Karla Darocas: Artist, Entrepreneur and Canuck Expatriate in Spain
I had the opportunity to meet Karla last year on one of my trips to Spain. My interview preview will give you a little insight into our meeting. Karla is a fascinating person, a painter, a writer and generally a creative person, but also an entrepreneur with an alternative touch. Here’s what she has to say about her experience as an American expat living in Spain.
1. Tell us a little about your background. Where did you grow up, what is your educational background and what did you do before moving to Spain?
I was born in Toronto and raised in a small country town called Bowmanville, just east of Toronto. I returned to Toronto after high school and attended Humber College in Rexdale, where I studied creative arts such as fashion design, photography, and writing. After college, I opened my first company, a boutique in Toronto’s fashionable Queen St. area, selling weird and wonderful art objects.
I sold that business in 1983 and went to the University of Waterloo where I received an honors degree in Fine Arts. I graduated in 1990 and started my second company called Zona Communications. It was a communications company, and I jumped onto the Internet with both feet. I then built my first internet company, which I sold to a California company in 2000. I lived in sunny Southern California after the sale of my company, until the New York World Trade Center tragedy in September 2001.
I packed everything up and went back to Bowmanville. Then 10 days later I packed up some items and flew to Zurich, Switzerland and married my long time Spanish boyfriend who had been working in Zurich for 8 years. We packed up his apartment and in December 2001, Christmas, we moved to Spain.
2. You now live on the Costa Blanca in Spain. How long have you lived there and what motivated you to move there?
We’ve been here since December 2001. We didn’t know where we were going to live, so the first logical place to go was where Jose, my husband, Xativa, was born. It is a walled city in the interior of the province of Valencia. We live there for 6 months. We were unemployed and free to travel around Spain as it was our honeymoon. We bought a 4×4 and traveled through mountains and valleys and places that no tourist would think to go.
However, we really wanted to move to the coast, to the sea. We had met in a fishing/holiday town called Jávea, back in 1988, when I was a university student. I came to Spain twice, on student loans, to study art at the Prado in Madrid. Then, I would head to the coast to have fun and go to the beaches.
My Spanish sweetheart was a waiter at a fancy little restaurant called – El Solomilllo – right on the beach. We fell into some kind of crazy love and spent two wild summers together. We kept in touch for the next few years through a friend, until the Internet was developed.
When we came to visit Javea from Xativa we met an old friend, Carmelo. He gave my husband a job and we moved to the coast. We now make Benitachell our home, which is only five minutes from Jávea.
3. What is it like to live in Spain? What are the main cultural differences between living in North America and living in Spain? How was the adjustment phase initially when you moved there?
Spain is an ancient culture, full of raw passion, tragedy, love and a fascination with the macabre. It takes some time to get used to the intimate nature of people. They are a nation of huggers and kissers. In North American culture where a handshake is normal to greet people, here in Spain it is a hug and a kiss on both cheeks. This is standard for men and women. No one thinks you’re gay because you’re kissing a member of the same sex. This is a dumb idea.
Spain is a noisy country. They have a great love for fireworks. The bikes have no mufflers and roar like great beasts through the streets. People don’t talk to each other, she yells. An American would think that this fight is taking place in a bar when the Spanish get going. But they are not fighting, these are normal communications.
Spain is a dangerous country. Every criminal fleeing persecution in his own country comes to Spain. All kinds of mafia are here, Russians, Romanians, Italians, Yugoslavs… In addition to all the murderous soldiers left over from some Central European war. Terrorism has been a common scenario in Spain thanks to the Basque separatist movement (which learned everything it knows from the FLQ in Canada). Every week an unknown body will turn up dead in a ditch due to some unpaid Colombian drug payment.
Drinking and driving in Spain is normal. Death is cheap on the highways. Every weekend, families say goodbye to their loved ones as the jaws of death scrape the mangled bodies of young and old from a twisted piece of metal that used to be a car. Beer is not considered a dangerous drink, but it does have an alcohol content of 5%. If you need to get one, you can stop by the Drive-Thru window at your nearest McDonalds. Both wine and spirits are very cheap in Spain, making it an alcoholic’s dream come true.
Smoking is not prohibited and cigarettes are very cheap. Everyone here starts smoking at a very young age. Women stay slim as they don’t eat, they only smoke. Everyone has black circles under their eyes. The mixture of cheap brandy and cheap cigarettes creates very smelly people.
4. He has been living in Spain for several years. What places have you seen? What festivals have you experienced? What gastronomic pleasures have you enjoyed?
Our favorite festival is the Fallas Festival in Valencia. We look forward to the first two weeks of March with such passion. It is the most amazing festival both visually and emotionally. The combination of art and fire, noise and danger, all come together in this festival.
We have so many favorite foods, like paella and sausages filled with pork and herbs grown on the mountain. We love the flan and the rice pudding. We love all kinds of fresh seafood and vegetables from the market.
5. You are always involved in a variety of activities. Tell us about the various websites you are working on.
My husband and I try to keep all of our important information on our own website – http://www.darocas.com/ – this is where I also keep track of my paintings. Then I have another website called http://www.spainlifestyle.com/ where I store my writings and poems and photos of the renovations in our house. Then we have another site called [http://www.spainphotos.net/] where we store our photos of Spanish adventures.
6. In addition to websites, he is also involved in various business organizations. What are they and what is their role?
http://www.palomera.com/ is a website that searches for and monitors what the Spanish business community is doing and we can see business trends.
Last year, I started a business club for women, which has grown and we are actually organizing International Women’s Day. It just demonstrates the power of women to make something out of nothing. This is a club of international women who have come to live on this coast. The website is http://www.wibc-spain.com/
7. Obviously, both you and your husband have a strong business orientation. He is now also involved in a project involving the development of luxury Canadian cedar wood houses in Spain. Tell us more about that project.
We both love wooden houses. Houses in Spain are made of cement, so they tend to be cool in the summer, which is good, but during the winter and storm season, cement houses are damp, cold, and sticky. They are always full of cement dust and if they don’t get enough sun they get moldy.
The Spanish do not have a good knowledge of the construction of wooden houses, but many of the immigrants from England, France, Switzerland, Germany, etc. they love their wooden houses. So I got together with some old university friends from Canada who design and build wooden houses so that I could offer a Canadian cedar log house to the Spanish landscape and market. We are currently working on a project with a Spanish developer to build the first community of wooden houses in Spain. This website is called [http://www.spainloghomes.com/]
8. In addition to your business ventures, you are also an artist. Tell us a bit about your artistic training and the creative endeavors you are involved in now.
I love painting. He hadn’t done it for many years because he was so involved with the Internet industry. When we moved here, I was very happy to get back to my passion and use my skills that I developed in college. Now, I paint to please myself, but the paintings are very easily sold to people who buy new villas or to tourists.
9. Tell us about the expat experience in Spain. Where does the foreign community live, how do they interact, what types of businesses and activities are they involved in, and how has that changed the country?
The coasts of Spain are becoming very international communities. It reminds me of what California and Florida must have been like in the 60s and 70s. All the retirees from Northern Europe move to Spain for the sun and the sea.
They are bringing their cultural mix and adding it to the Spanish culture. The rest of Spain is also changing, for better and for worse. Now more social reforms are taking place in Spain, for women and for work and social welfare. The new government is young and progressive.
The down side is that progress is too fast and the natural beauty and landscape is being filled with concrete houses that look like low-cost housing, but as vacation homes are fetching a huge price. This inflation is killing off the poor in this country and now young Spaniards are facing an era where they will not be able to buy a home.
10. What advice would you give someone else who is thinking of moving to Spain?
Do not move to Spain unless you are willing to be flexible. There is nothing stable in this country and perhaps there never will be. If you’re rich and can live on a pension and play golf every day, you’ll be fine. If you think you can move to Spain and get a job, forget it. However, if you are an entrepreneur and can see the holes in the market and have the guts and knowledge to fill the hole, you will be fine.
Thank you, Karla, for sharing your views and experiences. I appreciate your insider knowledge of a culture that has fascinated me for a long time. Good luck with your efforts in Spain!