Hello Gary, I am astounded that you found Xativa!!! Its a super place to live and we go there most Fridays to the market!!!
Why astounded, well it is a bit out of the way except for the castle. we have had a place just down the road from Xativa (Palma de Gandia) and I am not sure about this, but people seem to want villas - on urbanisations - or be by the sea.
is for info.  You have to integrate into that community and although Xativa has a lot to do with arts - if you want a fairly quiet life well Xativa is OK once you have gone round the town and gone on the walks there isn't much more there.
We chose Palma de Gandia because it was so near to a city (Gandia) where we could paseo and other surrounding towns.  We go to Xativa, Cullera, Valencia, Javea for days out (even Benidorm and Alicante) we have it all. Palma is v quiet as is Xativa and other towns during the winter but its a town you can come back to whilst the holidaymakers are here in the summer. You also get to know people in the different towns you go to regularly and of course, we have integrated into Palma very well (I am Spanglish and my partner speaks a little bit of Spanish) but I get on with all my friends OK and we understand each other. There is a big mixture of ages here and add to this the sports that people do, its a fairly busy little town. We don't have any "modern" places to buy, they are across the main road to Xativa where as far as I am concerned is dead but thats my personal opinion. When you first decide to buy a place, it is very confusing, we were lucky in that we did A Place in the Sun and they took us all over - 6 properties in all. Looking back we did the right thing, as we have it all = Valencia via car or train - Alicante etc. we try to discover as much as we can. You didn't say anything about work - are you going to try and find work?  Whilst there are English Schools, I am not sure whether you could live on the income, it also depends whether you are married or not. Don't be put off by apartments in old properties. There are lots of reasons why v old town houses were split up into 2 - which ours is. A lot of Palma's people left and went to live in France and also the houses were too big for them to pay their IBI/warm up and inheritance. It is pretty difficult to talk to someone on a forum but think Xativa, if you are active! would be too quiet.