In the spring of 2015, we sailed 22 nautical miles up the Rio Guadiana, intending to anchor for a week or two between the villages of Sanlúcar de Guadiana, on the Spanish side of the river, and Alcoutim, on the Portuguese side.
My husband, daughters (Lily, then six, and Katie, four) and I were a year into a global circumnavigation aboard our 36ft yacht. Little could I have imagined, as we dropped anchor to a soundscape of sheep bells and birdsong, that, nine years later, I would still be here.
We had always intended to home educate our daughters. But the opportunity to enrol them for a few months in the tiny 30-pupil school in Sanlúcar, to be immersed in Spanish language and culture, was too good to pass up.
Those few months turned into the entire school year, and then the next and, in mid-2018, we realised we weren’t ever going to sail the world, so we moved ashore and sold the boat.
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My husband returned to the UK just before Covid and then died unexpectedly in 2021. My girls, fluent in Spanish, are now 14 and 15 years old. No longer in the little village primary school, they travel 25km on the schoolbus to secondary school, while I work from home as a ghostwriter and editor for clients all over the world.
Sanlúcar de Guadiana is a tiny, close-knit village of just more than 300 people nestled in the almond-, olive- and cork oak-covered hills of western Andalucia, facing its Portuguese neighbour, Alcoutim, 200 metres across the river.
We live in a rich environment of two languages, two distinct cultures, and two time zones. With both villages embracing sustainable tourism, we enjoy a yearly round of festivals dedicated to walking, cuisine, music and a shared history of cross-border smuggling!
Our village is quiet for much of the year, but comes to life in summer, at Christmas and, most importantly, on the weekend after Easter, for a noisy, fun-filled four-day fiesta honouring the Virgen de la Rábida. Locals return home from across Andalucia, and as far afield as Madrid and Barcelona, to celebrate and honour traditions, such as carrying the “Virgen” through the streets and performing an energetic Morris-style dance.
Enrolling our daughters in school was a great introduction to village life. I befriended other parents at the school gate, at birthday parties and through the parents’ association.
I spoke no Spanish when we first arrived, but throwing myself headlong into those activities was a great way to learn. My children enjoyed immense freedom from a young age, making dens with their friends in the hills, playing in the streets and visiting friends at family land outside the village.
We weren’t the first to sail up the Guadiana and, despite the small size of the two villages, they are cosmopolitan, home to yachties from across Europe and beyond who come for weeks, months or, like us, forever.
Like many others, I was drawn to the place for its many great opportunities to be outdoors. There are hundreds of kilometres of trails for the dog and me to choose from, radiating in all directions over the hills in both countries, along the river and from one tiny hamlet to the next. The river also remains a large part of our lives, where we kayak, row and swim for much of the year.
We have been generously accepted into village life. Our neighbours gift us with endless home-grown fresh fruits and vegetables, we are treated with warmth and good humour and, during our time of greatest need, we were cared for and comforted. We really are at home here.
When we decided to remain in Sanlúcar, I had to figure out how to make a living. What started out as a few hours of editing, mixed with odd jobs here and there, has grown in the past nine years into a successful ghostwriting and editing business, from my home office with a view of a pair of historic windmills and that ever-present backdrop of sheep bells and birdsong.
I feel privileged to have a job that challenges my intellect and my curiosity from the comfort of my home and that we gave our girls the chance to become bilingual and bicultural in this little piece of paradise in the far southwest of Europe.
- Martina Tyrrell is from Edenderry, Co Offaly. She previously lived in Japan, Canada, Scotland and England, and has lived in southwest Spain since 2015. She is a ghostwriter and editor and was formerly an academic anthropologist. She writes about life, place and home at Me in Place. Although the Spanish floods happened in Valencia on the other side of the country she says “people here are frightened it might come our way too - although it’s absolutely not forecast to do so. Just fear. I spent some time last night reassuring one of my daughters, and some parents chose to keep their kids home from school the following day out of concern.”
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