3 Tops and Flops: Emigrating to Mallorca

It’s now been 6 years since I asked myself the question “Emigrate to Mallorca?”. Especially since Corona, the energy crisis and war in Central Europe, I’ve been getting more and more messages or calls from old acquaintances with the very same questions. After an awkwardly worded “Wow, you! Haven’t spoken in 15 years. How are you?” comes the real reason for the often not entirely sincere interest in where I’m at. “I heard you emigrated to Mallorca. We’re thinking about it now too. What do you think, is it a good idea?” My answer is always the same, namely a clear, plain, definite and absolutely unambiguous: no idea!

Fundamentally, anyone toying with the idea should be told: even if the island is often portrayed in the media as the Germans’ 17th federal state, emigrating to Mallorca means cutting most of the ties back home. It means moving to a foreign country with a different kind of people, different customs and a foreign language. (What’s more, there’s nothing more annoying than Spanish bureaucracy, but that’s a whole other can of worms we don’t want to open right now.) So is it a good idea for you and your family? As I said: no idea.

I’m also the wrong person to ask that question. I never wanted to go to Mallorca because German television had managed to make me believe this sensational island was a grubby cesspool of drunkenness. But it isn’t! I came here because of a job. I stayed for many reasons.

I’m going to share my TOP 3 reasons why, in my opinion, emigrating to Mallorca makes sense.

On the island, beauty shows itself to anyone who looks on virtually every corner. Mallorca is a pearl in the Mediterranean, and if you don’t see that, you simply don’t want to. The island has 250 coves & beaches with an average of 300 sunny days a year. Admittedly, you can find great weather and beaches elsewhere in the world too. But narrow the search criteria just a bit more and you’ll realize: Mallorca is something very special. Or do you know another island that offers 550 kilometers of coastline and at the same time a mountain range that deserves the name? An isle that has a real big city with 400,000 inhabitants and still boasts a multitude of picturesque little villages and unspoiled nature? A place that differs fundamentally from the old homeland in terms of climate while being only a two-hour flight from Germany? You see—then it already becomes more difficult to choose.

The fact that Mallorca is teeming with emigrants from all over Europe is also a huge plus—at least for us who’ve moved here. For example, if you’re standing at the bakery and hear someone speaking your native language, there’s a potential new acquaintance in front of you. Because automatically you have something in common: you’re foreigners in a foreign country. I imagine the same situation in a city like Berlin would be very funny. “Hey, you from around here too? Buying bread rolls too, yeah?” “Don’t talk crap at me from the side, mate!” Well, networking here on Mallorca with other Germans, Brits or Swedes is definitely a big plus.

As a third point that definitely speaks in favor of emigrating to Mallorca, I’d like to stick with the people who live here. Even if Mallorcans are generally considered rather insular, most of the other Spanish-speaking people on the island are a dream. It starts with the cashier in the supermarket who briefly forgets her job because she takes huge pleasure in fooling around with my son, continues with the police officer who, as a rule, feels more called to help than to punish, and ends with the countless everyday encounters that keep showing me how much joy in life and sunshine there is in Spaniards’ hearts. Exceptions, of course, prove the rule here too.

We’ve already ticked off three points, but because love for an island also goes through the stomach, it should at least be mentioned that Spanish, Mallorcan—or more generally Mediterranean—cuisine is usually tasty, healthy, varied and sometimes quite extraordinary. Not a compelling reason to move to the island, but at least one I wanted to mention for the sake of form.

Emigrating to Mallorca is a bit like a relationship with your partner. At first everything is wonderful. The island sun shines brighter, the Mediterranean is bluer and the little beer on the beach seems like the tastiest of all time. And then, just like in any normal relationship, the moment comes when everyday life comes knocking at the door and you find the fine little hairs in “sopa mallorquina”, the Mallorcan vegetable soup.

I once read that Mallorca is said to have a higher density of millionaires—relative to its population and land area—than the Principality of Monaco. No idea whether that’s actually true. However, the island attracts money and its owners almost magically. What’s curious, though, is the flip side of the one-euro coin: despite all the cash circulating on Mallorca, the wage level is on average significantly below the earning potential of an employee in Germany.

Of course I don’t know every payslip of every emigrant on Mallorca, but I can write here from my own experience. In 2016 I came to the island with a completed journalism training and at my first island employer I earned only about one hundred euros more than during my training in Bavaria. If I had stayed there, in the decidedly beautiful Bavarian Oberland, and hadn’t necessarily wanted to swap the mountains for the sea, then after a short time almost double the meager island salary would have ended up in my account at the end of the month. A former colleague once said to me: “On Mallorca, you get paid in sunshine.” And he wasn’t entirely wrong.

This is also about money and the number 183. That’s the number of days part-time emigrants are allowed to spend on the island per year at most. If especially island-loving people exceed this number, they become fully liable for tax to the Spanish state. Then emigrating to Mallorca suddenly becomes a fact.

Of course, though, in the international tax jungle it’s not quite as simple as Spain would like. Fortuny explains this in more detail by saying that it depends on many factors. It’s about the family center of life, the business center of life and generally where which activities are based. Ultimately, previous tax residence as well as nationality is indeed one of the factors the authorities examine.

Despite all that, it makes no sense to act here on a “hope for the best” principle. Because in case of doubt, both countries could initially assert claims. Which would then have to be clarified internationally. But probably not with particularly high priority. And until then, in case of doubt the taxpayer would first have to shoulder the double burden …

This point is about Spanish bureaucracy. And although in the vast majority of cases it’s already enough to make you run for the hills in Germany, the authorities here on the island are usually even worse. Yes, that really is possible. This quote comes from a good friend of mine:

Often you battle your way through an opaque jungle of forms here, of which you’d only understand half even in your mother tongue. As the cherry on the paper cake, the Mallorcan official language is Catalan, not Castellano.

With your hard-learned Spanish you won’t get an inch further here.

As if that weren’t bad enough, the right hand here also often doesn’t know what the left is doing. It’s happened to us more than once that we were sent back and forth multiple times between counter A and counter B because the respective employee simply didn’t feel responsible. If the counters are not only in different buildings, but even in different districts, it really becomes a joy. We were even once sent officially to the neighboring island of Menorca because an application there would supposedly be processed faster. Not only was it not faster, the Menorcan official couldn’t make heads or tails of our paperwork. Oh boy!