Almost every Canadian who falls for Spain falls for the same thing. A long lunch that turns into a long afternoon. A grandmother, a toddler and a teenager at the same table. A public square that belongs to everyone at ten at night. Trains that leave on time and cost less than a tank of gas. A hospital that treats you and never mentions a bill. It is one of the most persuasive lifestyle pitches in the developed world, and most of the persuasion is true.

This article is about what happens after the pitch. Specifically, it is about the gap that opens once a Canadian stops visiting Spain and starts filing taxes there, enrolling children there, insuring their health there and reporting their worldwide assets to the Agencia Tributaria. Spain rewards that transition unevenly. The single most useful thing I can tell a Canadian considering it is this: Spain is easier to love than it is to structure. You can build an extraordinary daily life there and, at the same time, an unexpectedly complicated financial and reporting life. The two are not the same project, and pretending they are is how people get hurt.

So the question this piece actually answers is narrower than “is Spain good.” It is: what form of Spanish life, if any, improves a Canadian’s options enough to justify the tax, administrative and emotional cost of becoming a resident? For some Canadians the answer is a clear yes. For others, the honest answer is that they want Spain for three months a year, not for the rest of their lives, and Spain is quietly better at the former than the latter.