travel for classes, nightlife etc, then go for one of the villages just outside. HTH. Juliet
When we started looking for somewhere to live, we started with the internet and found a particularly helpful estate agent, who was English and worked with local Spanish estate agents, alas she has gone back to the UK, BUT, we were living in Barcelona at the time and came down to Baza actually for hols and ended up where we are now. We love mountains and great scenery. The house we saw was the last one and it just had that feel. I would probably recommend staying in a hotel or likewise just to give you time to meander through the streets of Granada, and poss hire a car to view the other villages. Of course, being biaised, Monachil is fab and where we are its pretty quiet and but you do need a car! There is bus service, one little bus which takes you down to get the main Granada bus, they normally coincide. Parking is definetely not an issue here, and whenever I?ve gone into Granada, crossing fingers, touch wood, have never had a problem with any parking! Getting there is about 10 mins and can actually see the city from up here. Sorry, this seems a bit of a ramble, but one other thing the estate agent we used was Uno Imobili?ria right here in the Barrio, they had both rental and sale properties. Ooh, just one more thing, if you like biking then you will love the park, miles and miles of track and again great scenery and there just happen to be a few bars along the way too!
Again, just give us a yell if you want any more info and hope we?ve all been of some help. Perhaps when you come over you would like to come up for an ?orientation?drink, so to speak.
Hi,
Pulpite is about an hour from Granada, in the lake district, with 2 large national parks within 20 minuets, lots of tracks for cycling, and some stunning scenery!
Yes, it sounds like the way to go is to find a hotel for a short while well looking around. Can one bike into town from Monachil? Any suggestions for other villages that also might be good to look at? I was looking for Uno Imobili?ria online but couldn’t find them. I really like the idea of being near a park where we can cycle. I guess you have a car - was it difficult to buy? I have read online that buying a second hand car in Spain can be tricky and requires quite a lot of paperwork. The orientation drink idea sounds good!
If I can just jump in here; so far as buying a car is concerned any self respecting garage will handle the paperwork issues themselves.
You will need proof of address and your NIE document (it serves the same purpose as an identity card); but if you are only staying for six months to be honest there isn’t a great deal of point in applying for the NIE and again you might then have a problem selling a car on anyway because car dealers here tend to sell the cars on behalf of the owner and take a cut. Second hand cars can be more expensive than in the UK.
A better idea if you are only staying for six months would be to bring a UK car over here and run that instead; OK so the steering wheel is on the wrong side but hundreds if not thousands of other Brits in Spain don’t seem to find that to be too much of a problem. Provided the UK road tax MOT and Insurance remain in date during the period that the car is over here its perfectly legal to drive a UK reg car for up to 183 days.
Some parts of Granada City are permanently off limits during the day to cars and at the moment the Granada / Andalucia authorities are installing a tram system (like Sheffield) so traffic can be a bit chaotic as many roads are dug up during this installation period.
Thanks for the information regarding automobiles. Unfortunately I will be coming from Canada so I won’t have the opportunity to bring a car in from the UK. Would you know of any other means of getting a car during our 6 month stay? Does one have to have an NIE? And if so how long does it typically take to get? Whether or not we can get a car will dictate where we can stay so it is quite important to us.
Unfortunately an NIE is necessary for two main purchases out here, buying a house and buying a car. Its because of the tax implications.
Getting an NIE isn’t that difficult a process; in our case it took two visits to the National Police Station in Granada City, the first was to lodge the paperwork and the second to collect the Certificate about ten days later. I think the admin cost is about 10 Euros about 15 dollars Canadian per certificate. You can download the Application form from here;
The guide is about four years old but most of it still holds true. Note that in Andalucia, you do not need a Residencia Certificate but you will need the NIE. You also need to register with your local authority to obtain an Empadronimiento Cerificate. You can only do this when you have an address. Basically for car purchase purposes it handy as a proof of address. As I said previously any self respecting garage will handle the transfer documentation for you. You will not be permitted to drive the vehicle off the forecourt after purchase unless you have Insurance for the vehicle. during the period that the paperwork transfer is occurring you can sort out the Insurance. You will need a copy of the vehicle log book to do this.
Hi Nigel, looks like you?ve got all the info you need for buying a car, heaven knows what the cost would be for a long term rental! We bought our car in Barcelona, but we are residents and do have NIE numbers. You can certainly bike from Monachil to Granada, going wouldn?t be a problem as all downhill, as for the return journey, well lets just say its good for the thighs!! There are lots of little villages/towns around Granada, and probably staying centrally would be beneficial for the search!
I have a lovely town house for long term let in Montefrio. 350 euros per month. The house is in an excellent position in the centre of the town 2 minute walk to the round church and has all you need for a very comfy stay. It is furnished for permanent living. Briefly Lounge/diner, fully equipped kitchen, 3 double bedrooms, bathroom with bath and shower outside terrace, sky tv etc. Montefrio is about 40 mins from Granada and is a very pretty town of around 7000 surrounded by olive groves. You would be in the midst of Spanish but with a number of English speaking families settled here, so would never feel isolated. The town has all you need for day to day living banks, shops, library with free wi fi, schools etc. pubs (with free tapas - 4 tubos means no need to buy lunch) If you would like any further info please let me know. There is a bus to Granada
