A dramatic move to a mountain town in the Axarquía

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When theatre director Paula Bangels moved to Cómpeta during Covid, she discovered a lively foreign and Spanish community

Jennie Rhodes

Friday, 12 December 2025, 19:17

When the Covid pandemic hit in March 2020, work for Belgian theatre director Paula Bangels completely dried up. There were no performances, theatres closed down and those working in the industry were among the most affected.

However, having spent much of his youth at his parents' house in Catalonia, Paula's husband Bert had already decided that he wanted to grown old in Spain and when he first proposed the idea to Paula when they met 10 years ago, she liked it.

Like for many people, Covid proved to be a turning point in their lives. Now Paula and Bert have lived in Cómpeta for almost five years. She admits that they had "never been to Andalucía" but an old college friend who was living in the Axarquía town offered the couple a place to rent.

The couple soon fell in love with the area, bought a house and sold their property in Belgium. "We don't regret it at all. It was the best decision," Paula smiles.

She soon got involved in local activities - singing, walking and ceramics groups - and they spent a good deal of the first year "enjoying the sunshine" and exploring Andalucía. However, after about a year Paula admits that "something was missing". So she decided to put a post on the town's Facebook page to see how much interest there would be in a theatre group. "I thought if I got four or five people, we could do something," Paula says. Instead she got 23 and Cómpeta Connect was born.

That was in February 2024. Now, almost two years later, Paula's stage coaching and directing skills have proven so popular that she has four groups: two international, one Spanish and one Dutch.

Acting in theatre is something Paula says she always wanted to do and after she graduated from theatre school she was soon spotted by a theatre director in Belgium, who asked her to go to work with him in Holland.

There she set up a workshop and started teaching young actors and the director suggested she also try her hand at directing. "What he offered me was tremendously big - a big step from being an actress to being a director," Paula admits. But it paid off and she stayed in Holland for 12 years.

Upon her return to Belgium she started up her own theatre company. "I was really living the dream," Paula recognises, adding, "People often think that if you choose to live in theatre, you know, 'poor you, do you have enough money to eat?' But it was really going well," she says.

Transferable skills

Paula has also worked with refugees, prisoners, children and people living with dementia and says that even if people don't speak the same language, emotions can be expressed in the same ways and body language can still be used to bring those emotions out.

In fact she also got into coaching - teaching professionals in the corporate world the importance of body language - a skill she had learned and developed as an actress and acting teacher that she was able to pass on to business leaders.

But then Covid hit, plans to take a play she had just directed in South Africa to London fell through and, in fact, as two weeks of lockdown turned into two months she couldn't see herself ever returning to her old job. However, Paula says "I am really, really happy". Of her previous life she says, "I've had it, I've done it. I'm 58, I don't want to travel the world with work anymore. I have my husband and Cómpeta."

Paula, who appeared in the town hall's recent international video as part of the Ferrero Rocher Christmas lights campaign, says that she loves how the community "organises integration very well. They organise a lot of things for Spanish people, it's a very lively community and foreigners blend in."

And that is exactly what Paula has done. She even decided the best way to improve her Spanish was to set up a Spanish-language theatre group. For two years she has run a theatre festival in her garden and the Dutch-language group is putting on a performance for Christmas.

Along with an 'intercambio' that she also runs from the studio she rented and the body language coaching, Paula is busier than ever: "I had to give up the other groups. I don't have time," she laughs, adding: "We are not leaving- we're staying – oh yes."