Every picture tells one

By: roughseasinthemed

Mar 22 2012

Tags: buying a house in Spain, finca

Category: Architecture, Camping, Europe, House and home, Life, Spain, Travel

14 Comments

Buying a finca in Spain is not a simple process. There are occasional frequent setbacks. Invariably, the paperwork isn’t quite right.

Of course, it can be put right for a price, and eventually. After paying a solicitor good money for her advice about a finca, we walked. It seemed that the land was classified as dry whereas it should have been classed as irrigated, or vice versa. This isn’t a capital crime, but when we asked if it was sortable, it seemed it was – but who knew how long it would take? We’re not talking weeks or months, we’re talking years.

Then we found this little gem set on 22,000 hectares or something like that. Its own water supply (that’s a water tank not a swimming pool in the pic below), loads of olive trees, fruit trees, and even a pretty little stream running at the bottom of the fields. The almond trees were in bloom and the whole place looked idyllic.

There were a couple of quaint ruins on site that could have been restored. To what I’m not sure. The main house in the pic was classified as a day house, rather than one you live in all the time, but Spanish estate agents are resourceful and it was quickly re-classified as a vivienda, ie a permanent house.

You could drive over the stream to get to it, or up a very long track (which had views of the sea). They were both extremely muddy. A four by, or a tractor was essential.

It was definitely detached, suitably quiet, not very overlooked, isolated enough but with houses nearby. And the odd goatherder who liked to wander through from time to time.

Once the sale price was agreed, we were told we could move in. Furniture was transported, we bought a shed for all our clart, and we did indeed move in. No running water, no toilet, no cooker etc etc etc, we basically camped inside the ‘dayhouse’. There was no power, so we used our generator. We investigated the prices of big generators for when we moved in ‘officially’ (ie when we had paid over our money). There was no telephone either. Obviously.

When it was time for a shower, we heated some water in the bucket (the one on roughseas ‘waste not, want not’ post) over our camping stove and had a quick wash down before all the local farmers saw us naked outside the house. We’re talking February here by the way, not summer.

The estate agent made a new route to the house over the stream. The guy who owned the ground behind complained and wanted some of the land from the finca, for some reason I never did understand, apart from the fact that he probably thought we were stupid foreigners. Our solicitor said there was an issue about putting a ford across a public stream.

One night there was a small earthquake a few hundred kilometres away in Murcia. We felt it. The house shook.

I realised the electricity pylons running across the finca weren’t just ordinary ones. They were high transmission ones that had your hair standing on end on Sunday lunchtimes when every Spaniard in Andalucía was cooking lunch.

The almond blossom faded. So did the allure of this finca. The furniture was removed yet again, and we hit the road.

It was nice though. I wonder who’s living there now? And what they did with our spare engine that was getting a bit difficult to keep moving around Spain?

Views of the finca (taken in high summer)