Roamer 13: She Spent 17 Years Abroad But Never Felt at Home
The thirteenth conversation in my 100 roamers project.
Roamer 13 didn't plan to spend 17 years outside Spain. The first move was almost accidental — an Erasmus scholarship, a year in Bergen, Norway, and then back home. But 2008 happened. The crisis swallowed Spain whole, and she was 22, young, restless and watching everything stall around her. Norway had worked once so she went back.
"Norway is a good country to make fast and easy money," she says. "If you don't have family, if you're alone and you just work, work, work, it's really easy to make a lot of money. Coming from Spain, the difference is like three times."
So she stayed. First for a year, then five, then fifteen.
Leaving her family was hard, yes. But she also missed what she left behind like how people in Spain spill out into the streets in the middle of the night on a random day, families with small kids still out, nobody drunk, the way strangers pull you into conversation like they've known you for years and the warmth in the air. Norway didn't have that.
After 15 years, she had one Norwegian friend. "All my friends were from South Europe, from South America," she says. "People like me."
She was happy, especially in the early years, before kids, when life was freedom, travel and a wide-open feeling. But happiness and belonging aren't the same thing. At 40, she started asking herself a harder question: "What are my actual values? Is it money?" The answer was no and suddenly 15 years of financial stability looked different. "I was feeling like I was not living."
Between Norway and Spain came Sicily — a detour shaped by a relationship, a hope that maybe a Mediterranean island would feel closer to home. Her partner at the time was from Spain and Italy, so they tried it and it was beautiful. But beautiful and livable are two very different things.
"You are really alone there," she says. "There is no state, there is no help, there is no government. So you are really alone. You need to fight a lot of things that you shouldn't be fighting because you are paying taxes, education, transport, garbage, service and you have nothing in return."
She described a place where the basic infrastructure you're supposed to be able to rely on simply doesn't exist. You pay in, nothing comes back and then on top of that, it's an island — which makes everything feel smaller, more contained, harder to escape when things get heavy.
Then there was the culture itself. "They are truly conservative," she says, flatly. "So no, no, thank you."
Coming back to Spain
She's been home since July and Spain, she notices, has changed. People are more polite, nobody smokes inside restaurants anymore, people don't throw rubbish on the street the way they used to, driving has gotten better. The European influence, maybe. But the core of it — the neighborliness, the sense that people actually want to show up for each other — that hasn't moved at all.
"I think we are good people. Really good neighbors and helping each other."
And it turns out the rest of the world agrees. People move to Spain from the Philippines, Russia, the US, Kazakhstan — from everywhere, chasing exactly what she spent 17 years away from. The culture, the family feel, a life that gives back what you pour into it.
Her daughters lived through Norway, Sicily, and now Spain. The younger one is small enough that she's just happy wherever she lands. The older one, at 12 and a half, is a different story.
She speaks Norwegian, Italian, and Spanish. She spent years in a Norwegian school system that doesn't give exams until age 13, and landed in a Spanish school where suddenly there are exams, grades and expectations, but she's getting really good grades.
What Roamer 13 wants you to know
She doesn't regret any of it. The years abroad taught her things about money, friendships with other South Europeans and South Americans — other people who understood what it meant to chase opportunity somewhere cold and far.
But she has things to say to anyone standing at that crossroads right now.
”Be careful what you choose, but enjoy as much as you can, because it's always good and if you find yourself drowning, if you think you can't see the exit, don't make the mistake of thinking you're alone in it.There is always an exit, and always people willing to help you. We are not alone, and together, we are better."
Roamer 13 spent 17 years abroad mostly in Bergen, Norway, and briefly in Sicily before returning to Spain in 2024. She is one of many expats interviewed as part of an ongoing project exploring what it really takes to build a life somewhere new.
Another compelling read, Sydney! I am as happy as I have ever been in Spain so it is fascinating to hear a returner's view...