Ireneusz Bednarek spent years dreaming about having a place in Spain to escape the long Polish winters. When Russian troops invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Mr. Bednarek’s dream suddenly felt like a necessity and he bought an apartment in Torrevieja on Spain’s southeastern coast.
Having a Spanish property was no longer just for vacations, he reckoned; it was a prudent way to move money out of Poland and a potential haven in case the war spilled across the border. Torrevieja was a doable two-day drive from his home near Katowice in southern Poland.
“He was thinking about it a long time and when the war came he said, ‘Now’,” recalled Mr. Bednarek’s son, Jakub, who followed his father to Torrevieja a few months later. “It’s a Plan B in case the war trespasses into Poland.”
What the Bednareks didn’t appreciate at first was that Poles weren’t the only East Europeans who’d discovered Torrevieja as a safe haven for themselves and their cash.
This small city nestled along Costa Blanca has become a magnet for people from Poland, Ukraine and Russia. Recent census figures revealed that for the first time nearly half of Torrevieja’s 100,000 residents came from abroad with Poles, Ukrainians and Russians among the largest groups.
Real estate agents say they can barely keep with the demand from the three communities.
“It has been just crazy,” said Katarzyna Stadnicka who works in nearby Alicante for Ro Spain Real Estate. “It’s not like they’re moving here, but they want to take their money out of the region and invest it somewhere safer.”
Ms. Stadnicka said she hardly sold any homes to fellow Poles when she came to Costa Blanca from Poland five years ago. Now her compatriots make up 40 per cent of Ro Spain’s clients.
Last year Poles bought 2,160 homes across the Alicante region, which includes Torrevieja. That was close to a threefold increase from 2021 and it put Poles among the top five foreign buyers.
Ukrainians too have been snapping up property. Many fled to Poland when the war started and then moved on to Spain, drawn by the low-cost of housing and relatives who moved here years ago. Last year Ukrainians bought 1,400 homes in Alicante, up from 1,036 in 2022 and 376 in 2021. And despite western sanctions Russians managed to buy 1,300 homes in 2023, nearly 200 more than in 2022.
The impact of so many newcomers can be seen almost everywhere in Torrevieja. There are Russian and Polish coffee shops, grocery stores, restaurants and bars. Every summer Torrevieja hosts a Russian film festival and Ukrainians gather to mark their homeland’s Independence Day.
But living side-by-side hasn’t been easy and the war has strained cross-community relations.
“We Poles don’t associate much with Russians,” said Mr. Bednarek, who bought a two-bedroom house in town with his wife and sticks largely to the Polish and Spanish communities. He works in a private hospital and part of his job involves outreach to the Polish community and serving as an interpreter for patients who only speak Polish.
Bartosz Karallos, who co-owns a monthly Polish-language newspaper called Polska Costa, says Russians have been keeping a low profile in town.
“Right now, since the war started, I see less Russians. They try to hide that they are Russians,” said Mr. Karallos, who runs Polska Costa with his partner Monika Meduna, who is also Polish. “I remember five years or six years ago, I saw Russian cars and heard lot of people speaking Russian. But when the war started, they hide or change and say ‘I’m Ukrainian.’”
Ms. Meduna said that when she came to Torrevieja in 2017 she rarely heard anyone speaking Polish. Now she hears Polish more often than Russian. The couple bought a modern two-bedroom house for €120,000 three years ago in a quiet neighbourhood that’s filled with expats from Ireland, Norway and other European countries. But they don’t know of any Russians.
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Bartosz Karallos and Monika Meduna quit their real-estate jobs last year to found a Polish newspaper in Torrevieja, where they seldom heard many people speaking their language until recently.
Polish tourists, dining out at Polka restaurant on their last day in Torrevieja, chat over shots of vodka with server Agnieszka Wolkowska, who has lived here for 15 years.
Grzegorz Ośko, co-owner of Flamenco Pastel café, serves lunch to Jakub Bednarek, a fellow Pole who moved to Torrevieja two years ago. Mr. Ośko says Russian patrons are a rare sight at the café.
Over at the Flamenco Pastel, a coffee shop owned by a Polish couple, Russian patrons are reluctant to set foot inside the door. “When Russians come in, they see all the Polish stuff and turn around and leave,” said Grzegorz Ośko, who opened the cafe a year ago with his partner, Emilian Kozlowski.
The cafe specializes in Polish delicacies and cakes baked by Mr. Kozlowski, and nearly all of their customers are Polish. “The Russians keep to themselves,” added Mr. Ośko dismissively. The few Russians who do come into the cafe “don’t say ‘hello’ or ‘please’,” he said.
Many local Russians have tried to distance themselves from the war or at least remain neutral.
Much of the community has been here for more than 20 years and many local Russians have no fondness for Vladimir Putin. There are oligarchs and politicians who own sea-front villas, including Mr. Putin, according to some media reports. But most of the community is made up of Russia’s burgeoning middle class and many haven’t been home in years.
When the war started, the organizers of the film festival changed its name from the “Sol Russian Film Festival” to the “Sol International Film Festival” and they issued a statement condemning Russia’s invasion. “We would also like to point out the international character of our festival, as well as its independence from any political ideology,” the statement added.
Many Ukrainians remain wary and they’ve called on the city to cancel the festival, which they see as a propaganda tool for Mr. Putin. Some have also questioned the festival’s funding. No one connected to the festival was available for comment.
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Ukrainians in Torrevieja are wary of perceived sympathy to the Kremlin among the local expats, many of whom moved here long ago and do not look kindly on the Putin regime.
The recent murder of a Russian defector has raised further concerns about Moscow’s influence over the community.
Last February, two gunmen opened fire on former Russian army pilot Maxim Kuzminov near his home in Villajoyosa, north of Torrevieja. Mr. Kuzminov drew global attention a year ago when he landed his Mi-8 helicopter in eastern Ukraine and asked for asylum. He took on a new identity and moved to Villajoyosa hoping to blend in with the Russian community. Police say he was killed within weeks of arriving, and they suspect the execution was ordered by Moscow.
Not all Ukrainians have been hostile to local Russians and some have had to make difficult compromises.
Valentin fled Crimea with his family shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion. His children fanned out across Europe while Valentin and his wife settled in Torrevieja, which they’d visited once on holiday.
Valentin, who asked that his surname not be published because he has relatives in Crimea, used to work for Eastman Kodak Co. in Ukraine. Now he runs a small restaurant in Torrevieja called Oasis, which caters mainly to Russians.
He didn’t have much choice, given that he’s fluent in Russian and not Spanish. But he’s philosophical about his situation and believes that a good meal can bring almost any warring people together.
Oksana Hrabova also didn’t have many options when she came to Torrevieja in 2022 with her two children, ages 16 and nine. They left Donetsk in Eastern Ukraine and her fluency in Russian landed her a job as a bartender at the Tres Gatos pub, a favourite Russian watering hole. She loves the place and is grateful to the pub’s Russian owner, Oleg Simonov. “It’s like a home,” she said of Tres Gatos. “Russians, Ukrainians, Poles, they all come here.”
Mr. Simonov has been in Torrevieja for eight years and he’s weary of the war and the disharmony it has caused. “Ukrainians who come to Torrevieja now, they are against Russians,” he acknowledged with a sigh as he sipped coffee in the pub on a quiet Thursday evening in August. “We understand.”
He’s from Kirov, northwest of Moscow, and he used to run a specialty paper business. When the company fell on hard times he headed to Torrevieja with wife and two sons, on the advice of friends who’d come earlier. He started a craft brewery then opened Tres Gatos, or “Three Cats.”
The pub has a rustic atmosphere with wooden benches and Russian mementoes on the walls. The bar is stocked with Russian soft drinks and beer that Mr. Simonov procures in Germany, and the front entrance is decorated with a sign, in Russian, that proclaims the benefits of good beer and good company.
Mr. Simonov said Russians and Ukrainians mingle here without any problems. The pub has also hosted performers from Ukraine, Russia and Belarus. “We all have one passport,” he said. “It says, ‘I am human’.”
He’s careful when speaking about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He blames the war on the distrust between Mr. Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and says they should have negotiated before Russia attacked.
Like most Russians in town, he’s been directly impacted by the war. Sanctions have made it almost impossible for him to get a bank loan and his Russian passport causes almost daily difficulties. He’s holding out hope that in two years he can apply for Spanish citizenship.
Despite the challenges and the uneasiness, he’d rather be here than in Russia. He loves Torrevieja; the weather, the people and the natural beauty that’s unlike anything he’s ever saw back home. “It’s heaven here,” he said with a smile.
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Publish date : 2024-09-24 06:00:00
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The post Sunny Spain’s growing diasporas from Ukraine, Russia and Poland find no vacation from tensions back home first appeared on Love Europe.
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Author : love-europe
Publish date : 2024-09-24 18:04:21
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