It took a long time for Jim and Emma Porter to get back to the country that they love, but now they couldn’t be happier

When Jim and Emma Porter left Santander to return to Britain after a year of teaching in the mid-Nineties, they vowed they would be back sooner rather than later. Until, that is, their intentions were waylaid by marriage, the birth of two children and the setting up of a successful business. In the end, it was almost 10 years before they said goodbye to Britain and headed back to Spain – this time for good.

The couple met at university in Wolverhampton where both were studying for language-based degrees. They spent their year out in Spain – Jim in Zaragoza and Emma in Santiago de Compostela – where they were well and truly bitten by the Spanish bug. Next they both completed an intensive teaching course in Barcelona before finding work teaching English to children and adults in Santander.

Finances forced them back to the UK with the plan of saving enough money to make the move to Spain a permanent one, and they used their teaching backgrounds to set up Talk Languages, linking up students with private tutors in London.

“We had people with Brazilian girlfriends, and some Swedish too, who wanted to learn the language. Also there were a large number of people moving abroad, especially to Spain, who wanted some tuition before they left Britain,” says Emma, who helped run the business in her spare time.
It grew so rapidly that they had 200 teachers and two full-time office assistants on their books before they knew it. “The business was doing really well, but having set it up I started looking around for another challenge,” says Jim. “So when we found a buyer, we were happy to accept. It meant we could realise our long-term plans.”

They had already begun to long for a return to Spain, and bought a run-down farmhouse in Huesca province for just £16,000. Later, they decided their future didn’t lie in the Pyrennean foothills and sold the property. “It was our little dream and it kept us going while we lived in London,” says Emma.
In early 2005, their house and business sold, Jim and Emma along with their two children, Joe, now six and Maggie, three, jumped in their car and set off to find their new home in Spain.
“We had serious car problems and were stuck in a relative’s freezing house in the middle of a very cold French winter while we had a new motor fitted,” says Emma.

“We ended up renting a car to continue our journey through Spain and looked in Asturias, the Valencian coast and Murcia, before almost buying a property in the Alpujarras. It fell through because of legal problems but on reflection it was a good thing because the area just seems too isolated for us."

Read the full interview in our March 2008 issue.