Hi there,
After being very disgusted with Spain, I began to think about countries to emigrate again. I got to know Mexico last year and I fell in love.
Mexico City is the ninth largest city in the world with more than 22 million inhabitants. It has 4 thousand years of history, 200 from the independence of Spain and 100 from its revolution.
The country’s capital has 16 territorial demarcations, 34 places declared World Heritage Sites, 188 museums, 15 cultural centers, seven archaeological zones, more than 20 forests and natural parks, and more than 8 ethnic groups.
The flaw of living in Mexico City is that it doesn’t have a beach. The closest is 3 hours by car.
For me, Mexico was a strategic place to live since it has a lot of infrastructure and is well connected with Central and South America, which was what I wanted to be close to.
The idea that came to me after having seen the prices of the properties was to start in Mexico City and buy a house in a beach area to turn it into a hotel and in the not-too-distant future, be able to live on that income.
With what you buy a small apartment in a bad area in Valencia, in Mexico you buy a wonderful house with a lot of land. Except in Baja California Sur, where prices are at the level of the United States.
I began to investigate how to obtain residency in Mexico. Leaving with everything arranged from Spain was impossible because the company in Mexico would have to hire me and do all the paperwork before immigration. So, we decided to go as tourists and continue looking if any company would hire us and process our work permit.
I tried to close everything I had in Valencia, and I cleaned out the closet. Before the trip, I already had everything stored and what I no longer used was put for sale.
I left with a suitcase of clothes to stay, but with the “plan b” to return if I did not find what I wanted, because in the end, in Valencia I have no expenses and living in Mexico City in the area that I like would cost 700 or 800 euros per month just for rent.
In September, as soon as we arrived in Costa Rica, I changed the Linked-in address to try to arrange as many interviews as possible during this month and be productive from day one in Mexico City.
That was what we did during the month that we were in Costa Rica, we arranged some interviews by Skype whenever the Wi-Fi allowed it and Diego organized several meetings for when he arrived in Mexico.
Throughout the month Diego could not find any company that would pay him what he wanted.
I had several interesting offers, but the salary did not compensate me for the change of residence.
One bad thing is that in this country there are few mandatory vacation days, so we, who are used to 23 days a year plus holidays, had to find a good company that would guarantee us the annual month of vacation.
A friend who has lived in Mexico for many years told me that you must start at the bottom and once you have some experience in the country, start asking for more money and gradually reach the amount you deserve. This, when you go with nothing, you do it because you have no choice, but it was not my case.
I thought that to remain in an illegal situation and spending a minimum of a thousand euros a month, it would be better if I spent it traveling.
In addition, small companies were either ignorant of the process to apply for your work permit or they didn’t bother directly. The companies that interviewed Diego were more open to hiring foreigners.
Something to highlight is that everyone told us that we were crazy for wanting to leave Europe to go live in Mexico (or Latin America in general).
Here the career you have also changes a lot. Diego studied computer engineering and did two master’s degrees: one in application development and the other in data science. Those who know how the world of work is, know that his career is better paid than mine (social communication and marketing).
This month in Mexico City was to see what it would be like if we lived there and if we could stay. In the end I decided to return because I had no offer that interested me, but with the notion of continuing to look for options to leave Spain. Even so, it should be noted that the offers I had there in a month, I have not had in Spain in 7 years.
I still like Mexico City because it has everything, there are an incredible amount of things to do and a lot of free entertainment. The people are polite, civilized and they did not cease to surprise me positively. Still, I ruled it out as a place to live.
We keep looking for a better country to emigrate to. The pandemic delayed the plans, but here I am waiting for the moment when I can catch a plane and leave for the next destination.