The Great Asturian Retirement
Or how Geoffrey finally escaped the office and completely lost the plot
The bus pulls into Oviedo on a Tuesday in October. The first thing you notice is that it is absolutely, magnificently raining. You are Geoffrey Hartley, 55, formerly of Accounts Receivable, Macclesfield. You took early retirement and moved to Asturias because a YouTube video made it look luminous and magical.
The video was filmed in July.
You stand outside the bus station in a light jacket, clutching a folder labelled IMPORTANT SPAIN DOCUMENTS, staring at a sky the colour of a filing cabinet. A local man walks past in a full cagoule, eating a sandwich, completely unbothered. This is your new life. It has started.
What's inside
- The Sidra Education: Asturian cider is the local religion. It is poured from a height of one metre to aerate it. The science is sound. Your first attempt covers the bar, your sleeve, and the shoe of a man named Manolo — who has a cousin in Birmingham, which turns out to be a sufficient basis for friendship.
- The Supermarket Odyssey: Mantequilla is butter. Manteca, which looks identical, is lard. Queso picón is an aggressively pungent blue cheese that fills a flat at midnight with something between a farmyard and a chemistry lab. It tastes extraordinary. You eat it all standing up.
- The Rain Reckoning: Eleven days. One umbrella, then a better one, then a "technical" jacket costing €180. Here you will learn the three Asturian words for rain — sirimiri, orbayu, diluvio — and understand why a people who needed that many words also developed fabada, sidra, and the philosophy of going outside anyway.
- The Five Endings: Follow Geoffrey to his fate — whether that's becoming a near-genuine Asturian (allotment mud, three dinner invitations, a "Notable" from Profesora Inés), a mountain hermit with three hens and comprehensive cheese vocabulary, a language legend whose subjunctive remains enthusiastic rather than accurate, a permanent patient beloved by the entire Centro de Salud, or the Cider-Man: pouring sidra from the right height, clean arc, lands in the glass — more or less.
Your five possible endings
Ending1: The True Asturian
Ending 2: The Hermit of the Mountains
Ending 3: The Language Legend
Ending 4: The Permanent Patient
Ending 5: The Cider-Man
Why you need this
Whether you are genuinely planning early retirement to Spain, in the early stages of completely losing the plot about it, or simply someone who has ever said "yes" with confidence to a question they didn't understand and found a loyalty card form being printed — Geoffrey's story is for you. It is a reminder that integration is not a language certificate. It is a fiesta where an elderly man asks you to dance, and you are terrible, and everyone claps anyway.
Note: the YouTube video was filmed in July. Asturias is magnificent in October. The rain is not a problem. It simply is.
Perfect for:
Early retirees mid-fantasy, anyone who has Googled "retire to Spain" more than once this week, and everyone who has stood in a foreign supermarket holding two identical packets, absolutely certain one of them is lard.
