The Mediterranean twilight casts a glow on the rugged mountains of the Sierra de los Filabres as the temperature falls far enough for Spaniards to venture outside. Seventy-odd Brits, however, have already been going for an hour, crammed in for quiz night at a roadside bar. “The British singer born Marie McDonald McLaughlin Lawrie,” asks the quizmaster, “is better known by which name?”
A boisterous mix of deep tans and bleached blonde hair, the contestants have helped give the semi-desert town of Arboleas its curious distinction — it is the most British municipality in Spain. Fifty-three per cent of residents are Britons, the highest proportion of anywhere in the country, and a change in UK electoral law means a record number can vote in the July 4 general election. They are also brimming with animosity towards the Tories.
“They’re gonna get what they deserve,” says Paul Baker, 65. “Kicked out.” A member of the Conservative party for most of his adult life, he quit around the time it elected Boris Johnson as leader. He laments the “just dire” state of the UK economy, which he sees via his own software company, whose clients are restaurants struggling with staff shortages, inflated costs and limp demand.
Having traded Hertfordshire for all-year sunshine and a parched rockscape 30 miles from the beach, Baker cares about another issue even more: “Rejoin”. Sadly for him, none of the main parties are pledging to reverse Brexit and go back into the EU. “I actually sent an email to Keir Starmer’s office saying ‘Why the hell aren’t you including rejoin, or at least rejoin the customs union?’” he says. “If Labour did, then I’d have to force myself to vote Labour.”
Brits number 2,300 in Arboleas, nearly 300,000 in Spain, and several million outside the UK. A change in the law earlier this year has potentially tripled their impact on the election by scrapping a rule that removed the right to vote from people who had been out of the country for more than 15 years. The government has estimated that the change will boost the pool of potential overseas voters from 1mn to about 3.3mn, although historically less than one-fifth of those eligible get round to registering.
The Labour party fought against the reform, arguing it was creating a loophole for “tax haven billionaires” to keep funnelling money into Conservative coffers. It has long been assumed that those with the resources to emigrate would lean more right than left. The government argued that the law had to be changed as a matter of fairness. But anger over Brexit has turned even once committed Tories against the party.
The consequences of leaving the EU may still feel remote for some back home. But in Arboleas, a cluster of cream-coloured villas and lemon groves in Almería province, the Brits are living with its real-life impact every day.
Bugbears include the need to get a Spanish driving licence, a ban on the import of British prescription glasses, and the levying of customs charges on everything else.
“Brexit is an absolute disaster. It really is,” says Cliff Chilton, 74, a retired electrical contractor. When he ordered a £20 book from the UK, the Spanish authorities demanded a £40 customs fee to release it. In response, he has stopped shopping on Amazon.co.uk. “It’s easier to buy stuff from the websites in China.”
Drinking in the New Trinidad bar, where a pint costs €3 and a picture of World Cup-winner Bobby Moore adorns the wall, Chilton says he is a life-long Conservative but has not decided how he will vote this time. Rishi Sunak is “very bright”, he says, but his premature exit from the D-Day commemorations showed he “lacks backbone”.
Brexit’s most dramatic impact in Spain was the way it cornered Britons who had been living illegally by not registering as residents, taking advantage of the fact their unstamped EU passports made them hard to track. As non-EU citizens, British visitors can now only stay for 90 days out of 180, so those in the shadows were forced to leave or get visas, which is not easy.
To obtain residency as retirees, Brits must show they have about €28,000 in funds — for up to five years. “They tell you: make sure you keep the money in the bank,” says Andrea Hollings, director of the Dream Homes property agency in Arboleas. “Then the next year people say ‘I don’t have it any more. I did up my kitchen.’ So it’s home you go.”
Michael Davies, a Costa del Sol solicitor, has had clients weeping over Brexit. A great injustice of the referendum, he says, is that people who had been out of the UK for more than 15 years were disenfranchised. “Probably 80 or 90 per cent of them would have voted against Brexit. Now we’re allowed to vote again, but it’s too late.”
The Brits in Arboleas love its rustic charm and affordability: a three-bedroom house with a swimming pool can cost €250,000, whereas the same property by the sea would be double the price.
The Spanish sun has hardened a sense that the mother country offers a raw deal. Craig Badley, 51, a military veteran now running a pool cleaning business, says the two-party duopoly has let people down. Given the choice between Sunak and Starmer, he wants neither. Nigel Farage’s return to Reform UK is something “I need to look into more deeply”, he says. “I really want to put my money on an outside chance because they could change things. But then I’m old enough to know that it will never happen.”
Badley moved to Spain just before Brexit came into force in early 2020 — and voted for it in 2016. He says he has no regrets, but is troubled to see asylum seekers being housed on former military bases and in hotels. “The reasons I voted for Brexit don’t seem to be happening in terms of looking after the shores of the United Kingdom.”
The cost of living matters too. He marvels that the solar panels on his house mean his electricity bill in Spain has never exceeded €4 a month. “The reason we’re leaving the UK is not all because of the weather. It’s not all because of the busy roads. It’s because of the amount we’re being fleeced.”
Back at the quiz in Bar International, Tracy Fowler from Ayrshire concurs. “I still have kids in the UK and it’s really quite hard for them to live there.”
After a lifetime voting Labour, she backed the Tories in 2019 because she could not abide Jeremy Corbyn. This time her vote will go to Starmer. “He’s not my favourite. But I think he’s much better than the Conservatives.”
At least one thing from back home gives some contestants satisfaction: they were right that Marie McDonald McLaughlin Lawrie is better known as Lulu.
