There is a situation that many people in this group know firsthand, even if no one tells it exactly the same. You've been in Switzerland for years. You know how recycling works, you know the quiet hours, it no longer strikes you that the neighbor calls you to tell you that the washing machine sounds too much at 8:30 pm. You have adapted. And then you go back to Spain on vacation, or you seriously think about living there again, and something doesn't quite add up.
This is exactly what describes the case of Manuel and Maribel, a Galician couple who spent forty years in Bern. Upon returning definitively to Galicia, they discovered that four decades of absence weigh heavily. "In the end we were foreigners in Switzerland and foreigners in Spain," Manuel says. In Switzerland they were called "the Spaniards". In Spain, "the Swiss". It is not an exceptional case: it is what ends up happening to most of those who have been away for more than fifteen or twenty years. The country you remember has continued to move while you were away, your friends have another life, the references are no longer the same, and you have had habits for years that no one fully understands there.
There are currently about 86,000 Spaniards residing in Switzerland. The first generation, those of the 60s and 70s, are already retired or close. Many think of the return. Some come back and reintegrate smoothly. Others find that the return is more complicated than they expected, especially if the children stayed in Switzerland or if they have not lived the day-to-day life of Spain for too many years. It is not a failure or a tragedy. It's simply what happens when you live long enough in a different place than where you came from: the roots divide, and that has consequences.