Anna and Alan Nicholas left behind their hectic London life and embraced rural Mallorcan life to the full.

"The first time I went to my local café and ordered a coffee in Catalan, everyone clapped. I felt as much pride that day as if winning a major client account for my business."

 
As I sit on my terrace, happily distracted by the sound of cicadas, raucous frogs and the trickling water of a nearby mountain stream, I have to pinch myself to believe it’s all real.

Eight years ago it was a different story. Running a bustling public relations company in central London, I had little time to contemplate the piles of papers on my desk, let alone what lay beyond my window. Life was chaotic, challenging and fun, though stressful. My husband Alan and I worked together and found it increasingly difficult to balance work with family life. Our young son saw more of his nanny than either of us, given that we were working flat-out all day and handling huge media parties and client events by night. Something had to give and that happened while we were on a summer break, renting a house in the mountainous north-west of Mallorca.

In truth, the island had never appealed to me, having read so much about drunken British youths on the coast of Magaluf and Arenal. But my sister’s au pair, Rosalia, who was from the mountain village of Fornalutx, urged us to visit. As soon as we arrived in the Soller Valley, we felt we were coming home. Embraced by the imposing and breathtaking Tramuntana mountain range, Soller town brimmed with life and colour and even had its own gothic, Gaudi-inspired church and historic seaside tram.

On a whim, we began looking at old fincas, country dwellings needing reforming, and came across a complete ruin along a country track which hadn’t been lived in for some time. We didn’t have funds to buy the place but pleaded with our UK bank to give us a loan. Amazingly it agreed and so we returned from our holiday, leaving our ancient wreck of a purchase behind us.

The next four years involved a huge amount of blood, sweat and tears. We had to renovate our finca from a distance, employ local builders even though we hadn’t a word of Spanish, and try to battle our way through planning applications, architectural drawings and Spanish bureaucracy. There were many frustrations and challenges in refurbishing the house, not least because we had no mains water and electricity and needed to have all these things installed at some cost. Meanwhile, we continued to run our business in London, wondering how we might find a way to live and work between the two destinations.

When the house was just about habitable, we took the plunge and decided to relocate to Mallorca. Our son was five years old so we found an international school for him in Palma and decided to hand over the day-to-day reins of the PR company to our young managing director. Unlike many Britons arriving in a new country, we were lucky because my sister’s lovely au pair made sure we had the full support and friendship of her family and community. We took Spanish lessons immediately and threw ourselves into vibrant town life, so making friends was easy.

The only slight obstacle lay in the fact that Mallorquíns speak a dialect of Catalan, especially in the rural areas, although they also speak the more widespread Castilian Spanish. The town council began running free courses in Catalan for foreigners so I decided to brave it and went along. Although a long way from being fluent, I learned enough to read the daily Mallorquín newspaper and to read a menu. The first time I went to my local café and ordered a coffee in Catalan, everyone clapped. I felt as much pride that day as if winning a major client account for my business.

Four years on, we feel totally integrated in our mountain community. We attend all the town’s festivities, fiestas, musical events and pageants, and relish the fact that we are no longer living a pressurised, hurried existence. Although we are not, and can never be Mallorquín, we have been warmly accepted and welcomed as permanent residents and cannot ask for more.  Ironically, it is only recently that we have started to get to know British residents on the island and those who have settled here from other parts of the world.

Two years ago, we sold the UK interests of our company to a larger PR business and now handle international consultancy work from Mallorca. This has meant that I don’t need to commute back and forth to the UK so much, visiting London only once a month for meetings. As a consequence, I have had the time to develop my journalistic career, which includes contributing to the island’s British daily newspaper, the Majorca Daily Bulletin. I’ve now written my first semi-autobiographical travel book, A Lizard in my Luggage, about learning to juggle life between two countries. Alan spends a great deal of time nurturing our gardens and field of 40 or more orange, lemon and other fruit trees. He is also starting a small landscaping advisory business, gardening having been a hobby for many years.

Our new life has allowed us time to devote to our son, Oliver, and the days of expensive nannies are long gone. He has joined the local football team, plays tennis and loves rural life, walking with friends in the mountains and spending sunny days by our pool. In future years we will need to address his further education, an issue that concerns many Britons here. There are good international schools on the island that teach in English, but which maybe don’t quite offer the in-depth Spanish language learning many of us would like for our offspring. Still, there is plenty of time to investigate alternatives when the time comes.

We can never imagine a day when we would want to leave Mallorca. For us there really is no going back.