Keely Capel, a British woman now 42 years old, discovered the Algarve, at 24, the ideal place to fulfill a dream that many would consider unattainable. Capel lives a life that, according to her, is incomparably superior in terms of quality and cost of living compared to what she had in the UK, she begins by explaining to .
“When 24-year-old Keely Capel packed her entire life into her car and drove for three days to reach the Algarve, she wasn’t sure how long she would stay in southern Portugal, but she wanted to escape the ‘hamster wheel’ of life in the United Kingdom. Now, at 42, a successful businesswoman and mother of two boys, she has made the sunny region her home and has no plans to return to England,” the same source begins. According to the British, “what attracted me [ao Algarve] is that the Portuguese seem to have a good balance between work and personal life. Nothing is sacrificed, but people stop, take time out, have coffee, go to the beach.”
In the Algarve, life “is calmer and outdoors” and it is possible to contrast with the lifestyle he had when he lived in Windsor in his early 20s, but traveled regularly to London: “it was that kind of hamster wheel – getting up and catching the train at 6am, never getting home before 8pm, every day was a blur, the weekends arrived and only served to decompress from the past week, ready to start again”.
Account to inews that when his parents moved to Portugal, a destination that, according to Capel, the family had already considered emigrating to during their youth, this sparked an idea a few years before their big move.
“I looked at the quality of life my parents had and realized I would never achieve that quality of life no matter what I did in the UK… work-wise, financially, I would always be playing catch-up. I decided that, if I didn’t make the change, in 10 years I would wake up doing more or less the same thing, so I literally packed the car and drove, for three days, to Portugal”, said the British woman.
Approaching his 25th birthday, he decided to give it six months to see if he could establish a life in the Algarve or, failing that, return to England. However, “I very quickly realized that, you know, even if I had to clean bathrooms for two dollars an hour, I would do it if it meant I could stay. The transition is obviously made easier when you have your parents already living in the country, but at the time I moved here, the average age of the expat population was over 55. It was still a vibrant place with lots of young people, but not so much a place for someone in their twenties to move alone,” he said.
According to the British woman, this is changing. Although he continued to work in recruitment when he moved to the Algarve, Capel ended up embarking on the real estate business, first by creating a national agency with a fellow Englishman, before venturing out to found his own company four years ago.
“One of the reasons I created my own agency was because I focus a lot on foreigners and people who are moving,” he explained, adding that he has started to see “a lot of young families [a procurar mudar-se para a região]. Covid has changed the landscape and I’m seeing a lot of people, from the UK, Ireland, even the US, moving permanently, who perhaps previously bought holiday homes”, he explained.
In terms of lifestyle, Capel stated that he feels it is easier to do more and have a more social life, while spending less, in Portugal than he ever experienced while growing up in England. “It’s relative and depends on what you do in terms of work, as wages can be quite low here, but it’s still affordable. If I want to have coffee with friends, I can get a coffee for 60 cents. In England, even if you don’t go to the big chains, we’re still talking about three or four pounds for a coffee. Of course, England is beautiful, but the weather doesn’t always help and the cost of living doesn’t make it easy. In England, everything costs money.”
Their children, aged six and eight, are both bilingual and have dual citizenship: British and Portuguese. Capel also highlights that the Algarve is very welcoming, as many people speak English. Although she still has friends and some family in the UK, she doesn’t foresee the family returning to England, even if they left the only home her children know.
“I don’t think even if my parents lived in the UK I would go back. I’m here indefinitely with my children because of their nationality, but even if I said, ‘now is the time to go’, I wouldn’t go home. I love England, I love going back for a few days, seeing people, I miss certain things about England, but not enough to want to go back home”, he concluded.
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