Computer expert Craig Mander didn’t let a little thing like learning the language stop him building a life and coaching football on the Costa del Sol

Craig Mander didn’t plan on building a life in Spain. For one thing, he had everything going for him back home in Britain, and for another, he didn’t speak a word of Spanish and had never visited the country. He was busy building a career in his native Hertfordshire when he was headhunted at 21 years old to set up the information technology systems for an estate agency on the Costa del Sol.

“I was working for an IT consultancy and had played a role in successfully marketing snowboarding to the Winter Olympics committee. As a result the estate agents heard about my role and I was asked to come and work in Spain,” he says.

“I was apprehensive because I was doing well at work and it also meant giving up coaching young footballers with Stevenage Borough’s academy, which was my great passion. But the contract was for a year so Jo and I decided to see how we got on.”

Jo, his then girlfriend and, since 2005, his wife, and Craig arrived in Spain seven years ago and never went home. “The job was extended for another year, then I was headhunted by a much bigger chain of estate agents and things carried on from there,” says Craig.

“I spent two more years with that firm then helped to set up a small company’s business and operational structure, which was a totally different challenge. Then, in 2006, I decided to go into business for myself, with a consultancy advising companies how to increase their profile on the Internet.”

While Craig was busy helping Costa del Sol businesses into the electronic age, Jo was also falling back on familiar ground. She had been a nursery assistant in Stevenage – where she and Craig had met when they were at school – and in 2003 opened a British-style nursery near their Nueva Andalucía home.

Four years later, they closed that business for the simple reason that they wanted to start planning for a family. Jo is now expecting their first baby in July.

Read the full story in our July 2008 edition.