Back in Brexitland

BREXIT – the moment Brits in Spain mostly dreaded and a few (erm, why?!) hoped for – happened three weeks ago, and the differences may or may not be immediately obvious here, but the burning question for all of us is, what has it done to the UK?

The first effect of Brexit on this Anglo-Spaniard of 17 years' residence has been to order my Cervantes Institute CD and book at level C2 to start my Spanish citizenship application (you only need level A2, a good GCSE or O-level standard which, sorry, no excuses, any Brit of sound mind can achieve with a bit of work; but if I have to pay €100-odd for the exam, I might as well take the highest-level one so it'll be of some use to me – if only to flash it as a middle finger at those who subject me to micro-xenophobic comments such as, "sorry, I didn't catch your name, I don't understand your foreign accent)".

And I'm about to fly home from the UK as I write, and can confirm that so far, passport queues at Stansted are still ridiculously long and slow (without Brexit, Britain could have joined the Schengen and I'd be off the plane and standing outside Arrivals with a fag in my hand within 10 minutes of landing and...oh, whatever. At least we've taken back control, haven't we. But at least travel to a long list of other countries from Spain is still wait-free and painless).

“Nothing's changed yet – just that it's not on the bloody telly all the time,” says my about-toretire mum who, after 20 years' experience in high-end retail, largely at shop-manager level, and over 40 years in customer service, still earns 35p an hour above the minimum wage and would fall far short of the minimum salary threshold expected of EU immigrants post-Brexit (as would anyone outside the London area who's not a company manager or sales exec. A community support worker earns £21,000 to £26,000 and a secretary-cum-receptionist, £13,000 to £16,000, in Norfolk, a home care worker about the same, and they're rarer than the proverbial hen's teeth, as I know from looking after my 95-yearold Grandma during my visits).

NHS workers are apparently exempt, which leaves Grandma's other neighbour and friend María, hopefully, safe: married to a British woman with two adorable kiddies, she's Dutch, but has lived in Norfolk since she was one and chose not to return to The Netherlands with her parents some 15 years ago. But she's still having to apply for Settled Status. As has the Olivaborn

wife of my British ex-boss who have been in East Grinstead since 2013.

And that's about the size of it: We in Spain have been mourning the loss of our EU citizenship, but Brits are still in the Union in all but name until the end of the year. That's when, I'm sure, along with European 'immigrant' minimum salary requirements, it'll all go mental.

The UK will apparently expect EU migrants to prove a set level of English before they're allowed to live there for more than 90 days. Let's hope, for the sake of a high number of Brits on the Mediterranean, that EU governments don't follow suit.

As I'm surrounded by Remainers on my East Anglia trips, I manage to avoid getting stabbed (if I accidentally slide into Spanish when talking to myself or others, I'm safe from English supremacist punch-ups, too, in my childhood carrotcrunching country).

My Grandma's neighbour and surrogate daughter, after blowing a raspberry at Boris on the telly, told me it's largely a myth that the oldies voted for Brexit – the two generations between her (aged 52) and Grandma seem to be divided 5050 on it, but leaning more towards Leave – whilst the elderly people she worked with all voted Remain.

Grandma did, too. She was 91.

“They want it to go back to how it was in the '70s, but it won't,” she says.

“I probably haven't got much of a future, but I'm voting for the youngsters, who do.”

She's regaled us all with tales of the '70s as a woman at work. In charge of equipping NHS hospitals across three counties, but on paper and in her bank account, was 'just a clerk', and company policy was to not promote married women any higher. “Can you minute that?” She'd be asked by men at meetings with hospital managers. “No,” she'd say. “Bill can minute that. I'm the one you should be negotiating with, because I hold the purse strings.”

She had young female colleagues who sighed with resignation at 'having to move quickly' in all-male offices to keep their bums ungroped, and getting shouted at and reduced to tears when they wouldn't make the tea for their menfolk because they were busy with 'proper' work and the men could bloody well make their own.

My bezzie in Pego says as soon as the law changed to allow women to do so in their own name, she bought every appliance she could think of on hire purchase.

Yet many of these Remainers I speak to voted for Boris in the recent elections, which, as most agree, was effectively a second referendum on Brexit, but one that dare not speak its name.

Some won't admit which way they voted – my cousin David tells me he doesn't want to know what his mum, my mum's sister did. “Because if I found out she voted Tories, we'd have the biggest row of our lives,” he said.

It turns out Corbyn was beyond unpopular; even those who didn't believe the smear campaigns in the right-wing tabloids formed their own opinions (so they said) from his TV interviews; Lib-Dem leader Jo Swinson wasn't either (“God, I can't stand that woman,”) many said; in fact, they were so non grata that a swathe of Remainers voted Boris 'because he was the least worst'.

And because they were just sick of Brexit. Would you vote for a party which promises to chop off your head now, or prolong the agony by voting a party which claims it'll try to fight for a retrial, knowing you'll probably get it chopped off anyway, but the agonising wait for the guillotine to fall would continue? If your cancer was 'probably' terminal, would you go through months of gruelling chemotherapy 'on the off-chance it might work'? Those sufficiently fired up about Brexit voted tactically to keep the Tories out; those who were just 'sick of the whole thing' voted Boris to 'get it over and done with'.

That's how it happened, you see.

I met up with my Scottish friend Anna (who has plenty to say about the 'English-language competence' requirement for future EU immigrants. There's more than one official and native language in Britain, she pointed out. She speaks Gaelic, and told me of how a bloke on a bus speaking Welsh was told by English supremacists to 'talk in English, because this is Britain'. Apparently, Wales isn't in the UK). Her son and his Spanish wife have lived in Segorbe (Castellón province) and Valencia city for over 20 years, and have three kids, so she knew who Ágatha Ruiz de la Prada was when I handed her a bright-blue scarf with yellow stars on it by said designer at Christmas. She wears it everywhere, even when she's forced to eat in Wetherspoon's because there's nowhere else. I'm crossing my fingers she doesn't get beaten up.

“I'm so grateful to Scotland,” she says. (She has a croft in her native Outer Hebrides). “Everyone else is so resigned, now, and the Brexiters have no real opposition – other than Scotland.”

I talked to plenty of East Anglians who believe Scottish independence would be disastrous, but Anna reminds me that a huge reason the secession bid failed in 2014 was because a vast number of 'stayers' didn't want to leave the EU, which would have happened by default if Scotland had broken away.

“So, we were lied to,” she says.

And her reports of how Westminster just dismisses Scotland's 80% SNP Parliament's ideas, and how they do it, makes it sound as though autocratic company bosses faced with very real requests for a soundly-merited change in working conditions by a female staff member just dismiss her as 'hysterical' and 'probably on her period', and keep her on the minimum wage, whilst implementing a corporate policy banning employees from disclosing their salaries to each other.

Back there in Brexitland, anyone who wishes they could wake up and find it's all a nightmare has nobody fighting their corner except Scotland.

Meanwhile, my East Anglia Remain circle all knows someone who voted Brexit for reasons that have nothing to do with the EU.

“I didn't want to waste my vote.”

“They banned playing conkers in school playgrounds, and you need a parent's note to let pupils go sledging [said by people who are neither parents nor teachers].”

“Because there are too many Polish people on my street, and they chew sunflower seeds and spit out the husks, which is disgusting. [Oh! So it's not just Spanish kids, then?].”

“Some Romanian shat next to my parked car. [Is the EU to blame, too, for dog-owners who can't be arsed to pick up their pets' offerings, which are far more ubiquitous than human poop?].”

“I just fancied a change. [So, go on holiday to Spain, then. While you still can, without a visa].”

Although in truth, I've never met any of these people. The ones I meet in the UK say, oh, well, I guess it won't be as bad as they say, but I'm just fed up with hearing all about it.

Online, of course, there are plenty gloating about how 'we've left the EU and there's been no difference – it was all scaremongering'.

The first part is true. The second isn't. Because in most ways, the UK actually hasn't yet left. When it does, you might find holes where staff should be if you're shopping, in a restaurant or pub, or seeking a care worker for your elderly relative, but there could be a glut of CEOs and claims department managers and operations directors (not the medical kind).

Plus, the unanswered questions continue. I'm still not sure about many things. I have an EHIC issued by Spain, which I use if I need urgent healthcare in the UK; what will I do when it no longer applies there? Do I need health insurance to visit my Grandma and stay in my childhood home? Can I be there more than 90 days a year once I'm a Spanish citizen, if the carer shortage means I need to chip in more and more with my lovely Grandma, who still lives in her own home and wants to keep things that way?

My dad knows he'll have to get international driving licences from the post office before he visits me, or he can't use my car to get to the golf course. Yet another thing to do in the long list of travel preparations, on top of packing.

And if the UK is expecting minimum English-language competence and an income higher than many very-qualified natives could ever command in order for Europeans to settle there, where will this leave future Brits who want to move to the Mediterranean if the governments here follow suit? Will holiday-home owners still be able to retire to Spain as they'd planned? Will they have to prove at least a very decent working knowledge of Spanish?

We've been assured we'll keep our existing resident-linked rights for life. But if any governments create a new agreement that axes or restricts those, none of those affected will get a say. After 15 years outside the UK, we can't vote there, and as foreigners, we can't vote in Spain.

The only difference between the UK in January 2020 and February 2020 is that Eastenders has suddenly become more suspense-filled and the 'doofs' come at annoyingly-cliffhanging moments the day before you're due to fly home and miss the dénouement.

But otherwise, it seems Brexit in Britain hasn't actually happened yet – it's just that people (other than my Scottish friend Anna with her deliberately-debate-causing blue-withyellow-stars Ágatha Ruiz de la Prada scarf) have stopped talking about it.

And it still feels like we're waiting for our heads to be chopped off as the agony continues, with no hope of a retrial.