Spanish AfterLife exists because I made the move myself — from Mexico to Spain, through the tourist-visa years and the Digital Nomad Visa to residency — before I ever offered to guide anyone else through theirs. This is that story, and why it became a business.
My name is LJ Koch. I live on the Valencia coast, in Oliva Nova — and I got here the long way.
I left Vancouver, Canada for Mexico in 2017, and lived there until Spain pulled me across the Atlantic. Vancouver had stopped working for me — I was coming out of a long divorce, at a low ebb, and tired of running a program that no longer fit. I wanted a lower-overhead life with sun and surf, and Mexico gave me room to breathe while I worked out what came next.
I work under several remote sales contracts — the kind of location-independent income the Digital Nomad Visa was built for. That freedom let me go looking, and what I was after was never a holiday. It was somewhere I could actually live — in the off-season, at a cost and a pace that made sense — not just visit.
I didn't manage this from a spreadsheet abroad. I lived each stage of it — the limbo, the paperwork, the residency — and learned exactly where the process bends, stalls, or gets lost in translation.
I landed in Oaxaca and stayed five years — living, traveling and working across Mexico. I fell for the place almost by accident: I learned to speak Spanish, became a certified mezcal producer, founded Chulele® Mezcal, and produced a documentary series, Las Joyas de Oaxaca. It changed me. In 2020 I'd also set myself a goal of reconnecting with my Danish family, and made a good number of trips to Denmark between 2021 and 2023.
With the language behind me, I wanted to feel what Spain was like when I could actually talk to the locals — so in January 2023 I spent a month in Málaga. Between the Denmark trips and that month, the pull was clear: close access to family without living in Denmark, the weather I'd had in Mexico, and a country whose language I already spoke. Spain made sense.
Living in and out of Spain from 2023 on a tourist visa — getting to know the coast in the off-season, not just on holiday, before committing to anything.
A seasonal apartment on the Valencia coast — close enough to the everyday reality of the place to know it honestly.
The route I took onto Spanish residency. What nobody warns you about is the paperwork — the sheer number of documents that have to be certified with an Apostille, and the number of people who call themselves experts but have never actually done it.
The foreigner's number, and the stack of documents that precedes everything in Spain. Budget more time than you're quoted: a simple step can run past a week, and anything needing apostilled documents can stretch beyond a month.
Granted — and the difference it makes to live here rather than visit. The property chapter comes next; I will write that one honestly too, when it is real.
After years across Mexico, Canada and the US, I kept seeing the same shift: people aren't just chasing the traditional sunny retirement anymore. Politics, safety, and the cost of living are pushing them to look further — and Spain, honestly, is the answer. But moving to a country you don't know is frightening for most people. I'd just done it the hard way, and friends and acquaintances kept asking how. The value was never the information — that's everywhere. It was having someone who had actually walked the path.
So I built the thing I wish I'd had: one relationship that handles the whole move. I've lived the immigration side of this myself; the legal, tax, and property work is run with vetted partner firms who do it every day — but you deal with me and my team throughout. The bureaucracy isn't theoretical to us.
What life looks like now: the Mediterranean a few minutes from the door, surf when the swell arrives, work I can carry anywhere, and an overhead that finally makes sense. It's a smaller life than the one I left — and a much better one.
Spanish AfterLife handles the whole move, not one slice of it. The two things that trip people up most are immigration and property, so that's where we concentrate.
I'm not a lawyer, and I don't pretend to be one. Everything here about visas, tax, and money is “Your Money or Your Life” information, and I treat it that way:
A free 45-minute call. Whatever stage you're at, you'll get honest answers from someone who has made the move and lives on the Valencia coast now.