About the Diaries

For more or less 6 years, starting on year 2001 until 2007, I was what most commonly is known as an ‘expat’. This is the abbreviated form for ‘expatriated’: someone which legal residence is other than that of birth or nationality. In my case, I was a Spaniard who lived in UK and Brazil, having spent around two months in Switzerland before my initial adventure started.

This part of my life (I thought) ended when I came back to Spain in September 2007, six years after I was seating at Zurich’s airport watching on the lobby’s TV how the World was changing. It was the 11th day of September, 2001.

Further, in 2012 I had to expatriate myself… although this time I am what it is called a self-made expat. I live in London, where I lecture economics, research, volunteer as a business mentor, and try to enjoy myself with social media and Android programming.

Nowadays a husband and a daddy, but still an economist, social scientist, and human being, I feel I need to start writing my expat diary. Moreover, I’d like to advise you that ‘once and expat, always an expat’.

Francisco Marco-Serrano

PS Yes, why do we call it ‘expat’ when we mean immigrant?