How did you come to live in Mallorca? Episode (1)
We are often asked that question, the truth is it wasn’t planned, it just happened in the last three days of our holiday in Mallorca in 1985. It was just a happy accident. In the words of Forrest Gump, “My mama always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get”.
On Friday 3 May, I delivered a flash X-Ray system that I’d built for Hadland Photonics in Bovingdon. The system was used with Hadland’s Imacon high-speed camera, to study a projectile’s aerodynamics in the muzzle flash region of a cannon and target impact. This was done for developing some nasty anti-tank weapons for the Ministry of Defence. After commissioning the system, at about eight in the evening, before leaving for home I stopped by the office to tell Roger Hadland that the system was working, but if he needed me, I wouldn’t be available for two weeks. I was about to get into my car when Roger came out and asked where I was going. I told him I was going to Mallorca, but I didn’t tell him where he could contact me. I had been running my own business for three years working seven days a week during which time I hadn’t taken a holiday. Sandy was adamant, we would have two weeks free of work, or else!
Roger said, “My mother and father live in the countryside in Mallorca, they would love to meet you”. He scribbled a map on a piece of paper and gave it to me.
On the 7 May Sandy and I, Tayrne and Rohan, my mum and her new husband Wally flew to Mallorca. I had the map in my pocket, but I didn’t give it much thought.
The first week of the holiday in Cala Millor was a trauma for me, I was suffering work withdrawal. I walked around the pool at the hotel and couldn’t understand how people could lay around all day doing nothing. On the 14 May, Sandy suggested we hire a car and go and find Mr and Mrs Hadland. We didn’t have much choice with the hire car, it was a slightly bent SEAT Panda or nothing. Early Tuesday, on a beautiful sunny morning the six of us squeezed into the Panda and set off. Exiting the town of Felanitx, we found the lane to the village of Son Barcelo, and that’s where the adventure started. Son Barcelo was not a village as we understood it. It covered an area of about ten square kilometres and was mainly fields of olive, almond, apricot and carob trees with grazing sheep and the occasional old stone farmhouse, some derelict, connected by rough tracks. It was a far cry from the Mallorca of hotels, beaches, suntan oil and tourists. We became totally lost. We followed a route to an imposing chateau-style house that was under renovation. We showed our hand-drawn map to the Spanish workers. With no common language, they directed us to another house. This was a convenient solution, as the house was being reformed by an English couple who could understand us. From there we were directed onto the right track. However, it still wasn’t straight forward, at one point the narrow lane passed between the back door of an old house and its outbuildings and then turned sharp right onto a potholed track with protruding rocks with stone walls either side just wide enough for the Panda to pass.
“This can’t be right,” I said, but Sandy insisted we continue. After bumping along for another three hundred metres and negotiating two more dog-legs in the route, we encountered the drive of house Can Floquet and a scene of unexpected beauty. The garden was full of colour, the old stone house was covered and ablaze with red and orange bougainvillaeas and blue plumbago set against a clear, bright blue sky.
I lost my nerve again. “I can’t just go walking in there unannounced,” I said, so Sandy got out of the car and disappeared through a floral covered archway in a wall; she returned about ten minutes later.
“Come on,” she said, “we’ve all been invited to lunch”.
“What happened?”.
“Well, I saw a tall elderly gentleman down some stone steps working in a vegetable garden. When I went down and asked him if he was Mr Hadland, he took both my hands, kissed me three times on the cheeks, and answered, ‘Yes. Now, who are you?’ “.
I said, “I’m Sandy, Bernie Butler’s wife and he invited us for lunch”.
John and Daphne Hadland came out just in time to see an additional three adults and two children extricate themselves from the dusty Panda. We introduced ourselves and were warmly greeted and taken into the house. We had lunch outside on a bright terrace, we had fried bacon, omelettes, baked beans, ‘Smash’ mashed potato and a delicious salad of tomatoes, peppers and onions, the products of their garden. The meal was complemented with rosé wine from their vines. After lunch we were given a tour of the house; they described how they had renovated it and showed us a complete photographic record of the renovation from ruin to its present state. John showed us around their garden planted with grape vines, fruit trees and a variety of vegetables. An adjoining field with a distant farmhouse, a straw-hatted farmer, and a donkey dragging a wooden harrow over the dry red earth presented a quixotic pastoral image of Old Spain.
Later, John and I went up onto a flat roof terrace on the house and talked about what it was like to live in Mallorca. During that conversation, some things occurred to me.
1. Mallorca was a strategic island, you needed permission from the Military Governor to live there; that was usually a formality provided you weren’t a right-wing fascist or a prominent communist.
2. There was a lot of derelict farmhouses around, and many of them seemed to be abandoned and up for sale.
3. Sandy and I had some savings available that had resulted from helping the Americans develop microfocus-high-definition X-Ray systems in Georgia a few years earlier. We said we wouldn’t touch that money unless it was for something exceptional.
4. In 1986 Spain was expected to join the European Economic Community (EEC). I had worked under the Treaty of Rome for the last ten years, I knew once Spain joined the EEC all travel, work and residence restrictions would be abolished. Once this happened hordes of European citizens, especially rich ones, would be here in Mallorca buying up all those old farmhouses; it looked like we could afford one now, but in two years?
5. It seemed to me that Spain was going to become the California of Europe.
Even though it had only occurred to me at that moment, I told John we were interested in buying a property in Mallorca, I was sure Sandy would be up for it.
The next thing, we were off in convoy to look at an old farmhouse that John and Daphne were renovating and a new one that they were building.
The renovated farmhouse was surrounded by almond trees heavy with new green nuts and bathed in golden light. The place had a simplicity and an evocative earthy smell of disturbed oldness about it as if you had stepped into some distant past, it was tranquil and quite enchanting.
To get to the new house, we had to drive to a high outcrop of rock along a narrow track with a sharp drop off on one side. The stone house had a newly constructed swimming pool and gardens. Sandy and I stood on the walled roof terrace with a warm breeze blowing in our hair. It was like being on a citadel. Looking down the valley in the distance you could see as far as the shimmering white coastal village of Cala D’Or, and then on to the blue Mediterranean. We thought we knew Mallorca, but we didn’t. It’s difficult to explain the emotional impact of that moment.
That night in our hotel room, Sandy and I talked about our experience. We had only three days left of our holiday, but we came to a fateful decision: We would not go home without buying a piece of Mallorca. We were totally committed, if we didn’t do it, we knew we would go back to our everyday life, and all this would be just a holiday dream. We telephoned John and Daphne who agreed to arrange a meeting with a lady who would be able to help.
Next week Episode 2 will explain the three-day whirlwind to find and purchase the property that would change our lives forever.