Thirty two degrees is far above the norm for September and I’m sleeping with the shutters half way down and the windows wide open. The mosquitoes are tearing me up. There’s a concert within earshot every other weekend, not sure where, but close enough to ensure that tonight I’m getting takes on Bonnie Tyler, Foreigner and Freddie Mercury. I like it. The open shutters also mean that I can see directly into the back of the house opposite which fronts onto a different street. It was empty when I moved here, and Juan told me that it was recently sold for 85,000 euros. Now its four floors homes three groups of tenants, at least, these are the floors I can see into. I assume the inhabitants work at the port, I can’t think of any other local work opportunities for groups of mostly men. The second floor houses a group of lads who might be from Senegal, and there’s a few Colombian men on the third floor. A solitary man is lodged in the roof space, and hawks loudly in the morning, wearing yellow underpants, into a basin on the small roof terrace. The layout of the buildings means the sound is amplified and although the house is probably 20 metres away, I can hear every plate clink and word spoken, even the sound of one of the sudanese men stirring the cooking pot. He puts it on the ground and bashes the contents with a spoon before replacing it on the stove. I’m being nosy as hell but as they happily yell at each other and laugh a lot, I feel justified in observing through the window as I can’t exactly go to sleep until they settle down. The washing machine on the balcony is working overtime.

Juan told me that the top two floors of my house are ‘illegal’ and by that I think he means they don’t have planning permission. They were built in the 1970’s so I’m confident I won’t be be asked to take them down, but it makes sense that they weren’t given permission considering the aspect and a privacy issue which is apparent now that the house opposite is occupied. I can see them and they can see me, so I’m at pains not go about my business in my knickers unless the shutters are fully down, even in this heat. Internal blinds are needed. The man at the top spent a good while this afternoon hand-combing his hair and wriggling his fingers in the air. I peered at him from my reclaimed patio space (the public path to nowhere) whilst I painted some drawers with chalk paint, each brush stroke drying lumpen in the heat before I’d had chance to get the brush back in the paint pot. I’m going to be painting those again. I’m not surprised he’s camped out on the little terrace, the top floor of my tower is an oven. It must be over 40 degrees in his small roof space, which leads into a slim corridor and out of sight.

Current figures in the Municipal Register for Pontevedra show that the non-Spanish population is growing in our closest city, Pontevedra, and stands at 6.8%. Venezuelan residents top the list with Columbian and Portuguese coming in next. Settlers from Peru are fourth, and also in the top ten are Morrocco, China, Italy and Senegal. Brits are currently seventeenth on the list. I’d say my neighbourhood in Estribela is predominantly Spanish /Galician however, I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference if I overheard Castillian Spanish or Latin American. I met a Colombian woman at the bus stop a couple years ago who was visiting but had lived here once. She said the racism she had experienced had been the reason for her return home, which surprised me. She didn’t go into details, she only said that it had been difficult to retain work and she was glad to leave.

I live close to the port and its always been obvious that there’s a more of a cultural mix in this neighbourhood than there seems to be in nearby Marin. I’ve never been on the sharp end of hostility, but as a white woman that’s less likely to be my experience and I dont have to find work here. My day to day mostly encounters people who are ridculously helpful and friendly. The single person who hasn’t been is another neighbourbour who lives in Vigo and has a family holiday home close to mine. He is surprisingly unfriendly, sourly disagreeing when I told him that his security light was faulty and flashing all night through my bedroom window. Not quite sure why he thought I’d make that up, but that one encounter was enough to be reminded that ignorant men who know it all are everywhere.