A British couple from the Midlands say they made the spontaneous decision to leave Britain after Brexit and bought a boutique hotel in a Spanish hilltop town. Ken Barnsley, 65, and Joanne Greenhalgh, 63, made the move from Birmingham to the picturesque town of Archidona, north of Málaga in Andalusia, after spotting an advert for a hotel there, Almohalla 51, during the first Covid-19 lockdown. “We saw Almohalla 51 in an online advert in August 2020 whilst in the first Covid lockdown, working from home,” Ms Greenhalgh tells i .
“We actually had no plans to move to Spain , but were so interested in the idea, that from that day on we spontaneously embarked on a life-changing experience”. They flew to Archidona in September of that year to view the village and hotel. Its local owners had renovated two derelict farmhouses to create it, and there were still chickens, pigs and a horse living in the garden.
The couple fell in love with the hotel and placed an offer to secure the property for €500,000 (£420,000). “It was not a plan [to buy the hotel]. Lockdown and the pandemic changed everyone’s lives and made us reassess ours.
So we felt we should give it a go as life is too short and who knows what is round the corner?” “We both took early retirement from our jobs in the UK, which allowed us to take our pensions early, and lump sums enabled us to buy the hotel here,” Ms Greenhalgh says. “We also explored a number of different routes with banks in Spain and mo.