It’s tax season in Spain. Everybody is bitching about “Hacienda” (the tax authority), about how much they owe, or how little they’ll receive in tax refunds. Social media is ripe with memes and sketches on the topic, and, like every single year, people start questioning my sanity for continuing in Spain, invoicing as a freelancer while working remotely.

Andorra would be so much cheaper.

Gibraltar has a similar climate.

As if life was only taxes.

I came to Spain for six months to write my Master's thesis on Innovation Management in European border regions. I may have been flexible on the definition of “border region”, but the alternative would have been the Danish/German border - have you seen the weather up North?????

But more importantly, do you remember the film “L’Auberge Espagnol” (the English title ended up being The Spanish Apartment, or Pot Luck in the UK)? It’s a romantic comedy from 2002, which doubled as an Erasmus (European student mobility program) advertisement. And it worked! I fell in love with a city through a movie.

So I moved for my Master’s thesis. Six months became 20 years (and counting).

I’ve been an autónoma (freelancer) for most of my time here in Spain, so I have my fair share of experience with the setup. Paying taxes for me is the price I pay for civilisation. The roads I use, the bridges I cross, the sewage system that keeps the city clean - those are all services I don’t have to worry about or think about. They are taken care of thanks to tax money.

Does this mean I agree with how every individual tax euro is spent? Certainly not, and those are debates worth having. I do believe that taxes make for better societies, though, because they allow us to invest in infrastructure and social support.

So why did I stay, if taxes were not the main driver for my decision?

Yes, my work is location independent, but I thrive on community. And as an introverted person, maintaining a community and a sense of belonging is a lot easier if I don’t have to recreate it several times a year. So I’ve stayed close to Barcelona, in Sunday lunch distance with close friends, and access to several communities I can dip in and out of without starting from scratch every time.

I came for the sun, I stayed for the people.

And some choices, somehow, keep quietly confirming themselves.

If you’d like to dig deeper into how taxes, society, and morality are connected (or not) I recommend the latest podcast by Culture Study: A Compelling Conversation about The Morality of Taxes (Especially Right Now), an interview with sociologist Ruth Braunstein who wrote a book about the topic. The conversation is very US centric, but the arguments work reasonably well for others societies. Find it on Patreon or Spotify

And if you want to hear more about my relationship with money in general, I talked about the topic with Judit Mateu on Radio Floresta. Here’s the link (the interview is in Spanish though): https://juditmateu.com/de-corazon-a-corazon-con-valentina-thorner