The Mediterranean twilight casts a glow on the rugged mountains of the Sierra de los Filabres as temperatures drop enough for Spaniards to venture outside. However, about seventy Britons have already been at it for an hour, crammed together for a quiz night in a roadside bar. “By what name is the born British singer Marie McDonald McLaughlin Lawrie,” asks the quizmaster, “better known?”
With a heady mix of deep brown and bleached blonde hair, the participants have given the semi-desert town of Arboleas its remarkable character: it is the most British municipality in Spain. Fifty-three percent of residents are British, the highest percentage of anywhere in the country, and a change in British electoral law means a record number will be able to vote in the July 4 general election. They are also brimming with hostility towards the Tories.
“They get what they deserve,” said Paul Baker, 65. “Threw out.” He was a member of the Conservative Party for most of his adult life, resigning around the time Boris Johnson was elected leader. He laments the “simply terrible” state of the British economy, which he observes through his own software company, whose customers include restaurants struggling with staff shortages, high costs and weak demand.
After trading Hertfordshire for year-round sunshine and a parched rocky landscape 30 miles from the beach, Baker is even more concerned about another problem: “Rejoining.” Unfortunately for him, none of the main parties are promising to reverse Brexit and return to the EU. “I even sent an email to Keir Starmer’s office saying, ‘Why on earth don’t you rejoin the Customs Union, or at least rejoin the Customs Union?’” he says . “If Labor did that I would have to force myself to vote Labour.”
There are 2,300 Britons in Arboleas, almost 300,000 in Spain and several million outside Britain. A change in the law earlier this year may have tripled their impact on elections by removing a rule that disenfranchised people who had been out of the country for more than 15 years. The government estimates the change will increase the pool of potential foreign voters from 1 million to about 3.3 million, although historically less than a fifth of eligible voters get around to registering.
The Labor Party fought the reform, arguing it created a loophole for “tax haven billionaires” to continue funneling money into Conservative coffers. It has long been assumed that those with the means to emigrate would lean more to the right than to the left. The government argued that the law should be changed for reasons of justice. But anger over Brexit has turned even the once committed Tories against the party.
For some at home, the consequences of leaving the EU may still seem remote. But in Arboleas, a cluster of cream-colored villas and lemon groves in the province of Almería, Britons live with its real impact every day.
Bugbears include the need to get a Spanish driver’s license, a ban on the import of British prescription glasses and the imposition of customs duties on everything else.
“Brexit is an absolute disaster. It really is,” said Cliff Chilton, 74, a retired electrician. When he ordered a £20 book from Britain, Spanish authorities demanded £40 customs fees to release it. In response, he stopped shopping on Amazon.co.uk. “It’s easier to buy things from websites in China.”
Drinking in the bar in New Trinidad, where a pint costs €3 and a picture of World Cup winner Bobby Moore hangs on the wall, Chilton says he has been a conservative all his life but has not yet decided how he will this time to vote. Rishi Sunak is “very smart”, he says, but his premature departure from the D-Day commemorations showed he “lacks a backbone”.
The most dramatic impact of Brexit in Spain was the way that Britons who had been living illegally were cornered by failing to register as residents, taking advantage of the fact that their unstamped EU passport made them difficult to trace . As non-EU citizens, British visitors can now only stay 90 days out of 180, so those in the shadows have been forced to leave or apply for a visa, which isn’t easy.
To get a residence permit as a retiree, Brits must prove they have around €28,000 in resources – for up to five years. “They tell you: make sure you keep the money in the bank,” says Andrea Hollings, director of Dream Homes real estate agency in Arboleas. “The next year people say, ‘I don’t have it anymore. I renovated my kitchen.’ So you go home.”
Michael Davies, a lawyer on the Costa del Sol, has left clients crying over Brexit. A major injustice of the referendum, he says, is that people who had been out of Britain for more than fifteen years no longer had the right to vote. “Probably 80 to 90 percent of them would have voted against Brexit. Now we can vote again, but it is too late.”
The British in Arboleas love the rustic charm and affordability: a three-bedroom house with a pool can cost €250,000, while the same seaside house would cost double that.
The Spanish sun has hardened the feeling that the mother country is offering a raw deal. Craig Badley, 51, a military veteran who now runs a pool cleaning business, says the two-party duopoly has left people behind. Given the choice between Sunak and Starmer, he wants neither. Nigel Farage’s return to Reform UK is something I “need to look at more deeply”, he says. “I really want to put my money on an outside opportunity because they can change things. But then I’m old enough to know that it will never happen.”
Badley moved to Spain just before Brexit came into effect in early 2020 – and voted for it in 2016. He says he has no regrets, but is concerned that asylum seekers are being housed on former military bases and in hotels. “The reasons why I voted for Brexit do not appear to be about caring for Britain’s coasts.”
The cost of living also matters. He is amazed that the solar panels on his house ensure that his electricity bill in Spain never exceeds €4 per month. “The reason we are leaving Britain is not just because of the weather. This is not just due to the busy roads. It’s because of the amount of money we get.’
Back at the quiz at Bar International, Tracy Fowler from Ayrshire agrees. “I still have children in Britain and it is really difficult for them to live there.”
After a lifetime of voting Labour, she backed the Tories in 2019 because she could not tolerate Jeremy Corbyn. This time her vote goes to Starmer. ‘He’s not my favorite. But I think he is much better than the Conservatives.”
At least one thing from home is satisfying for some participants: they were right that Marie McDonald McLaughlin Lawrie is better known as Lulu.