Many expats in Valencia and across Spain describe feeling lonely as an expat in Spain even when life is objectively going well. Loneliness is one of the most common experiences among expats in Valencia and across Spain, yet one of the least talked about. Research suggests that up to 40% of expatriates report moderate to severe loneliness (Tjitra & Sadarjoen, 2020), and in my practice I see this regularly. Many people arrive with excitement, a new city, a fresh start and find that within months they feel isolated in ways they did not expect. This is not a sign that something is wrong with you or that you made the wrong decision. It is a normal response to a significant life transition. Expat loneliness in Spain tends to follow specific patterns: the absence of relationships that once held your history, the effort of building connection across a language and culture, the quiet grief of leaving behind a version of yourself. As a bilingual psychologist offering in-person sessions in Valencia and Madrid and online sessions internationally, I work with this experience often. Understanding what the loneliness is pointing to is usually the first step toward something shifting.
The loneliness that surprises you
You planned for the practical challenges. The paperwork, the language barrier, finding a doctor. What most people do not plan for is the particular quality of loneliness that arrives even when life is objectively going well.
Valencia is one of the clearest examples of this. People move here for the sun, the pace, the food, the lifestyle. The city delivers on all of it. And still, a few months in, many people find themselves sitting in a beautiful apartment in Ruzafa or Cabanyal, watching the evening light, feeling inexplicably alone.
The setting makes it harder, not easier. When everything around you looks like the life you wanted, the loneliness feels like a personal failure rather than a predictable part of the transition. Digital nomads who chose Valencia for freedom find themselves missing the colleagues they didn’t realise mattered. Families who relocated for a better life discover that culture shock and homesickness survive the Mediterranean sunshine.
Part of what makes expat loneliness so disorienting is that it does not always look like loneliness from the outside. You are busy. You are making it work. But the relationships around you are still new, still surface-level. Nobody here knows who you were before you arrived.
That absence is real. And it takes time before new roots feel deep enough to replace it.
When “I should be fine” becomes its own problem
One pattern I notice often is the pressure to feel grateful. You chose this. You wanted the change, the adventure, the opportunity. And so when loneliness arrives, there is a second layer on top of it: the feeling that you have no right to struggle.
This tends to make things worse. When we dismiss our own pain because we think it is not justified, we lose access to what the pain is trying to tell us. The loneliness gets pushed down. It surfaces later as irritability, as exhaustion, as a vague flatness that is hard to explain to the people back home.
What I have found, both through my own experience of living across different countries and in my work with clients, is that the people who move through expat loneliness most quickly are the ones who allow themselves to feel it without immediately arguing themselves out of it.
What the loneliness is often pointing to
In my experience working with internationally mobile people, expat loneliness is rarely just about the absence of friends. It is usually pointing to something deeper.
Sometimes it is an identity shift. When you move countries, you lose much of the external context that tells you who you are. Your professional reputation, your family role, your cultural references, your sense of humor in your own language. All of that has to be rebuilt, and in the meantime there can be a disorienting sense of not quite knowing who you are here.
Sometimes it is what I would describe as migratory grief – a real and underacknowledged loss. Not just of people, but of a version of your life, a chapter of yourself. Logotherapy, the approach developed by Viktor Frankl, has a particular way of working with this kind of existential loss: not by eliminating the pain, but by helping you find meaning in and through it.
For accompanying spouses who left careers behind, this grief often has a specific shape. The identity that was tied to professional life disappears overnight, and the loneliness that follows is not just social it is existential.
And sometimes, particularly in clients I work with using an IFS lens, the loneliness belongs to a younger part of the person that has always felt this way. The move simply brings it closer to the surface.
Understanding which of these is at the root makes a real difference to how you work with it.
What helps (and what doesn’t)
The advice most commonly offered to lonely expats is practical: join clubs, take language classes, say yes to invitations. That advice is not wrong. Community matters and putting yourself in situations where connection can happen is important.
But it does not address the internal dimension of the experience.
What I have seen help, more than any activity, is giving yourself permission to grieve the transition properly. To acknowledge what you left, what changed, and what you are still figuring out. Not as a complaint, but as an honest reckoning with where you are.
Talking to someone outside your immediate situation also tends to make a difference. Not because you need to be diagnosed or fixed, but because having a space to say the complicated thing, the ambivalent thing, the thing you cannot say to your partner or to your family back home, tends to loosen something.
When to talk to someone
Loneliness that passes as you settle in is a normal part of the expat experience. But there are signs it has moved into something worth taking seriously.
If you have been in Spain for more than six months and still feel fundamentally disconnected, if what started as adjustment has begun to look more like relocation depression, if the flatness is affecting your work or your relationships, if you are questioning the whole decision in a way that feels paralysing rather than reflective – those are signals worth paying attention to.
Working with a therapist who understands expat life specifically makes a difference. Not just because of the language, but because the context matters. There are things you will not have to explain. And I know finding an English-speaking therapist in Valencia who also understands the emotional terrain of living between cultures is not always easy. That gap is exactly why I do this work.
I offer in-person sessions in Valencia and Madrid, and online sessions in English and Spanish to clients across Spain and internationally. If what you have read here feels familiar, you are welcome to get in touch. The first session is a conversation, nothing more.
If you are not sure where to start, my guide to finding an English-speaking therapist in Spain covers the practical side.
Talí Uribe is a bilingual psychologist and psychotherapist based in Valencia, Spain, with over 25 years of clinical experience. She is IFS Level 1 certified and holds a diploma in Logotherapy and Existential Analysis from the Viktor Frankl Institute. She works with individuals navigating expat transitions, anxiety, burnout, and relationship difficulties, in person in Valencia and Madrid and online internationally. Learn more about Talí →
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute professional psychological advice. If you are experiencing a mental health crisis, please contact a qualified professional or call emergency services.
If you are in Spain and need immediate support: 024 (Línea de atención a la conducta suicida, 24h) | 717 003 717 (Teléfono de la Esperanza) | 112 (Emergencias)