From San Francisco to Cantabria: One Woman's Story of Building a Life in Spain
Some people move to Spain once. Mardi Lucich has done it twice — first as a newly-in-love twenty-something with zero Spanish, and again, a decade later, as a mother searching for the right school for her son. In between: a career left behind, a return to the US, and a growing realisation that Cantabria was where she wanted to put down roots.
In this Integration Stories episode, Mardi sits down with Grace to talk through both of those transitions — what made them different, what made them hard, and what actually helped. It's one of the most honest conversations we've had on the podcast about what integration really involves, beyond the paperwork.
A Love Story That Started With a Photo in Malaysia
Mardi's connection to Spain began nowhere near Spain at all. Travelling alone through Southeast Asia in her late twenties, she was asked to take a photo of a group of Spanish friends at a temple in Malaysia. One of them was Jorge, now her husband. What followed was weeks of travelling together, months of staying in touch, and a decision, in 2012, to leave San Francisco — house sold, job resigned — and move to Zaragoza with no Spanish at all.
It's a reminder worth sitting with: many people who eventually build a life in Cantabria didn't arrive with a five-year plan. They arrived because of a relationship, a job, or a feeling — and figured the rest out afterwards.
Learning a Language From Zero, Without a Community to Lean On
Zaragoza, Mardi is quick to point out, isn't Cantabria — it's a different climate, a different rhythm, and at the time, a city without much of an international community to soften the landing. That meant total immersion: five hours a day, four days a week at the University of Zaragoza, followed by further study through the local ayuntamiento's language school. Two and a half years of it.
What stood out in this part of the conversation wasn't the study schedule — it was what the loss of language did to her sense of self. Mardi had come from a career working with press and government officials, comfortable walking into any negotiation. Suddenly she couldn't confidently walk into a bank, or bring herself to answer the phone.
"I felt like I needed to change my voice in order to pronounce the words correctly, or to have the inflection or expression in Spanish — that's when things shifted for me, when I gave myself permission to have a different voice in speaking Spanish." — Mardi Lucich
That permission — to sound different, to be a slightly different person in a second language — is something Grace recognised too, describing how her own children behave differently depending on which language they're speaking. It's a small but important thing to hear if you're in the thick of learning Spanish yourself: the frustration of not being fully "you" in a new language is normal, and it does shift with time.
Two Different Arrivals: As a Woman, Then as a Mother
After five years in Zaragoza, Mardi and Jorge relocated to a small town in North Carolina for Jorge's work. Five years after that, with a young son and a growing sense that the US wasn't where they wanted to raise him, they began looking back toward Europe — and a position in Santander brought them to Cantabria in 2022.
This second move looked nothing like the first. Where the Zaragoza chapter had been about language and independence, arriving in Cantabria was shaped almost entirely by one priority: finding the right school. Once that was settled — they chose Waldorf Cantabria — everything else, including housing, followed from there.
It's a pattern we see constantly with families relocating here: school comes first, because school is where community gets built. Mardi describes meeting other parents who shared a philosophy on raising children, in or out of Spanish, as the real turning point in feeling like Cantabria could become home rather than just an address.
Why a Cup of Tea Matters More Than It Sounds
One of the more quietly powerful parts of this conversation is how Mardi and Grace actually met: Grace messaged Jorge's number after noticing an English-speaking family had joined the school community, simply to say — if your wife wants to get a coffee with someone who speaks English, I'd love that.
That single message grew into a regular gathering — Grace, Mardi, and a third friend, Reina, meeting for morning tea — which slowly expanded into the wider community that would eventually become part of the foundation for Move to Cantabria itself.
What both women describe isn't really about tea. It's about the relief of being fully articulate with someone, even briefly, while still doing the harder work of integrating in Spanish the rest of the time. Community doesn't replace learning the language and building a life locally — but it does make the learning curve survivable.
What "Belonging" Actually Felt Like
Mardi is refreshingly specific about the moments that made Cantabria start to feel like home, and none of them were dramatic:
Confidently ordering — and receiving — the right thing at the butcher's.
Knowing where the small pueblos scattered across Cantabria actually were, and how long it took to get to each one.
Finding a reliable dentist, mechanic, and organic shop, so daily life stopped requiring research.
Being recognised somewhere — a small shop where the staff know her name, her family, and what she does and doesn't like.
None of these show up on a checklist for moving to Spain, but together they're what turns a place from unfamiliar into lived-in. It's also, notably, exactly the kind of groundwork that takes the longest to build alone — and where having someone point you toward the right people saves months, sometimes years.
From Integration to Reinvention: The 3rd P
The conversation's second half turns to what Mardi built once she'd settled: The 3rd P, a consultancy supporting women through perimenopause. It's a business born directly out of her own experience — first struggling with unexplained symptoms in the US with no answers, then facing the same confusion again after moving to Spain, this time layered on top of an unfamiliar healthcare system.
Her insight is one that applies well beyond women's health: moving to a new country strips away the informal knowledge you didn't know you were relying on. You don't just have to learn a new system — you have to learn that you need to ask, and often in a language you're still building confidence in. For women going through perimenopause at the same time, Mardi describes it as "a double whammy" — navigating brain fog, sleep disruption, and anxiety, while also decoding a healthcare system, in a second language, often without knowing what support is even available to ask for.
Her work now focuses on closing that gap: helping women, Spanish and foreign alike, understand both their own physiology and the Spanish healthcare system well enough to advocate for themselves confidently.
The Common Thread
What ties both halves of Mardi's story together — the language learning and the business she eventually built — is the same idea that sits at the heart of every Integration Story we feature: struggling through something alone rarely has to be permanent, and the people who've been through it are often the best guides for the people arriving next.
That's the whole premise behind this series, and behind Move to Cantabria itself. Nobody expects perfection when you're learning to live somewhere new — but a little welcome, a little community, and someone who's already done it, make an enormous difference.
Want the full conversation? Listen to the complete Integration Story with Mardi Lucich on Spotify / Apple Podcasts / YouTube, where she also talks about raising a bilingual son, discovering her Puerto Rican roots through learning Spanish, and what it took to rebuild her fluency after five years away.
Learn more about Mardi's work: The 3rd P website
