We left Britain for Spain – for £15 a day our kids go to state-of-the-art summer camps

Summer holidays as a child are idyllic. Six weeks of uninterrupted, unstructured bliss – no teachers, no homework, no lessons and no early morning starts. But ask any busy working parent and they might view the extended time differently. Without school routines, the summer period can often be a stressful, logistical nightmare in which parents struggle to juggle the exhaustion of full-time work with full-time childcare. Particularly for those without grandparents or relatives living nearby who can regularly help out, summer clubs, childcare and sports camps are often a no-brainer. But in the UK, they notoriously cost a small fortune, especially if families are sending more than one child. Alexandra Watson can attest to the ways summer can feel financially ruinous for working parents in Britain. She remembers the struggle of working through the summer and paying over £1,000 a month for childcare in Nantwich, a market town in Cheshire. “It honestly felt like we were working through the summer then watching so much of what we earned disappear straight back into childcare,” she says. “It was awful.” This all changed 10 years ago when Alexandra, her husband and their daughter Theia, now 12, moved to Jávea, a beach town on the Costa Blanca in Spain. “I first discovered the whole summer club thing during her first summer off school when she was three,” says Alexandra, who runs a history YouTube channel and History Mystery Agency, a children’s history puzzle company. “We started sending her when she was about five so she could keep seeing her little pals and I could actually get some work done.” Shorts Summer clubs are huge in Spain, says Alexandra, and the camps usually run from around 8am to 1pm due to the heat. “The thing is, parents have to work here; there aren’t many holidays and wages are low,” she says. She was immediately struck by just how many clubs there were, what they offered, their low cost, and the fact that even with national teachers’ strikes, schools would stay open to give the equivalent of childcare daily. Alexandra paid £170 per month for summer childcare in Spain from 2016 until 2022, making it really affordable compared with her experience of UK childcare. “The council-run options can be particularly cheap. Xàbia’s [Jávea’s] council summer school this year is only €90 (£70) for a month, for example,” she says. Summer holiday clubs in the UK cost parents an average of £1,145 per child, research from 2026 shows, up 6 per cent from last year. A recent survey from charity Pregnant Then Screwed revealed that 89 per cent of parents had used annual leave to cover holiday childcare. Half admitted that childcare costs affected their ability to afford essentials, and 88 per cent of UK parents felt financial and emotional pressure during the school holidays. Over the years at these camps, Alexandra’s daughter Theia has done “everything” from tennis, swimming, cooking, languages, chess and robotics – usually five days a week through July and sometimes into August. “Some of her friends even did sailing courses for several summers. Being a little kid and learning to sail a boat in Jávea – how cool is that?” says Alexandra. ‘I can do all my chores – it’s perfect’ Anna Wardley is a solo parent who also has high praise for Spanish summer clubs. Anna has homes in Gosport, Hampshire, on the south coast of the UK, and Colónia Sant Jordi, a small resort town on the south-eastern coast of Mallorca. She lives between the two with her six-year-old daughter, Grace. Pre-Brexit, Anna would spend more time in Mallorca than in the UK, but now it is more of a juggling act. Still, she and her daughter spend summers mostly in Spain due to the affordable and quality childcare. “Grace goes to the summer camp from 9am until 2pm, Monday to Friday, and it’s perfect,” says Anna, an endurance swimmer who works as a professional speaker and swim coach. “I know she has a great time there and in that chunk of the day, I can get work done. I can do all the chores. I can go into Palma and buy things I need, meet the accountant and not have to drag a six-year-old with me. Then I collect her at 2pm, we have lunch together and go to the beach.” Grace’s summer camp, Best Centre in Colònia Sant Jordi, features a 50-metre Olympic pool, state-of-the-art underwater video analysis, and technique swim clinics. International swimmers and triathletes train in the pool and Anna coaches swimming there. It was opened in 2009 by two former British Olympic swimmers, and it is near Anna’s apartment, which she purchased in 2015, years before her daughter was born. Anna, left, loves her ‘holy grail’ setup because she’s found somewhere she and her daughter, Grace, right, love spending summer, that allows her to work too (Photo: Anna Wardley) Over the summer, Best Centre runs Campus de Verano, a camp for children from age four to 12. “They do a combination of sporty activities, crafts, swimming, and it’s multilingual as well,” she says. “It’s a mixture of local and international children speaking Catalan, Spanish, and English – so it’s not just childcare, it’s language immersion, interacting with kids from different cultures, swimming at one of the best pools in Europe.” Six weeks of the camp costs €518 (£443) which works out at €17.26 (£15) per day, and it’s less for siblings – more than half the cost of the UK. Anna has invited other British solo mums out to Mallorca to show them an alternative way to spend summer that enriches children and parents. But for some, work still gets in the way. “It’s difficult because some people’s employers don’t allow them to work overseas or remotely, and for other people, 9am until 2pm is just not long enough and doesn’t cover their whole working day,” she says. “It works if you’ve got some flexibility.” From speaking to friends, she has heard firsthand how the setup in the UK can make summers a gruelling “headache and a financial drain” for parents, especially for those without family help. “There’s a real divide between people who have grandparents or family that can step in and provide childcare, and those who haven’t,” she says. “For the ones who haven’t, it’s really difficult. Then that’s coupled with that guilt of not being able to spend the time with your child when you feel like other families are able to. They may get one or two weeks during the six weeks holiday when they’re with their child.” That’s why Anna loves her “holy grail” setup because she’s managed to find somewhere she and her daughter love spending summer, and that allows her to work at the same time. Both parents agree that when childcare is affordable it alleviates not only the emotional pressure on working mums and dads, but also has a positive impact on their careers and wellbeing. “When you’re 24/7 solely responsible for a child, it can take its toll. We all need a break in the summer holidays, and it means we both get that,” says Anna. Spanish culture being much more child-centric and accommodating of parents’ needs makes for happier children, adds Alexandra. “It feels much less ‘children should be seen and not heard’ than in the UK,” she says. “The sunshine and outdoor life obviously help too. It’s just less stressful when you’ve got a happy, fulfilled child who’s been out having fun all morning.”