@Julien and all,
My name is Jim and I currently live in Aliso Viejo, California.
My wife and I have been talking about the possibility of retiring in Europe for a couple of years now and Spain is the most attractive country to us.
We're both working on our Spanish but feel the need to be in an immersive environment for quite a while to develop enough fluency to be able to maintain a verbal conversation.
We spent a couple of weeks visiting Malaga, Granada, and Sevilla (plus Lisbon) last December and into early January, and we've sort of zeroed in on Sevilla as our favorite spot so far.
We're beginning to plan a longer visit towards the end of this year -- probably December and January.
We're tempering our hopes somewhat, due to what we're learning about the tax situation. We haven't entirely given up on the idea of retiring there, but are also considering splitting our time between our current home and spending almost half of the year in Spain.
My wife has a passport from another EU country and our understanding is that will make it possible for us to stay up to 6 months per visit rather than just 90 days. If that's a misunderstanding on our part, I'd appreciate getting set straight.
Sorry for the long-winded intro. I'll have to gather my thoughts and start a thread or two with specific questions.
In closing, I'm very happy to have found this forum and look forward to learning from/with and sharing thoughts with you all.