Spain: Sun, Soil, and the Strange Seduction of Chaos
There’s something about Spain that keeps pulling you back.
I’ve just arrived again — this time for a summer with the family. The air is thick with heat and the scent of grilled fish, the evenings stretch long and slow, and even the chaos feels charming at first. The country has its grip on you before you even unpack.
The last time I was in Spain was in 2018, for a very different kind of trip. I’d come to Menorca with two of my sons to attend a regenerative farming masterclass led by Joel Salatin — the wild, brilliant, and unfiltered American behind Polyface Farm in Virginia. I had previously spent a full consulting day with Joel at his farm during one of my own agricultural ventures, but this was something else entirely. Seeing his uncompromising philosophy — soil-first, animal-centric, anti-industrial — translated into a Mediterranean setting was both inspiring and strangely grounding. It wasn’t just a course. It was a glimpse into another way of living.
We stayed in a rural finca surrounded by dry stone walls and olive trees that looked older than some nations. The Menorcan soil — red, dusty, stubborn — gave nothing away easily. But under Joel’s guidance, even the land began to open up. We learned not just about compost or cows, but about how to think like an ecosystem. Joel talked with his hands, laughed easily, and challenged every assumption you had about food, farming, or freedom.
There’s a moment that comes back to me now, sitting on this shaded Spanish terrace years later. Joel standing by a pile of manure, face lit with boyish excitement, saying something like: “This isn’t waste. This is transformation. This is life mid-sentence.” It was absurd and profound all at once — like much of what he says. And Menorca itself seemed to understand him.
Menorca Isn’t Mallorca — It Never Was
People say Menorca is what Mallorca used to be. They’re wrong. It was never Mallorca — not in any time I can remember.
Where Mallorca is full of glossy marinas and designer boutiques and loud Berliners reinventing their lives for the tenth time, Menorca has always been quieter, slower, more stubbornly itself. The roads are narrow. The villages white and square, nothing too tall. Time behaves differently there. You don’t schedule things. You let them happen.
There’s a saltiness to the island — not just in the air, but in its character. You get the sense that even the goats wouldn’t put up with your nonsense. The old men in cafés don’t care who you are. And yet there’s warmth too, and calm, and silence when you need it. It’s a place where ideas can root.
It’s no surprise Joel’s masterclass worked there. The island feels regenerative. It’s not trying to impress you. It just exists — solid, patient, grounded.
Joel Salatin, the Soil — and the Return of the Lunatic Farmer
I’d known about Joel long before that day at Polyface. His books had been passed around like samizdat in certain circles — You Can Farm, Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal, The Sheer Ecstasy of Being a Lunatic Farmer. Titles that told you exactly what you were in for. He didn’t just farm — he preached soil, challenged orthodoxy, and made compost sound like revolution.
There’s something magnetic about people like Joel — people who live so far outside the mainstream that they build their own gravity. Of course, he’s never been without controversy. He said things that made polite society recoil. He picked fights. He refused to wear a mask when the world insisted you must. He wrote something once about race that sparked furious backlash and cost him relationships with legacy farming magazines. He shrugged it off like a man who’s been canceled since before the word existed.
And now, somehow, he’s back in the mix again — not just as a voice from the fringe, but as someone invited back into the halls of power. With RFK Jr. now in government, Salatin has re-emerged as a kind of agricultural elder statesman. He’s advising on food systems, decentralization, and the rebuilding of rural economies. The man who once mocked the FDA is now, incredibly, in the room where food policy is made. And he hasn’t changed a bit.
I can’t say I agree with everything he says. But I’ve always been drawn to characters like him — people who refuse to bend, who see the world at an angle, and somehow still thrive in it. Maybe it’s because I’ve spent most of my own life outside the lines, always chasing edge cases and loopholes and backdoors to freedom. Maybe I just like people who build things with their hands and say what they mean.
Whatever it is, when I look back at that week in Menorca, I remember the learning — yes — but more than that, I remember the feeling: we could do it differently. That not everything had to be top-down, centralized, sterile. That maybe, just maybe, a little disorder — a little lunacy — was exactly what the world needed.
Spain’s Endless Quality of Life
And now I'm back.
Spain still seduces you. It always will. With its sunlight and its olives, its wine and its cities that only wake up after midnight. The daily rhythm alone is enough to make you question everything you thought was normal.
Spain is a place that nourishes the soul — even while it tests your patience. It’s precisely this contrast between the lifestyle and the bureaucracy that makes it so fascinating. Having just spent a week surrounded by soil and philosophy in Menorca, I was reminded of how much Spain gets right — and how much it manages to complicate.
Let’s start with the positives, because they are undeniable.
Spain offers what many of us in northern Europe or the Anglo-American world crave:
Sunlight and abundant natural beauty
Food that still remembers its roots — olive oil, seafood, jamón ibérico
Family-friendly rhythms of life
Reasonable cost of living, especially outside Madrid or Barcelona
Excellent private healthcare, at a fraction of U.S. prices
Easy access to Europe and Africa
And for those seeking a simpler life — a finca in Andalusia, a co-living project in the hills of Valencia, or an eco-village in the Balearics — Spain is one of the last affordable places in Western Europe to do it.
But it’s not all tapas and sunsets.
A History of Turmoil — and a Present Full of Warnings
Spain is a country marked by violent revolutions, civil war, and ongoing centrifugal forces. Catalonia. The Basque Country. Galicia. Spain has always been more of a mosaic than a monolith. This diversity gives it cultural richness — but also political instability.
And today’s socialist government under Pedro Sánchez is a continuation of this tragic tradition: well-meaning on the surface, but disastrously incompetent underneath. Spain is a textbook example of what happens when ideology trumps governance.
Consider the recent national blackout — the worst electricity failure in any developed country in recent memory. Spanish media tried to spin it. But The Telegraph pulled no punches:
“Faith in the current investigation has reached rock-bottom. The socialist government of Pedro Sánchez is trying to buy time with explanations that either make no technical sense or veer into absurdity.”
Sources in Brussels reportedly confirmed that the government was conducting a real-time experiment, testing the limits of renewable energy reliance while phasing out nuclear reactors. The result? A cascading failure that shut down the grid — and a stonewalling state utility, Red Eléctrica, run by a socialist loyalist with no relevant experience. Her salary? Six times that of the Prime Minister.
It’s a scene worthy of Chernobyl. And yes, that parallel was made in the same article.
Taxes, Inheritance, and Fiscal Madness
Even if you can laugh off the politics, there’s no escaping the tax system. Spain’s tax regime is the worst of both worlds:
High, complex, and retroactively applied taxes
No real incentive for entrepreneurship
Punitive treatment of real estate profits
A Kafkaesque bureaucracy that targets foreigners
Let’s take a few examples — and understand why, for many, Spain feels less like a European democracy and more like a sun-drenched fiscal trap.
1. Wealth Tax (Impuesto sobre el Patrimonio)
Spain is one of the few countries in Europe that still enforces a national wealth tax. It kicks in at surprisingly low levels — typically around €700,000 to €1 million depending on the region — and applies to global assets: real estate, cash, securities, crypto, art.
The rates are progressive and may seem “modest” on paper — but in practice, it’s like paying annual rent to the state for the privilege of being successful. Worse, the valuation methods are opaque, and deductions (like mortgages or debt) are often limited.
And now it gets worse: In 2023, the government introduced the Impuesto de Solidaridad — a second wealth tax layered on top of the existing one. Billed as “temporary,” but what tax ever is?
So yes — Spain now double-taxes wealth, at a time when most of Europe has abolished the practice altogether.
2. Inheritance Tax (Impuesto sobre Sucesiones y Donaciones)
Spain’s inheritance tax is a masterclass in unpredictability.
Not only is it regionally set (with wildly different exemptions depending on where the deceased and heir live), but the base valuation of assets — especially real estate — is often inflated far beyond market value.
Even direct heirs, like children, can face crippling bills, especially if the property is a second home or located in a “wealthier” region. If you’re a foreigner, or worse, if the inheritance involves cross-border assets, expect months of paperwork and painful tax rates. Timing, valuations, kinship status — all of it plays a role. And nearly all of it favors the tax office.
This is not a country where you can “quietly leave something behind.” If you die in Spain, the government will come for your heirs — and they don’t come gently.
3. Capital Gains on Renovated Property
This one borders on the absurd.
If you buy a house, invest heavily in renovations, and later sell it at a profit, you might assume those renovation costs can be deducted when calculating your capital gains tax. In practice, that’s rarely the case.
Spanish tax law allows deductions only for renovations that demonstrably increase the cadastral value of the property — and even then, only if they meet a vague and inconsistently applied standard. There’s a complicated and opaque formula used by the tax office, and many types of improvement — such as aesthetic upgrades, structural enhancements, or energy efficiency measures — are arbitrarily excluded.
Unless the renovations are not only officially declared but also classified as “value-enhancing” under the tax authority’s narrow definition, you’re out of luck. The result? Many foreign investors end up paying tax on profits they never truly made — especially if they poured €500,000 or more into upgrades that don’t “count” under the formula.
There are even cases where Spanish tax inspectors flatly refuse receipts unless they match an internal checklist of acceptable categories. Want to restore the roof, upgrade the plumbing, and install solar panels? Sorry — that’s your personal hobby. Not deductible.
4. Crackdowns on Foreigners (See: Shakira)
Spain’s tax authorities have become aggressive — even vindictive — when it comes to foreign residents, especially celebrities, high-net-worth individuals, or anyone with international income.
The most famous case? Shakira.
Despite being Colombian, and despite splitting her time across multiple countries, Spain’s tax office pursued her for millions in alleged unpaid taxes, arguing that she had “informal” residency and should be taxed like a Spanish citizen. Their evidence? Appearances in local media. School attendance of her children. Paparazzi photos.
Yes — in Spain, the number of Instagram photos tagged in Barcelona might now help determine whether you owe €14 million in back taxes.
If they’ll do that to Shakira, what do you think they’ll do to you?
5. Surveillance Culture and Enforcement Theater
The most disturbing trend of all may be the quiet emergence of surveillance-based tax enforcement. In the Balearics and along the Costa del Sol, the stories are piling up:
Golf courses are being audited to see how often foreign residents played, so the tax agency can build a case that they spent more than 183 days in Spain.
Elite private schools in Mallorca are being watched by police to catch foreign-plated luxury vehicles dropping off children — cars that should’ve been re-registered (and taxed) after six months.
German SUVs are routinely flagged and fined after local informants tip off the authorities.
Energy use in luxury homes is being analyzed to assess whether a “non-resident” is in fact living there.
This isn’t tax enforcement. It’s something far more unnerving: a state that doesn’t trust its own residents, and targets outsiders as a cash crop.
The Beckham Law: Spain’s Last Tax Trick?
This is the part of the story where, after all the bureaucracy and heavy taxation, Spain offers one last twist — a legal way to stay, thrive, and still keep your global income out of reach. If the rest of the article has shown you how easy it is to stumble into Spain’s fiscal traps, this section is about how to step around them — without walking away from Spain entirely.
Named after footballer David Beckham, who first took advantage of it during his time at Real Madrid, the "Lex Beckham" regime was introduced in 2005 to attract foreign talent. It allows qualifying individuals to become tax residents of Spain without being taxed on their foreign income for a period of up to six years.
Here’s how it works:
You must not have been a Spanish tax resident in the previous five years.
You must move to Spain for work (employment, or appointment as a director).
You can apply within six months of registering with social security.
Once accepted, you pay a flat tax of 24% on Spanish income up to €600,000 — and nothing on foreign income (dividends, interest, crypto, capital gains).
Yes, really. Zero.
It’s a lifeline for digital nomads, global entrepreneurs, or those relocating high-value businesses. Structured properly, it can even work with foreign holding companies — for example, with real substance in Malta, where treaty benefits and tax-neutral repatriation can be leveraged efficiently.
The Risks: Don't Be Complacent
But beware — Spain comes down hard if you give it an opening. Cases involving Shakira and others have shown that the Spanish tax authorities don’t play around.
Even under the Beckham regime, Permanent Establishment (PE) risk is real: if your foreign company is deemed to be operating in Spain — even unintentionally — your foreign income could suddenly become taxable. Good legal structuring and real foreign operations are essential.
And remember: the Beckham window closes after six years. What then?
Where to Go After Spain?
If you've enjoyed the weather, the lifestyle, but not the taxes — there are plenty of next stops:
Dubai: tax-free, no reporting, full expat infrastructure.
Malaysia (MM2H or Premium Visa): tropical lifestyle with low taxation and excellent services.
Malta: strong treaties, strategic location, and effective tax schemes for HNWIs.
All of these work well after Spain — especially if you plan your exit carefully.
We help clients with just that: building multi-stage migration plans that start with Lex Beckham and evolve toward a lasting low-tax lifestyle.
Book a private consultation with us today if Spain is on your radar. We’ll help you do it right — before Spain does it to you.
