When you landed—2019, 2021, whenever—you picked a location based on what made sense at the time. Maybe the rent was €800/month cheaper in Benalmádena than in Marbella. Maybe Fuengirola felt close enough to everything. Maybe the eastern municipalities seemed like smart arbitrage: same sun, lower cost.

Those assumptions made sense then. The question is whether they still do.

Over the past three years, the Costa del Sol's professional infrastructure consolidated toward the western corridor—Marbella, San Pedro de Alcántara, Nueva Andalucía, Estepona, Benahavís.

Service providers followed the money. The English-speaking lawyers handling complex cross-border tax structures? Their offices are now in Marbella and San Pedro. The gestores — administrative agents — who understand autónomo compliance for remote workers? Mostly west of Fuengirola. The accountants who can navigate both Spanish and US/UK filing requirements? Same pattern.

Coworking consolidated. The spaces with tested fibre speeds and professional membership—Centro House (Calle Arquitecto Francisco Salvá, Marbella), Work in Marbella (Plaza de la Victoria), WeCowork (Nueva Andalucía)—charge €159-400 per month because that's where the demand is. East of Mijas? The options thin out fast.

Infrastructure investment diverged. Marbella's Ayuntamiento — town hall — budgeted €47 million for water infrastructure over three years. The eastern municipalities—Torremolinos, Benalmádena, Fuengirola—received less than €15 million combined. When pipes need replacing, streetlights break, or permits need processing, response times vary. And those differences compound.

Schools clustered. Fifteen international schools are within 20 minutes of Nueva Andalucía—English International College, Aloha College, Swans International, Laude San Pedro, and British School of Marbella. The eastern municipalities? Zero international schools. Families with school-age children moved toward the options. Their professional networks moved with them.

If you live in Benalmádena or Fuengirola and your professional life runs through Marbella, you're paying a tax nobody budgeted for.

It works like this:

Every meeting with your lawyer: 45 minutes each way instead of 15. That's an extra hour.

Every networking event in Nueva Andalucía: 45 minutes each way. Skip a few because the commute doesn't justify the uncertain payoff. Miss the introductions that would have happened if you'd been there.

Every coworking day: 45 minutes each way, or settle for a space with slower internet and fewer professional peers.

Every service provider appointment—accountant, doctor, the contractor who actually shows up—if they're west and you're east, every interaction costs an extra 30-60 minutes.

Add it up. Ten extra hours a month is conservative for someone whose professional centre of gravity is Marbella but whose address is Benalmádena. That's 120 hours a year.

At €50/hour, that's €6,000. At €100/hour, that's €12,000.

You didn't choose this tax. It accumulated as the geography shifted, and your address didn't.

This isn't about whether you made a mistake. In 2021, living east and saving €800/month on rent was rational. The professional infrastructure was more distributed. The price gap was wider. The arbitrage worked.

Four years later, the maths may have changed.

The rent arbitrage narrowed. A two-bedroom apartment in Benalmádena Costa that was €1,200/month in 2021 is now €1,600-1,800/month. The same apartment in San Pedro—closer to the professional infrastructure—runs €1,900- € 2,200. The gap shrank from €800 to €300-400. Does €400/month justify 120 hours of annual friction?

Your professional gravity may have shifted. When you arrived, maybe your work was fully remote, and location didn't matter. Now you're taking more local meetings, attending more events, and building a Costa-based network. The centre of that network is probably west of where you thought it would be.

Your time horizon has probably extended. "We'll be here two or three years" was in 2021. It's now late 2025. If you're staying—actually staying, not theoretically—the calculus changes. What's tolerable for two years becomes expensive over five.

Pull up your calendar from the past six months. Mark every professional appointment, meeting, or event that required you to travel west of your current location.

Count them.

Multiply by the round-trip time difference between where you are and where you'd be if you lived in, say, San Pedro de Alcántara.

Multiply by your effective hourly rate.

That's your friction tax. It's not the only factor in a location decision—family, community, and preferences matter too. But it's a number. And most people have never calculated it.

Repositioning isn't free.

Selling and buying property: 8-12% of value in transaction costs—transfer tax, notary, legal fees, agency commissions. On a €350,000 apartment, that's €28,000-42,000.

Moving costs: €2,000-5,000 for a local move.

Disruption: New neighbours, new routines, new parking patterns. If you have children, potentially new school catchments and the social reset that comes with them.

Those costs are real. They might outweigh the friction tax, especially if you're only here another year or two.

But if you're staying five years? Ten? The friction tax of €6,000-12,000 annually is starting to dwarf the one-time repositioning cost.

Neither answer is wrong. The wrong answer is the one you didn't calculate.

The calendar exercise above takes 20 minutes. You already have the data—it's just not organised.

The output is a number. That number tells you whether your 2021 assumptions still fit your 2025 reality, or whether you're paying a tax you didn't sign up for.

If the number confirms you're in the right place, good. You'll stop wondering.

If the number suggests the position no longer fits, you'll have the maths for whatever conversation comes next.

"¿Cuánto tiempo se tarda a Marbella a esta hora?" — How long does it take to get to Marbella at this time?

"¿Hay mucho tráfico por la mañana?" — Is there much traffic in the morning?

For readers whose audit reveals a thinner professional network than expected—or whose network is concentrated in a geography that doesn't match their address—we're building something.

The response from yesterday was great, and we have a few small groups ready to go. But I think we can do more. Eight people maximum. Same people each time, so relationships compound rather than reset. Monthly meetings over coffee in the western corridor. Everyone brings one live operational question: tax structure, contractor pipeline, compliance confusion. No pitches. No presentations. Either my team or I will facilitate at first.

If you replied REALLOCATE this week, you're on the list. If you missed it and want to register your interest, reply with REALLOCATE and your town. No commitment—just gauging numbers for January.

The weekend question

The Costa del Sol shifted west over the past three years. Infrastructure investment, schools, professional services, and networking density—the centre of gravity moved.

Some people moved with it. Some people had good reasons to stay put. And some people are still operating on 2021 assumptions that stopped being true somewhere around 2023.

The friction tax is real. It's just invisible until you calculate it. That's what weekends are for.

Enjoy the weekend — A. and the ideally located Waypoint Sur team

With Waypoint Sur, you can always expect plain-English guidance to land, settle, and thrive on the Costa del Sol—work, schools, healthcare, visas, taxes, home, and daily life.  
Made Mostly Under the Costa del Sol Sun. 💛