Posted: Wed Aug 5, 2020 10:13am
It really depends what you are looking for. You have previously asked about Los Montesinos which is a lovely little town, so I wonder if your main aim is to get away from expats? La Marina to Sax would be a totally different experience.
As you can see, I don't live in Sax, although it's not that far from me and Villas is the one with all the local knowledge but I do have experience of living in the Campo of a traditional Spanish town that is just slightly larger than Sax.
Buying in the Campo can be complicated as many properties were built illegally and don't have a Habitacion Certificate. You will probably have a septic tank rather than mains sewage and some are not on mains water at all. The further out you go, the more problems you may get with internet reception and speed. The more land you have, the more work you will have. I have 3,000 m2 and it is a constant struggle to keep weeds down and tend to the orchard. The higher you are ( Sax is about 450 m above sea level ) the colder it will be and many unreformed villas rely solely on an open fire or wood burner if you are lucky.
Buying a country property can be an eye opener as many were self-built and can have dodgy plumbing and electrics. We bought ours as a refurb project, having been in the game in the UK, and have a healthy budget which we will definitely use up even though we are doing most of the work ourselves. At the moment my husband is digging up all the outside wiring and finding multiple junction boxes with bare wires buried just below the surface.......no earth at all when we first arrived!
Quite often at our nearest café we will not hear English voices at all and very few of the locals speak more than a smattering, enough to order a coffee and wine but not sufficient to explain what is on the menu. We are lucky that the owner of our ferrateria speaks enough to help us out along with our limited efforts in Spanish.
Our Centro de Salud insist that non Spanish speakers bring an interpreter. The locals are mostly very friendly but any dealings with officialdom needs an interpreter if you don't want to go around in ever decreasing circles.
Much as I love where I live, if anything happened to my husband I would be looking to move into an area with more expats and facilities all close to hand.