An Englishwoman in Galicia. In a tiny tower, on a slab of rock.
If it wasn’t for the lockdowns, home working, home schooling and little else to do for light relief other than drink in the garden or browse the internet, I wouldn’t have found the tiny tower. One of a small and select group, in an optimistic search for ‘under €30.000’, it was the first place I’d found in 30+ years of intermittent searching that I could possibly borrow the money for, and wasn’t tucked away in the mountains. It was on the coast! I’d love to hole up in the hills, but a home from home would be a family bolt hole, and the boys, now teenagers, were unlikely agree with that. I’d dreamt about this since completing a European Languages degree in the 90s and it might have remained a pipe dream until I clicked on the tower.
One thing I’ve inherited from my father is a ‘just do it’ attitude. Whilst I knew nothing about the location or the condition of the house, it was fairly close to Vigo, where I’d been on a month long reccy with the boys and our dog Joyce, 5 years previously, and most importantly, it was in Galicia, the region I’d romantically set my heart on living for almost 30 years. No real reason, only that it is green, has Celtic connections and part of me is Welsh. Messages were exchanged with the estate agent on WhatsApp, and I expressed an interest.
I persuaded my eldest to view the house with me. His father had died earlier that year and I felt a short trip together would do us good. That part hung in the balance, when we were told at the airport we didn’t have the correct Covid documents to fly to Porto, from where I’d planned to take the train to Pontevedra. We had to spend the night at Stansted before catching the first plane to Santiago de Compostela the following day. We had an appointment with the agent that afternoon but although I explained the reasons for our delay, it was Friday and he was finishing work on time that afternoon, no hanging about. The public transport options, which are generally very good, were a mystery then, so a €120 taxi ride took us to the bar in Estribela where I’d arranged to meet him, a young man possibly still short of his 18th birthday.
We walked to the house, picking up another man en route, José. The rooms, reeking of cat pee, were filthy and dark. Something small had died in the kitchen and the whole grim scene was accompanied by a man, a neighbour maybe, shouting outside in Spanish that the house was ‘illegal’. It was pouring with rain. My son, then only 16 and in no mood for my kind of adventure, wanted to make a sharp exit. The bonus of the rain was that I could just about see in the gloom that there were no obvious leaks. I called my friend and foreign escapade mentor, Sarah, who sagely advised to take as many photos as possible, check for leaks and record on my phone whatever the commotion was outside. The boyish estate agent had helpfully disappeared as soon as we’d arrived, and we grabbed a lift with José to our Air BnB; son: pissed off, me: deflated but not giving up.
It rained all weekend, my son stayed in bed, annoyed he’d missed a party back at home, so I bought a brolly, went back to the house and strolled around the town. It wasn’t bad. It was better than than that, it was pleasant. Everything you’d expect from a small Galician town; a central square, London plane trees (Platanus x hispancia; more Spanish than English, to be fair), cafes everywhere, people wandering to and fro, and what seemed to be a lot of industry all along the coast side. The port. I could only peer through the little house windows, but again, what I could see was grubby, gross in places, but not damaged. Derelict yes, but it had a roof. Several other houses I nosed around that day, didn’t.
I returned to two policemen standing outside our rented apartment. A passer-by reported a smoking cigarette butt being lobbed from the overhead balcony, and my son was the only suspect. When they pointed to the butt on the pavement, my limited Spanish pointed out that it was a Spanish cigarette and we’d arrived only the night before. He was 16 and had no access to euros or fags. Despite soaring cortisol levels, I was quietly surprised at their presence. Two policemen to attend a single cigarette butt incident? Wow.
The day we left, the sun appeared, and we walked to the closest beach, along a track lined with pine trees and eucalyptus. The invasive eucalyptus is everywhere; used for the cellulose pulp of the Ence factory in Placeres, at the expense of the native pine, oak and chestnut . More of that later. But the walk was beautiful and we swam in a sheltered cove with its cafe still open in October. I was sold, and I put in an offer on the house, via WhatsApp, as soon as we got back to England. I contacted a large architect’s firm in Madrid, found online, and they arranged for a local architect/surveyor to do a condition survey of the house. It was useful, confirmed there were no gaping holes or cracks, and concluded only that it smelt really bad. I was happy with that.
I turned up in Pontevedra one day in December to sign the contract and collect the keys. It turned out that an 8% tax was due on the purchase, payable on exchange (this would have been helpful to know before the big day), and legally, you also need a Spanish bank account for the whole thing to go through. So, to my embarrassment, we (the vendor, the solicitor and another man I couldn’t fathom out), all trudged over to the nearest Abanca and sat there for over an hour whilst my first Spanish bank account was opened. I’ve never been so pleased to own an iPhone. Every required piece of identity was stored on it, making the process a fraction less awkward.
For a more routine house purchase, I’d recommend getting some legal assistance, in a language you’re comfortable with. But this purchase was done on a shoestring, and incredibly the estate agent’s solicitor did all the conveyancing I needed, without charge. I ignored the online advice to select a solicitor outside the locality who was unknown by the agent, and that worked out ok. I never understood why I wasn’t invoiced, only that the process seemed far, far more straight forward than in England.
Despite the process taking an uncomfortable hour, and my language being unable to cope with this level of formality, a basic bank account, which I still use, was opened and the sale went through. I tottered off, keys in my handbag, contract in my hand, leaving behind a very helpful and patient group of people, most certainly hoping they would never see me again. Only the solicitor did, when I returned a couple of months later to start cleaning and painting, and dropped off an overdue bouquet of flowers to say thank you.
