Estribela Rocks

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  • Meet you in the car park

    An Englishwoman in Galicia. In a tiny tower, on a slab of rock.


    The small balcony faces south east and gets the morning sun. My birth son managed to break the plastic, yellow chair that sat comfortably for four years in a space large enough for one person and a machine load of washing, the only item of furniture we inherited with the tiny tower. I’ve decided to removed the piece of corrugated glass fibre that covers an opening facing south west, hoping to let in afternoon sun and a piece of sky, but it seems that the concrete roof of the balcony has been poured around the fibre undulations and so this shuffle of progress is added to the long list of jobs I’ll tackle when I’ve expanded my tool kit from a single spanner.


    My lovely neighbour has pretty much completed every job I’ve started, a more generous person you couldn’t wish to meet, but he’s told me that there are laws about looking on to other properties, in this case his, and so I feel that I might have to do this one on my own. The opening is too high for me to peer through, privacy issues don’t feel relevant, but the point has been made and I’ll quietly work around it.


    ‘Vaca flaca’, my affectionate name for the house, only has windows facing southeast, along with the balcony. This contributes to it feeling as small as it is, and some digging around means that I now know I’m not permitted to install new windows to any aspect that fronts on to private land in case the owner wants to build to that level. The tiny tower didn’t come with land, the extent of the house is all I have, but a quick look at a map and a neighbourly chat establishes that as I’m at the end of my street, the land to the east is also public highway. There’s nothing to stop me inserting some more windows there. Not quite the south west glazing I was hoping for, but light is light! A few YouTube videos later and I’m confident that I can knock through east facing apertures on each floor.


    Furnishing the tower comes with its own challenges, mostly that the only access is through a narrow front door, which opens the ‘wrong way’ blocking the doorway to the kitchen, and the first and second floors are accessed by a narrow, iron, spiral staircase. This would be dreamy if it were wider than 50cm or the world of furniture broke down in to teeny, tiny pieces. Facebook Marketplace doesn’t seem to have the same appeal here in Galicia, but I was recommended the app Wallapop for second hand goods, and made several online purchases from the UK. I’d installed a key safe in the first months, long before the house was habitable, and its been worth its weight, giving access to the electrician who rewired the house and to various Wallapop vendors who were happy to drop off their sales for no more than the price of the petrol. The electrician kept track of deliveries. Only once, I met a nervous, older woman in the car park and bought her electric radiator, confident that this would be adequate heating through the winter. It wasn’t.


    Once the house had electricity and water, I planned a first summer break there with my youngest and an adventurous friend, Maria. This was a long time coming as the electrician initially installed the old model of meter, apparently one he’d installed a hundred times before, but the distributor, UFD/Naturgy, wouldn’t approve it or connect me to the mains until the new model was in place. This added to the cost and our inaugural stay was delayed somewhat, not least as the solution (and final invoice) was thrashed out on WhatsApp and Google Translate.


    I hadn’t factored in the staircase. A dismantled kingsize bed frame barely fit in the hallway and wasn’t going up those stairs. It seems that nothing is truly a problem here, so after telling me the dimensions of his own bed, a far more reasonable size, my seafaring former-ship’s-captain neighbour, threw a piece of rope around the frame and hoisted it up the outside of the building to the balcony, where we pulled it in, seconds later. The same was done for the daybed; up the outside and through the first floor window. Minutes later the doorbell rang and a delivery of two Ikea mattresses was made in time for our first night in the tiny tower.

  • Buying a House on WhatsApp

    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.

  • Estribela

    An Englishwoman in Galicia. In a tiny tower, on a slab of rock.

    I spoke to my neighbour, Juan, half an hour ago. This isn’t unusual as I see him and his wife every half an hour as they potter to and from their house to the small holding they’ve conjured up from abandoned land next to my tall, thin tower (an accurate description of my home). He said the council have plans to develop the land where he grows veg, keeps hens, cares for stray cats and generally hangs out with friends and family, into a local park. This is news to me. Most news is news to me as I don’t yet have any way of finding out local news other than from Juan. I had a boyfriend here briefly, but it turns out that even the nice guys can be not-so-nice and that’s all I’ll say about that here.


    If Juan’s small holding turns into a park that’ll mean my house is butted up to the edge of a recreational space, if not within it, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. Currently, ‘vaca flaca’ (skinny cow), my affectionate name for my 2M wide house, sits quietly at the end of a short path with only Juan’s house and an elderly couple I don’t think I’ve met yet, as neighbours. Since Juan cleaned the path up, no one loiters here or takes drugs, and I believe him when he tells me the height of the vegetation that grew along the path or the volume of rubbish he cleared away to create a clear access.


    Some fun facts about my neighbourhood, Estribela, the place I’ve landed on as my home from home, on a road perched on a rock. It has 1,200 residents and is located in the parish of Lourizan which in turn sits in the province of Pontevedra. Although I’m technically in Pontevedra, and the eponymous city is a 10 min bus ride away, my casita sits on the Pontevedra/ Marín boundary (it took me a year to work that out) and so I generally wander into the small town of Marín to do anything I want to do. And the best beaches are in that direction too.


    My skinny tower would be a stone’s throw from a beach but in the late 1800s Marín was given port status, and the maritime development expanded along the coast from Marín to Placeres. Placeres means ’pleasures’ which is a little cruel as it has been home to the Ence cellulose factory since 1958, which is ugly and stinks and has been the source of local disquiet for decades. Only the wind decides whether Estribela gets a biomass whiff, though mostly we seem to be spared. The licence has recently been extended to 2073 so its a case of getting used to it and acknowledging that corporate muscle flexes as much here as anywhere else.


    Estribela isn’t typically pretty, the world’s largest car park sits at the bottom of my road, for port staff, I assume, but Spain and in turn, Galicia, are masters of the public realm. Whilst the only access to the sea is through the harbour near the Naval Military Academy, the uninterrupted promenade that runs alongside the port is used by locals throughout the day, walking, running, and passing the time of day on solid, timber benches, nestled amongst well-maintained perennial planting.


    The footway on the other side of the road has recently been re-laid and doubled in width and there are signs of civic works and improvements throughout even this small town. EU/regional funding signs stand alongside most public works, and there are many. A brand new cultural centre is under construction on the port side near the town centre and unlike my home town in England, tired, unloved and under funded, this place feels mostly buoyant and well looked after. That’s not to say that the sustainability of the area isn’t an issue. Abandoned or derelict houses are propped up everywhere, mostly because the owner has died and the children have no desire to move to this small, quiet town.