{"id":43764,"date":"2026-06-21T06:53:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-21T06:53:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/43764\/"},"modified":"2026-06-21T06:53:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-21T06:53:08","slug":"in-spain-elderly-uk-expats-struggle-for-care-post-brexit-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/43764\/","title":{"rendered":"In Spain, elderly UK expats struggle for care post-Brexit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Turre, Spain
Reuters<\/a><\/p>\n

Daniel Northover left his home in Liverpool this month, which marks the 10th anniversary of Britain\u2019s Brexit referendum, to move in with his 80-year-old mother in Turre, a town of 4,500 people in Andalusia in southern Spain.<\/p>\n

After his stepfather died last summer, Northover, 53, has taken turns with his sister to travel back and forth to Spain to care for his mother Carole, who cannot cook, clean or dress by herself after suffering several strokes.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Daniel Northover, 53, pushes his mother Carole Bentley, 80, in her wheelchair alongside Nerea, 19, her morning caregiver, as they head out for their morning walk in the village of Turre, Almeria, Spain, on 18th June, 2026. PICTURE: Reuters\/Loyola Perez de Villegas Muniz<\/p>\n

But with non-EU residents only allowed to remain in the bloc for 90 days in every 180 without a visa, he said it had become unsustainable. A project manager for local councils and charities, Northover did not meet the requirements for a working visa. Visas to care for a dependent family member are only available if it is the UK citizen needing the care.<\/p>\n

A senior European Commission official said cases where the absence of a family member providing care would force the elderly beneficiary of the Withdrawal Agreement to leave the host state were evaluated on merit. Otherwise, general migration rules applied.<\/p>\n

Northover\u2019s sister\u2019s application for a family reunification visa was rejected.<\/p>\n

That left Northover and his partner with no choice but to sell their house to raise the funds for a so-called \u201cnon-lucrative\u201d visa \u2013 which bars them from working \u2013 and become full-time carers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe way the [Brexit] withdrawal agreement was written means we\u2019ve had to give up our lives and careers,\u201d Northover said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe agreement was terrible. They didn\u2019t think it through,\u201d said Carole, waving her fist in anger as she sat in her wheelchair in the Spanish sun next to her son.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m so ashamed I\u2019ve caused [my children] this stress.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2018\u201dA recurring problem\u201d
Northover\u2019s situation mirrors that of tens of thousands of families of British retirees in Spain scrambling to find ways to care for their infirm parents abroad.<\/p>\n

Britain voted by 52 per cent to 48 per cent in a referendum on 23rd June, 2016, to exit the European Union after more than four decades of membership. The decision meant an end to Britons\u2019 automatic right to live and work without restrictions in EU member states.<\/p>\n

Spain\u2019s resident British population, the largest in the EU at around 266,000 according to official statistics, is ageing fast. The number of over-75s has grown from 36,000 in July 2016 to over 51,000 at the start of last year, Spanish data shows.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a recurring problem that isn\u2019t going to go away,\u201d said Sally Myburgh, a British resident of Malaga who runs a Facebook group offering advice for navigating Spain post-Brexit.<\/p>\n

Myburgh said she regularly encounters families in Northover\u2019s situation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe attitude is they should just go back to England\u2026but these people are at the end of their lives,\u201d she said of the retirees. \u201cThis is their home.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
The village of Turre, in Almeria province, Spain, on 18th June, 2026. PICTURE: Reuters\/Loyola Perez de Villegas Muniz<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone knows me here\u201d
The number of Britons living in Spain has remained largely stable since the Brexit vote, official data shows. About a third of them are pensioners, and many live in villages and towns dotted along Spain\u2019s Costa Blanca and Costa del Sol coastlines.<\/p>\n

The Spanish social care system provides home care to infirm citizens and residents, but this is capped at 94 hours a month for those classified as suffering from a \u201ctotal loss of autonomy\u201d \u2013 around three hours a day.<\/p>\n

Returning to the UK is a daunting and unrealistic prospect for those who have spent decades in Spain and have no community or property to return to, said Neal Anderson, a welfare officer at the \u2018Help at Home Costa Blanca\u2019 charity providing support to elderly Britons in the area.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy mum is 80. A major upheaval is distressing. Uprooting her to a place she doesn\u2019t know with people she doesn\u2019t know\u2026it could kill her,\u201d Northover said, adding he feared that even if she survived the move, registering her in Britain\u2019s overburdened social care system would take months.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t imagine living [in the UK] now\u2026I love Spain\u2026This is home,\u201d said Carole, who voted to remain in the EU. \u201cEveryone knows me here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013 With reporting by MICHAEL GORE<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Turre, SpainReuters Daniel Northover left his home in Liverpool this month, which marks the 10th anniversary of Britain\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":43765,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1935,7716,19925,19926,17,841,19927],"class_list":["post-43764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-spain","tag-brexit","tag-elderly","tag-family-reunification-visa","tag-non-eu-residents","tag-spain","tag-uk","tag-uk-expatriates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43764\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}