MADRID – Brexit has caused a care crisis for elderly Britons living in Spain as fewer UK citizens move to live in Europe and work as volunteers, charities have said.
The post-Brexit rule that Britons can only spend 90 days in every 180 in Spain has meant that UK citizens must apply for visas if they want to live there longer.
The bureaucratic challenges have dissuaded many Britons from making a new life in Spain.
Thousands of retirees in Spain rely on charities such as the British Legion or Age Concern because their families live in Britain and accessing Spanish social services is not easy because of language problems.
However, since Brexit, the number of volunteers has dropped dramatically, putting more pressure on charities.
Michelle Greenwood, secretary and fundraising manager with Age Concern on the Costa del Sol who has lived in Spain for 15 years, said that before Britain voted to leave the European Union, the charity had up to 30 volunteers. Now, however, it had only five.
“There are less people coming to live in Spain because before Brexit there were no checks or limits on their time. Most people kept their homes in the UK and picked up voluntary work when they were here,” she told The i Paper.
“That does not happen now because obviously they are limited for their days so that scares people off. That has cut down on the number of volunteers.”
She added that elderly people had been affected by the lack of care as a result.
“People have come over and stayed in the English world as they have never entered the Spanish one. People hope nothing happens to them but when it does they struggle to cope,” she said.
Tracy, who did not want to disclose her full name, cares for her husband, Don, who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease. The couple moved from Chester in Cheshire to the town of Benalmádena, near Málaga on the Costa del Sol in 2020.
She said that it was difficult to care for someone while living abroad.
“Age Concern has been a great help but we went to Afab, a Spanish group for people with Alzheimer’s and they were not very friendly. They said it was only for Spaniards,” said Tracy, who said she did not speak fluent Spanish.
“It took us more than a year to get an appointment with a neurologist over here.”
Dr Kelly Hall, a social policy expert at the University of Birmingham, who has written a series of papers on British expats’ care needs, said Brexit was putting more strain on the voluntary sector in Spain.
“There are fewer people moving to Spain and fewer people buying holiday homes and volunteering. It is a ticking time bomb,” she said.
“There is an older generation helping voluntary organisations, but they are getting older themselves and are facing a really difficult situation.”
Dr Hall, a contributor to the book Retirement Migrants and Dependents: Caring for Sunseekers, which challenges the conception of Britons who retire to live in Spain, said many moved to be near their families, but without language skills or friends, they became isolated.
Some 400,000 Britons are residents in Spain, according to the Spanish National Statistics Institute, but the number of pensioners is unknown.
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