I am a teacher in Uppsala, 52, and I have spent my summers on the Costa Blanca since 2019, the last three of them in Albir. This summer was different because my mother came with me for the first time. She is 79. She walked the promenade every morning, she sat under the pine trees at the end of the beach, and on the last evening she said: I would like to have a place here.

So it stopped being my holiday idea and became a family plan. A flat with a lift and no steps at the entrance, close to the promenade, two bedrooms, so she can come from November to March and I can come when school allows. Albir or the Alfaz side above it, not Benidorm, she finds Benidorm loud.

We are looking through https://alegria-realestate.com/ together now, she on the tablet in Uppsala, me on the laptop. There is a list. She has vetoed everything with a step at the door. There are seven left.

What I would like to hear from people who did something similar with a parent: what mattered in their first months there? Was it the community, the doctor, the language? My mother speaks no Spanish and her English is from school in the 1960s. Is Albir in winter a place where a 79 year old Swedish woman finds people to talk to, or only in summer?