Hundreds of thousands of Brits have headed to the sun seeking a Spanish idyll. But the economic crash has left many facing disaster

The British butcher has gone and the karaoke nights at Jack’s and the Big Ben bar are all but dead. You can still get all-day British breakfasts and John Smiths on tap in San Fulgencio but a row of dusty, unkempt shop windows is all that remains of the internet cafe, the installer of pirated British TV channels and the Property Choice estate agent.

“It’s like a ghost town,” says Dennis Conway, 76, who is thinking of joining the exodus of Britons from this once bustling estate of bungalows and modest two-storey houses a few miles from Spain’s eastern Mediterranean coast. “It’s devastating. My pension is slowly disintegrating and there is nothing we can do about it. It is bloody frightening to think what might still happen.”

Dennis has been here for 15 years. He has seen the La Marina estate in San Fulgencio go from a sleepy outpost of retired Brits to a boomtown of holidaymakers, second home-owners and young families trying to make a go of it in Spain, to the current bust. “I’ve never seen it this bad. I’m thinking of going back.”

Britain’s fevered obsession with the Spanish good life is over. Once, ex-pat bars up and down the Mediterranean coast heaved with happy talk about cheap beer, low council taxes and why it was so much better to be in Spain. Now the drinkers are more likely to curse the pitiful pound, discuss who missed the last outing of the British pensioners’ club, and swap stories of friends who are moving home. There are whispered tales, too, of repossessions and of people packing up, dropping their keys at the bank and trusting easyJet to save them from Spanish creditors.

San Fulgencio is not alone. The removal trucks are busy in all the “urbanizaciones“, the vast housing estates that Brits now call “urbanisations”. They are places like La Marina, Ciudad Quesada, La Siesta, El Raso and all the others that line the dual carriageway inland from the beach town of Torrevieja, 35 miles south of Alicante. The trucks are also grinding their way up the narrow, twisting roads to the small hillside villages colonised by the last wave of Britons to catch Spain fever and come looking for sunshine, property and independence.

Removals companies confirm the tide has turned. “I’d say 70% of our work is now taking people back,” says one of the many cash-in-hand British “white van men” working without licences outside the Spanish tax regime. He did not want to be named. “We’ve had retired people calling us and saying they are going to Bulgaria or places like that,” explains Angie Russell, whose Union Jack company near Benidorm has been moving Brits – legally – for 22 years.

Television shows such as Channel 4′s A Place in the Sun promised adventure, swimming pools and the good life. A collapsing pound and the credit crunch have brought a harsher reality: homesickness, financial hardship and something those who call themselves “expats” rarely take into account, that they are immigrants – often with all the problems of not understanding the language or the rules. Interestingly, a surprising number of them list immigration as one of the things they dislike about Britain. Few, indeed, come from Britain’s own ethnic minorities.

For some, Spain has become a nightmare. Judy and Bill are going back to the West Country this month. Both served in the armed forces, then ran a fish-and-chip shop before coming to a rented villa with a swimming pool and views of the beautiful Jalón Valley in northern Alicante. That was two years ago. Frustration, boredom and their own naked prejudice are driving them home. Encounters with Spanish housing developers and their British estate agents – who scare them so much they do not want their real names used – have left them bitter. “This is a country with no law,” proclaims Judy. “We in England abide by the rules but here they don’t bother. Even the Brits here rip you off. I think most people would go back if they could. It’ll be a relief to get home. It’s not as cheap as people think.”

“We’re unsettled,” admits Barbara Moseley, who is selling her house in San Fulgencio and moving to Lancashire. “I miss the grandchildren. I’m on the phone every day to them. I’ll miss the easy pace of life here but the family comes before that.” Her ex-policeman husband Terry does not want to go, but admits the winters now feel chillier and their unsteady pensions dwindled by up to 30% as the pound lost value dramatically last year. The rollercoaster exchange rates saw them losing €500 a month at one stage. The Moseleys will have to wait to go home. The market is flooded with unsold homes. “We’ve only had two people come to view it in 12 months.”

A million Britons live for all or most of the year in Spain, according to the British embassy, although only 375,000 have registered formally at local town halls. Many would rather the Spanish authorities, especially those who collect taxes, did not know they were there. The one million figure makes them Spain’s biggest immigrant group.

Brits in Spain are usually associated with the southern Costa del Sol, near Malaga. It has glitzy, corrupt Marbella and once boasted Sean Connery, Barbara Windsor and glamorous East End gangsters among its denizens. Even Princess Diana visited. The biggest population of Britons, however, lives in Alicante province, along the long stretch of coast from Denia to Torrevieja. There is little glamour – and no princesses – here. Incomes are low, and the black market, English-speaking economy has attracted a legion of ill-prepared chancers trying to live off their – sometimes invented – skills as plumbers, electricians, hairdressers, gardeners, pool cleaners or labourers. “It’s the younger people who are moving back to Britain,” says Barbara Chadwick, at the Home 2 Home removals firm near Javea. “They just can’t make it here.”

But even the true Spanish devotees are finding the going tough. Phyllis and Ron Hillman, both in their late sixties, have found two state pensions no longer fund the good life they once had in San Fulgencio.”It sounds shocking, but we never had to budget before,” says Phyllis. “We are down €300 a month. What do you do? You cancel your gym membership and you don’t go out nearly as much. And we couldn’t afford the British butcher any more.”

Penny Lapenna is another of the genuine Spain-lovers. She and husband Joe sold their house in London’s East End nine years ago, and bought a house outright in the charming inland village of Parcent. They learned Spanish, got jobs, put their three daughters into the local school and enjoyed life. “We swapped our grey clothes for bright clothes,” says Linda. “I have loved living in Spain.”

Then her husband’s computer business folded and Linda lost her job on an English- language newspaper. Now she is applying for jobs in the UK. Her sister and at least three other British families from the village have already gone. “We’ve seen many families come and go in nine years. They fall into two groups: one lot with crazy notions and no command of the language who ended up having an extended holiday; and the other lot who made quite a go of it and set up businesses. But, like any immigrant, if your business struggles you have no fall-back.”

A Spanish bank manager in San Fulgencio confirms that people are dropping off their keys. “They are wrong to do that,” she says. “That does not cancel a mortgage in Spain.” Already banks are hiring lawyers in Britain to track debtors down. “I’m getting calls from people who are having houses repossessed almost twice a week,” says Michael Wroot, at the second-hand furniture store he has run in Javea for 26 years. “It’s probably the worst it has ever been.”

While the young move home, the old have few options. “Some people are having real problems paying the bills,” explains the owner of a private old people’s home for expats in Alicante. Even the dead try to save money. Seventy percent of the corpses donated for science to Alicante’s Miguel Hernández University belong to Britons – in some cases simply to avoid the expense of a funeral. “Some of those who have approached me don’t have much money,” admits Lionel Sharpe, who helps the university recruit future corpses.

In contrast, Helen and Len Prior actually found the kind of Mediterranean paradise promised in the glossy brochures. Orchards of lemon trees line the road to their home at Vera, inland from the spectacular, volcanic coastline of Almeria. A garden, built up over six years, contains an acre and a half of palm trees and exotic plants. There is a heated swimming pool and a workshop-cum-garage area. There is, however, no house. That was bulldozed 17 months ago by the local authority, five years after they had moved in.

Where there was once a two-storey, £300,000 home – built with money from the sale of their old home in Wokingham – there is now just a large slab of concrete. “We’d be standing in the hall now,” says Len, beside the workman’s metal shed that now serves as their outside loo. Their dog Bonzo, traumatised by the men in big yellow machines, cowers from strangers.

The Priors, both 64, live in their garage while Spanish courts argue whether the local authority was right to declare their home illegal and knock it down. They won the most recent case, but will not get compensation any time soon. The glory days of gardening, swimming and relaxing in the sun have given way to worry and ill-health. Unlike others who bought illegally built homes without asking questions, the Priors did their homework and got their licences. “It was a dream,” says Helen. “We were really happy here.”

What they did not count on, however, was different levels of the Spanish administration, run by opposing parties, using them to wage a political war. The Priors admit that their Spanish is “awful” and so depend completely on their lawyer. To them the regional government is not socialist but “communist”.

Their case has sent shivers through the British community, where fear of the demolition man is spreading. The letters pages of the Benidorm-based Costa Blanca News bubble with angry rants against Spanish tax authorities, police officers, town halls and, occasionally, Spaniards as a whole. For everyone who moans, though, another one leaps to defend the country they have all chosen to live in.

The Priors, who have more reason to complain than others, have not joined either the exodus or the anti-Spanish chorus. “People came and helped us who we had never seen before. We’ve had little old people hugging us and asking whether we have enough to eat,” says Helen. “Spain is a wonderful country. We will still stay. We would never go back” •