What are your options?

If you really want to succeed in the search for employment on the Costa del Sol, it will help if you speak Spanish. This will open the door to so many more opportunities and should you speak a third language your opportunities will be even greater. With a command of languages you could find work with companies whose business is targeted to the many foreign residents on the Costa del Sol.

Without fluent Spanish your options are more limited, but they exist, particularly in the coastal areas where most potential work will be allied to the needs of the expat community.

The service industries

There is bar work or restaurant work but this is likely to be paid in cash and the hourly rate might be very low. Your employer will probably not pick up the costs of social security and the work may also be seasonal. When the business is not busy you will not have a job but the employer will be happy to welcome you back when the tourists arrive again. Similarly other service industries offer regular, if not terribly glamorous, jobs. There is a constant need for cleaners to maintain the many second homes that exist on the coast. There is also a need for gardeners, pool cleaners and caretakers with basic maintenance skills.

Engineers and mechanics

There are also good opportunities for engineers and mechanics who are skilled in the servicing of upmarket vehicles. We know of people with such skills who have found work with local garages within days of arriving on the coast.

Building workers

If you have painting and decorating experience, plumbing, building, carpentry or similar skills there is potentially a lot of work available particularly from non-Spanish speaking expats who want to use the services of tradesmen to whom they can describe the required job without any language problems. Many people who have moved here are using these skills to make a comfortable living. Many offer their services as part of the ‘black’ economy and are paid in cash. This is fine, but if you really want to succeed in this type of employment in the long term, you should consider setting up your own official company. After all, the really lucrative contracts could come from people who want to renovate a large property and who want VAT receipts to justify their expenditure and therefore reduce their liability for capital gains tax when they sell.

If you speak fluent Spanish and you have a background in the building industry there are very good opportunities to offer your services as a project manager for restoration or general building projects. If you are able to communicate fully with the local builders you will be able to offer your clients a very good service through your contacts with local tradesmen who will probably charge a lot less for the work than the expat offering the same service. After all, if the local contractor is able to offer a lower hourly rate, the rate to your client will still look very competitive even after the addition of your commission to the bill and the work done will be totally legitimate.

The professions

If you possess recognised professional qualifications you might find that these are recognised, or can be recognised, in Spain so you could open a business as a vet, an optician, a dentist, or a practitioner of alternative medicine. If you have a medical or legal qualification this might also open the door to practising on the Costa del Sol with your own private practice although you might need to obtain some additional Spanish qualifications. You do need to check whether your qualifications are recognised under Spanish/EU law. You should be able to do this through your professional society, through the Spanish Consulate in the UK, NARIC or through EU Web sites. There is not the space in this book to go through all the various professions.

Estate agents

Unlike many other European countries the estate agency market in Spain is not yet governed by a huge number of regulations and there are many people working in Spain in real estate without any background or qualifications. I have never met so many estate agents in my life or those who think they are estate agents. With a booming property market many are making a very good living indeed but I have to say that this is a very competitive market and your income may depend very heavily on how many properties you actually sell. If you are happy with the hard-sell approach it would be a possibility for employment – you will probably have a contract of employment but most of your income could be in the form of commission. My only reservation about this area of work would be that, in the longer term, Spain may introduce some of the more stringent regulations which already exist in other European countries concerning estate agents. This could change this potential employment opportunity dramatically.

At the moment the potential rewards are high but should you choose this route you could end up with a seven-day-a-week job with very long hours and very high sales targets, particularly in the summer months when there are many potential viewers of property for sale.

Jobs in this sector are heavily advertised in the English-language press. Some involve selling property while others are in the timeshare-selling business, which is even more aggressive.