About us
Our Story
How did it all begin? That’s a good question.
Our commitment
Success is most meaningful when it is shared.
As the daughter of an entrepreneurial family, I decided at a young age that I would NEVER become an entrepreneur. Spain as a place to live, on the other hand, was clear to me from the time I was a little girl. The older I got, the harder I found the dark polar nights of the north. Thanks to many family holidays, I knew Spain well, and the dream of moving there grew stronger every year.
I got my first taste of life in Spain in the late 1990s, in the shabby but charming city of Málaga. I studied Spanish at the University of Málaga in classes for foreign students and fell in love with the local lifestyle. The year flew by, and I returned to Finland with tears in my eyes. Life then took me to rainy England to study business. I’m not sure I could have put up with the grey weather if I hadn’t just spent a year in sunny Málaga. This time the homesickness hit hard! Luckily, I managed to transfer from England to Laurea University of Applied Sciences in Finland, where I started in the middle of the academic year, right after Christmas. So the wind and rain gave way to proper dark polar nights and sleet. :D
In 2002 I returned to Spain for an internship, and once again life was full of smiles and sunshine. I spent the season from spring to autumn working in PR at a Sol Meliá 4-star hotel in Mallorca. After graduating, I looked for work anywhere in Spain, and in autumn 2003 my dream came true: I was offered a job in Torrevieja and moved there.
In January 2005 I sat in a notary’s office and founded my own company, Zariko. The daughter of an entrepreneurial family, who had sworn she would never be an entrepreneur, was now starting a one-woman business in a foreign country.
In the first years I worked alone with partners. In 2009 I opened our first office in Torrevieja, and at the same time Jesús Del Pino Galerón, an experienced professional in Spanish real estate, joined the team. The team grew year after year, and in 2014 we opened a second office in Lo Pagán, Murcia.
From the beginning, Zariko has served all foreign buyers, tenants and homeowners, not only Finnish ones. Our clients have always been very international, mainly European, but we have also helped Russians and even Americans. Our services have grown to meet our clients’ needs, and today our multicultural team can serve you in six languages: Finnish, English, Spanish, Swedish, Portuguese and Arabic.
With kind regards,
Heidi Saarikko
CEO, Founder