I have packed a suitcase more times than I can count. Long before living in Madrid for my year abroad was ever a plan, moving was just something that happened to me a lot, house to house, sometimes country to country. One of those moves took me to Spain as a child. I remember being shocked by how people seemed to love alongside their surroundings. Balconies were full of plants instead of empty ornaments. Markets sold what was in season, not what was exported. Nobody thought twice about walking somewhere that in England might have meant a car journey. I didn’t have the language for it then, but I was watching sustainability before I ever studied it as a concept.
When I found out I’d been given the chance to spend my year abroad at CUNEF Universidad in Madrid, those memory came straight back. It felt less like starting something new and more like returning to my memories that I’d had as a child without realising it.
Travel for me has never been a luxury I approached lightly. Growing up in social housing and navigating a lot of my education independently, every journey I’ve made has had to be deliberate, cost has mattered, and so has purpose. I instinctively made every trip count and wasted as little as possible, this lines up naturally with the UN Sustainable Development Goals, I now think about deliberately rather than instinctively. Goal 11, sustainable cities and communities, and Goal 13, climate action, both sit close to how I’m planning this move.
Practically, that means choosing rail and coach travel between the UK and Madrid over short-haul flights wherever the timing allows, even when it takes longer. It means finding accommodation near CUNEF specifically so I can walk or use public transport daily instead of relying on taxis or a car I don’t need. It means living the way I saw people live in Spain all those years ago: buying food locally, reducing waste in a country with a strong culture of doing exactly that, and resisting the pull to treat a year abroad as an excuse for constant flying to new cities every weekend.
There’s something else I’ve come to believe, which is that sustainability isn’t only environmental. A student who has had to build stability from very little learns to be resourceful almost automatically, to not waste what they’re given, whether that’s money, opportunity, or the planet’s resources. I intend to carry that same discipline into how I live and travel in Madrid, not as a checklist of eco-friendly boxes to tick, but as an extension of a mindset I’ve had to build for myself since I was young.
A cleaner environment and a sustainable placement aren’t separate ambitions for me. They come from the same place: an instinct not to take more than I need, wherever I am.
