We are a couple in our early 40s with a 4 y.o. daughter, and we moved from Los Angeles, California two years ago. Thought I'd share thoughts about our experience in Valencia, the good and the bad, and why we’re leaving. I thought this kind of post could be useful so that one doesn’t move somewhere with their head in the clouds like we originally did. And this is not meant to insult ANYone to say that a different opinion is wrong; it’s just our experience and opinion.

We lived in two neighborhoods: Benimaclet for 4 months then Ruzafa for the rest. 

People and language: 

Our experience with people was mostly great: Lots of warm, friendly, and helpful folk, of all ages. We both speak Spanish, and came in with about 65% fluency with great accents, and now of course are even way better—this definitely helped in a major way and we feel is crucial to really get “into” the culture and not just be with expatriates. For my two friends who live there and don’t speak Spanish well, it’s a big problem and they feel somewhat isolated in the ex-patriate community, like they aren’t fully part of the city and the people. 

Having a kid also definitely helped with that for us, since Valencia is very family and kid-oriented as a culture, and we had ours in a Spanish day care, then pre-school. But it was still hard to really get “in” with locals, even though they’re mostly friendly and kind. We finally managed to get somewhat “in” with a couple of them after about a year, but we still feel like outsiders overall, which is of course common for expatriates, and much more so if you don’t speak the language.. 

When talking with locals, some of whom we became friends with, and our friends who were born there, we found a good amount of growing resentment towards expatriates and tourists, which I now understand from living there. That’s a whole other subject, but our experience, as well as the friends who grew up there (two of whom need to move out because they can’t afford rent anymore), helped me understand where that comes from, and I agree with it. It felt uncomfortable for us to be a part of the problem.

The city itself:

Again, this is our individual opinion, but we found Valencia to overall to not be a particularly attractive city. It’s very dirty aside from the touristy areas, and aside from a few of the neighborhoods is a lot of bland, tall apartment buildings. Lots of people smoke and throw butts on the ground, and there’s dog shit all over the place. Plus it’s flat as a pancake. There are some beautiful barrios, for sure, but largely no in our opinion. 

While there are lot of wonderful city parks (Turia is amazing in so many ways, among a few others), the actual topography is scrub desert-like. If you like mountains and trees you simply don’t get that (places like Albufera that were recommended to us definitely don’t have even close to the beauty that we were used to in many West Coast areas and other places in the U.S., and you have to drive or take a bus/train to even see them). That was a big problem, one that we didn’t expect to have at first but that grew rapidly since the city itself is, well, a city, and isn’t surrounded by our definition of natural beauty. If you’re cool with driving far or taking long train rides to see great true nature (not city parks), this might not be an issue for you.

There are some amazing museums, places for music, giant indoor multi-vendor food markets, and definitely some gorgeous architecture (mostly in the highly touristy Centro area). You can walk or bike everywhere very easily and the public transport is pretty great, with mostly friendly people riding who will help you out if you have a stroller, etc. We love not needing a car at all—you definitely don’t in Valencia unless you have physical issues that require a car.

The food:

We got bored of the typical Spanish food very quickly. We were used to a huge variety of high-level food (cheap all the way to expensive) in L.A., which Valencia doesn’t have in a reliably quality way. There are without a doubt some fantastic restaurants, but if you come from a big city or other place known for its variety of great food or are a “foodie”, you might be a bit disappointed. Luckily, the various markets have a lot of fresh meats and produce and more, so we ended up cooking way more than we used to, which was actually fun.

Living:

It’s apartment life here, full stop. We had a house in L.A. (rented) and it took a while to get used to living in apartments. Pros and cons, for sure, but for us it ended being a negative because we never felt like we were truly coming “home”, which we were used to feeling at our small house in L.A. that had a garden, etc., because it has its own space and felt like “our place”. You get more community with the apartment life for sure, which is a plus, but again we felt most of the buildings are rather ugly and the apartments were often “meh”. Plus they’re starting to get very expensive in plenty of areas (again: mostly because of people like us and the associated greed of landlords). Our friends from Valencia were saying that apartment rental prices have seen an incredibly steep rise in prices over the past five or so years largely because of expatriates since most locals can’t afford those prices at the salaries one gets in Spain. Still cheaper than L.A., mostly…but actually not always, we found!

We started in Benimaclet, which was OK but bland, then moved to Ruzafa which has more of a San Francisco vibe that we like, albeit with much less trees, which is a bummer. We found people to a bit less warm and friendly overall in that area, but again, speaking Spanish did help.

Crime:

We’ve never had one issue there, and feel safe almost everywhere. There are a few barrios our friends from there told us to avoid, so we did (can’t remember the barrio names). 

The general world there:

Spain has a very high unemployment rate, and many young people leave because of that. This is a huge problem country-wide, according to people I know who have lived in Barcelona and Malaga for a very long time. Right now crime is still quite low overall, but that could easily change if things get worse, and the Spanish government itself is very much a mess! 

We are leaving because the cons I mentioned outweigh the pros for us. Still undecided on where to go, but we want to be settled somewhere before our daughter turns 7. Valencia feels like a third world city mixed with a first world city in many ways. The big influx of expatriates is a problem there, and it’s increasing the disparity between rich and poor, which is one of the reasons why there’s growing resentment. You might not understand that resentment unless you speak Spanish/start to make friends who are Spanish. And again: The expatriate friends I know there feel like outsiders to actual Spanish people, even after four years for one of them, because they only/mostly have expatriates as friends since they aren’t fluent in Spanish like we are. 

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Before you make a big move, make sure you know that once you get somewhere your ideal of what you think the place is like will definitely be challenged. We had dreamy eyes about Valencia, as I’m sure many do, so I feel it’s worthy to post about our reality there. 

Make sure you understand before responding that our experience is not all negative by any means! Just that the cons outweighed the pros for us.