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‘Coffee is something people don’t seem to want to give up, despite the Spanish heat’

Spain is going to be scary if it doesn’t get some rain this winter, says an Irish coffee roaster in Nerja

Kerry and Wesley Patten selling their freshly rosted coffee in Nerja, Spain.

Kerry Patten
Mon Aug 14 2023 - 06:01

Having done a lot of travelling, which had been my life goal from childhood, re-entry to normal life was very hard.

We arrived back in Ireland towards the end of 2009 after travelling around southeast Asia, Australia and South America. We were busy renovating a house and having our two children. However, things were very tough in Ireland at the time, so many people were going to Australia, and we had only just got home and committed to a mortgage.

Wesley, my partner, decided to go back to school, as he had previously worked in construction and there were no such jobs at that time. When he finished his degree, I started dreaming about adventures again. As my mother lived in San Francisco in the US, we started thinking about some different possibilities, particularly as the weather in Ireland was tough for us and we lived in the countryside, five miles from the nearest shop.

So we decided to do it.

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San Francisco was really tough for the first two years, trying to get used to the cultural differences and establish our careers and make new friends, but by year three we were getting there. Then 2020 came along and Covid rocked the world, making everyone rethink their lives.

I think 2020 was all about just trying to survive through it, but as 2021 brought some let-up, we definitely started to feel the distance from home and felt the time we had with our children during the pandemic was something we desired more of. As the busyness of life crept back in, we started thinking about what other possibilities there could be in life.

[ Irishman selling real estate in Florida while living in Spain ]

We wanted to be closer to home, but without the rain, and as we spoke a little Spanish from our six months in South America, we started looking into whether we could make Spain work.

The thing that seemed to hold a lot of people back from moving there was the difficulty of finding work in Spain, so we thought we should probably try to have a business ourselves so we wouldn’t need to rely on other people.

We knew we had to time things right with the kids, and so decided to take them out of school about six weeks early to allow us to travel around Spain to try to understand where we wanted to live and also learn some more Spanish before we found a place to start school in September.

We love Nerja. It is honestly so similar to Westport, except in terms of the sun. There’s something so familiar about living here. However, life isn’t all roses

We also wanted to try to figure out what type of business we felt could work for us.

We started in Barcelona, then we went to San Sebastian and to Pamplona, where we spent a week walking the Camino de Santiago to help us all to really reconnect as a family.

After we finished the Camino in Logrono, we wanted to explore some areas where we were hoping we could live.

[ Work in the sun: Spain offers low taxes and long-stay visas to globetrotting IT professionals ]

We were still a little stuck about what we wanted to do for work, until I one day realised in Salamanca that I had not had a single good cup of coffee since arriving in Spain.

Having two children, coffee feels like a necessity in life. And we had also lived in San Francisco, which has a thriving speciality coffee scene and where it is actually difficult to drink bad coffee. So, at that moment, I knew this was what I wanted our business to be.

One weekend, we went to see a friend of Wesley’s who was staying in Nerja on holidays – and that was it. We knew exactly where we wanted to live.

Nerja sits on the southern coast of Spain, on the Mediterranean.

We love Nerja. It is honestly so similar to Westport, except in terms of the sun. There’s something so familiar about living here. However, life isn’t all roses. It has its ups and downs, particularly with the cost of things, but we have a swimming pool to hop into and clear your mind on days that seem a little tough. We are extremely fortunate to have that.

Living in Nerja, the number one industry is tourism, so they cannot turn off the water in the town. However, outside of the town, the water is being turned off

There has not been a lot of talk here about the so-called heatwave. Spain is completely set up for heat. Traditional Spanish houses have thick walls, smaller windows and blinds on the outside of them known as persianas. This is how you keep out the heat.

I roast the coffee at 7am if I have multiple batches to do – I get it done early. Thankfully, coffee is something that people don’t seem to want to give up despite the heat, although we do sell cold brew, which is incredibly popular right now.

So you get up early to get your jobs done earlier. Then you have your siesta in the afternoon, and get some more work done come evening time. This is normal every summer, and we know how to cope with the heat here. The extremely pressing issue that everyone is talking about is water, however. It’s a huge problem.

[ Young people like us have opportunities in Spain that we’d never have in Ireland ]

Global warming has meant there isn’t much of a winter. The government gave grants for avocado trees and mangos, which need way more water than olives, meaning farming has drained water supplies.

Living in Nerja, the number one industry is tourism, so they cannot turn off the water in the town. However, outside of the town, the water is being turned off. It’s a massive problem a little more inland, so it is going to be scary if they don’t get some rain this winter. So, it’s literally the opposite of Ireland.

We have been in Spain for more than a year now and our Spanish has improved. It is still nowhere near perfect, but we can communicate. The kids have finished a year of school, which obviously was tough for both of them, but we are still really enjoying life here and we can pop home for a couple of days if anything urgent comes up, which makes life a little easier also.

  • Kerry Patten lives in Nerja with her husband Wesley Patten and their two children. She is from Teirnaur, Co Mayo, Wesley is from Achill. You can follow them on Instagram @nerjacoffeeroasters
  • If you live overseas and would like to share your experience with Irish Times Abroad, email abroad@irishtimes.com with a little information about you and what you do
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