By Alicja Ptak
When Karol Minarczuk, a 34-year-old insurance specialist, heard that his friend had bought an apartment on Spain’s Mediterranean coast, he thought it might be a good way to diversify capital slowly being eaten up by soaring inflation.
Prices in many parts of Spain were lower than in the increasingly tight property market in Warsaw, where Minarczuk lives with his family. But there was also another thing on his mind: his three-year-old daughter.
“Let’s not hide the fact that the situation in Ukraine also had some influence [on our decision],” Minarczuk told Notes from Poland. “The family situation changes a bit when a little one is born…[and] if something were to happen we would want to be able to take our family away so that they can stay somewhere in relative safety.”
In February this year, he bought a 90-square-metre apartment in Torrevieja, a town of 80,000 on Spain’s southeastern Costa Blanca. Minarczuk thus became one of the rapidly growing numbers of Poles buying properties in Spain.
In 2022 alone, Polish citizens bought almost 3,000 Spanish properties, a record number and over 160% more than in the previous year.
The seafront in Torrevieja
That trend points to the shifting economic dynamics of the European Union, as Poland and other eastern members have caught up with, and in some cases overtaken, their western counterparts.
When Poland joined the EU in 2004, it was the bloc’s second poorest in terms of GDP per capita in relation to the cost of living (known as purchasing power standards, or PPS). However, by 2021 it had surpassed Portugal on this measure and is now closing in on Spain.
Over that period, Poland’s GDP per capita at PPS rose from 47% of the EU average to 77%.
Meanwhile, in terms of earnings, Poland’s annual average salary taking account of purchasing power rose from 56% of Spain’s in the year 2000 to 86% in 2021. Preliminary data for 2022 and 2023 indicate that the gap has closed even further
Even though the average Spanish wage remains above Poland’s for now, property prices in Poland are often higher than their Spanish equivalents and are rising rapidly.
Magda Eder-Król, 43, bought an apartment in Torrevieja last year, moving there from London, where she had lived for almost two decades after emigrating from Poland.
She notes that she could have returned to Poland after Brexit, but that prices on the Spanish coast are lower than by the Baltic Sea. And there’s a lot more sun.
Magda Eder-Król on a balcony of her apartment in Torrevieja.
“It seems to me that if the holiday season in Kołobrzeg [a popular Polish seaside town] lasts two months and here it is nine months, and it is a few thousand [zloty] cheaper per square metre, then people prefer to buy here,” she says.
According to Polish property website Sonar Home, average prices per square metre in February this year in Kołobrzeg, a town of 46,000, amounted to 10,220 zloty (€2,270). In Torrevieja, the figure was 14% lower, at €1,948 per square metre, according to data from the Spanish website Indominio.
“Anyone who can afford to buy a property in Poland can afford to buy one in Spain,” says Jerzy Kurasandzis, owner of Spanish real estate agency Casprom, which caters mainly to Poles. He notes that increasingly his Polish clients are opting for more luxurious or larger properties.
Sales of new homes fell 38% in Poland's seven largest cities last year.
That did not, however, translate into a drop in prices, which increased by 9% per square metre https://t.co/rXV6F8XH68
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) January 4, 2023
Eder-Król says that some of her Polish friends buy two or three apartments, some for rent, some for themselves, profiting from the wide selection of properties that came onto the market when some British owners decided to sell in the aftermath of Brexit.
For her, however, the move was about living a better life. “I think I have a Mediterranean soul,” she says, adding that she loves long conversations until morning with Sangria and trips to the local farmer’s market.
Representatives of two real estate agencies told Notes from Poland that, while some of their Polish customers move to Spain from other European countries, like Eder-Król, the vast majority come directly from Poland.
“Everyone is buying, from pensioners to working families, to people who want to invest and people who want to rent. This circle of customers is very wide,” says Anna Dabrowski, a 43-year-old real estate agent who moved with her family to the area two years ago.
Multi-lingual signs at an estate agency in Torrevieja.
She adds that, even though Poles have long been interested in the possibility of buying property in Spain, the real boom started after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, as people started looking for a safe haven – both for themselves and their money – “just in case”.
The number of Polish clients served by her real estate office, Alegria, has doubled over the past year to an average of 30-40 per month.
“People are afraid for their money, lying in a bank somewhere, and which they feel they should invest somewhere,” she says.
Since the pandemic and especially after Russia’s invasion of neighbouring Ukraine, inflation has been stubbornly high in Poland, reaching a peak of 18.4% in February. Although it has started to slow down in recent months, it still stood at 13% in May.
All this demand from Poland has had a visible – and audible – impact in Torrevieja. Polish voices can be heard in the streets; many businesses, in particular estate agencies, advertise their services in Polish. You can even find a knock-off version of Żabka, Poland’s largest convenience store chain.
An advert for a Polish estate agency in Cabo Roig.
On the Facebook group “Poles in Torrevieja and its surroundings” (Polacy w Torrevieja i okolice), more than 7,500 Polish users are seeking advice on buying or renting a property in Torrevieja.
Just 10 kilometres from the centre of Torrevieja, in the nearby town of Los Montesinos, a Polish shop opened last month. The business is run by 48-year-old Anna Szymaniak, who moved to the area from England earlier this year.
The opening was greeted with enthusiasm by the local Polish community, with customers hunting for staples like buckwheat and potato starch needed for classic Polish dishes and not widely available in Spanish shops.
“We opened this shop to provide Poles with a bit of Polishness,” says Szymaniak from behind the counter. In the fridge next to her lie neatly stacked Polish sausages with bottles of Polish vodka in various flavours on a nearby shelf.
Anna Szymaniak in her shop “Polonia – Polski Sklep”.
“We wanted them to have our Polish beer, our Polish pickles, our Polish sausage, when you take all of this and add the [Spanish] weather it will give you 100 years of a happy life, I think,” she adds, laughing.
Back in the heart of Torrevieja, Minarczuk is taking over his new apartment following several months of renovations. He also noticed that his compatriots are everywhere.
“Torrevieja used to be called ‘Little Russia’,” he says, referring to the large Russian minority living in the region. “I think now it will be referred to as ‘Little Poland’.”
The number of immigrants from other EU countries resident in Poland has almost tripled in a decade.
Many have come from Spain, Italy and Portugal, saying that Poland offers better employment opportunities and quality of life https://t.co/4va4HpXZ0t
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) July 1, 2020
All images copyright of author apart from photograph of Magdalena Eder-Król, which belongs to her.
Alicja Ptak is senior editor at Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She previously worked for Reuters.
