MADRID – Hundreds of Americans staged protests in five cities throughout Spain on Saturday against Donald Trump as a tide of US citizens move to the Iberian nation to escape from the US President.
Estate agents said there has been a sharp rise in Americans buying homes in Spain since Trump won the 2024 election.
Facebook forums are full of tips on how to move to Spain.
“After (Joe) Biden’s disastrous performance in the first presidential debate we had a huge spike of enquiries and most of those people waited for the result of the election to push the button when Trump won,” said Graham Hunt, of Valencia Property, an estate agent.
Ruth Bonnet, who has dual UK and US citizenship, left America and feels safer in Spain (Photo: supplied)
Spanish scientific institutions received dozens of enquiries from US academics looking for jobs as fears grew that the US President would cut funding.
Gun violence in the US has made Americans leave for Spain which has a low crime rate. The cost of living is also much lower than in the US.
In 2024, there were 50,623 US citizens registered with authorities in Spain, according to the national statistics office, almost double the figure ten years before when there were only 29,371 Americans.
Corinne Hoisington, 59, a writer for Microsoft and an academic who left Virginia for Valencia in 2022, said she felt events in the US had shadows of what happened when her father escaped Nazi Germany in 1939.
“My father George Rauchauss realised that things were going very badly and left Berlin for the US. I hate to make the analogy, but I see a man (Trump) who is a bully, surrounded by sycophants,” she said.
“My father left when he could. We have left while we still can.”
Corinne Hoisington, a Microsoft writer and academic, who left the US to live in Valencia (Photo: supplied)
Andrew Haller, 43, an actor, moved with his wife Yana and two children from Colorado to Valencia in 2022.
“I would say that the attitudes that Trump represented and the messages that he popularised were a big factor for us moving. He was not in office, but he cast a big shadow after he was gone,” he said.
“These attitudes are ‘every man for himself, winning at all costs, never being vulnerable, chauvinism as a way of existing. This idea is that your success is determined by the capital that you possess.”
Mr Haller, 43, said gun violence in schools was another big factor in the family leaving the country.
Ruth Bonnet, 62, a retired executive assistant who was born in London but now has dual UK and US nationality, moved from Los Angeles to Valencia last year.
“I knew Trump would get in. I had seen Brexit happened. I hated to be right. It is much worse than I had imagined,” she said.
In America, she felt unsafe, but Spain appeals because she feels secure.
“In Spain, it took me six months to get used to the fact that no-one was going to shoot me,” she said.
Elizabeth Stallard, 31, a director of a Spanish university who is from Connecticut but moved to Madrid in 2022, took part in the demonstration in the Spanish capital on Saturday.
“I don’t think my generation has woken up to how bad it could be. I see it more in my parents’ generation. People are talking about contingency plans. Do we need to make a plan B to get our assets out of the country?” she said.