“How did you come to live in Mallorca?” Episode (2)
Following our decision to buy a piece of Mallorca, John and Daphne took us to meet a somewhat abrupt, but kind-hearted, South African lady called Lynn who ran an animal sanctuary and made a living selling land and houses on the island. We were greeted at her gate by an enormous Alsatian and numerous smaller yapping dogs that dashed around the undergrowth between some old windowless cars that served as kennels. After a brief discussion perched on some suspect garden chairs, and having secured the dogs into their various automobile homes, we set out on our property search. Suddenly, Lynn demanded we stop the car, she jumped out, blocked the path of an oncoming tractor, harangued the farmer and then curtly dismissed him. Back in the car, she told us that he wanted to sell some land, but every time she asked for a price he always answered ‘mañana’. In the South East of the island, at the market town of Felanitx, we picked up a great medieval looking iron key from a local builder and set off into the countryside. The first property we saw was a roofless stone shell in a field down a track. Tied in the gateway dozing in the warm morning sun was a black bear of a dog; nearby on the dusty sun-baked earth sat a wizened elfin shepherdess who looked well over eighty. She derided the animal, ‘He’s old, all he does now is eat and sleep’, she casually skipped a stone across the ground to keep the sheep off the new short spring barley, the dog opened a weary eye in acknowledgement, then fell back to sleep. We took some photographs and set off for another location, sweeping through the lanes with the dented SEAT Panda’s sunroof open to a cloudless azure Mallorcan sky with a warm breeze blowing through our hair. The next property was a place on a hill called El Calvario, a large flat plateau set on terraces retained by robust stone walls arcing round from East to West. Below this hill was a farm beyond which was a cultivated valley that ran to the base of the 13th-century mountain monastery of San Salvador that dominated the area. Just down from the rim of the plateau was a concrete structure obscured by trees, an old Spanish civil war gun emplacement with a commanding view across the valley. To the West was a cemetery from where occasionally drifted the melancholy toll of a bell. There was no house and no guarantee of permission to build one, but we were tempted to buy this place just for its sheer beauty. We left with some reluctance and went to the next site.
Here I should explain that in two days we looked at probably thirty properties: ruins, habitable houses and also land with the possibility of building permission; every place had its own captivating qualities. There was no way we could remember each one, to achieve our goal of buying before we left the island we had to put unrealistic ideas aside and practicality to the fore. Still in work mode, I had a clipboard, and we gave each property a rating of up to five stars against criteria such as price, availability of water and electricity, site location, views etc. Abandoned ruins had to have an official number indicating they were once homes and could be reformed. In the end, only two properties received five stars, the others were discarded. We decided to make a deal with each of the owners of these two properties so that we had a plan B in case one deal fell through. We prioritised the two properties and were truthful with one owner saying we would only buy his property if our first choice failed to complete.
Now, I can go directly to the property we finally purchased, although it wasn’t the last one we looked at. In the late evening of the first day a little before sunset, we entered the drive of a derelict stone built farmhouse close to Felanitx. We forced the rusting lock on the ancient olive wood doors with the great iron key. With rotting wood-wormed beams, a collapsed terracotta tiled roof, incumbent pigeons and their associated mess, to some, it would have been a heap of mouldering rubble. To the romantic, it was a palace of beauty, full of undiscovered treasures and mysteries, watched over by the monastery of San Salvador and the nearby Castillo de Santueri situated on a high vantage point since Roman and Arab times. It was tranquillity frozen in time, protected and hidden by a tangled wall of prickly pear and white rose brambles. Enchanted place that it was, it wove a spell, embraced us and drew us in, willing hostages from the cold of northern Europe. The house’s name was Cana Cavea, and it had an official number 222, looking like three blue swans on a white ceramic tile set above its stone arched entrance; it also had the possibility for water and electricity, and importantly we could just about afford to buy it. The following day we saw other properties, but in the evening we came back to Cana Cavea, met the owners and arrange to meet the next day to sign contracts.
On the third day of our search, with our two children, we set off to complete our quest. We met John, Daphne, Lynn and the owners of Cana Cavea at the Notaries office just off Plaza España, the palm square in Felanitx. At the time Sandy was thirty-three, I was thirty-six, Tayrne was seven and Rohan was almost six years old. We were celebrities, Mallorca was the domain of old and retired ex-pats, it was virtually unknown for such a young family to buy property at that time. The word got around, soon it became difficult to move in the office as locals drifted in off the street to see this new phenomenon. At the last moment, as we were preparing to sign the contract, the owners had a sudden realisation. The husband said there was a problem, we might sign the contract and then go back to England and just forget about the whole thing. They wanted a deposit of one hundred thousand pesetas (about five hundred pounds) as a sign of good faith. Lynn had told us they had got cold feet and backed out of a sale before, maybe this was their way of getting out of it again. How could we raise that amount of money on the penultimate day of our holiday? We searched our pockets and bags, we had two credit cards with one hundred pound limits, two fifty pound traveller’s cheques, about fifty pounds cash, the equivalent of forty pounds in Pesetas, and we wrote out a fifty pound guaranteed Eurocheque. We put all this onto the table, but we were still ten thousand pesetas short, it seemed that after all the effort the dream was over, there was no time now for plan B. The word went around the office, ten thousand pesetas in notes appeared on the table and we signed the contracts. To this day, with the excitement, we can’t remember who paid that money.
The next morning we left the hotel Samba on the coach to the airport and home.
We intended to use Cana Cavea as a base, renovate it over the years and eventually in our old age have a retirement home in the sun. Little did we know that in less than a year the Butler family would be camping in that building site and embarking on the greatest adventure of our lives.
In April 1986 we moved into House 222 and renovated it back to life. Rohan and Tayrne grew up in that farmhouse, did their homework in Spanish and Catalan and played with new friends in its hidden places. They roamed the lanes during long Mediterranean summer days and spoke easily in mallorquí with the farmers and old ladies in the extended rural village of Son Barcelo. They came to think of Mallorca as their home and their way of life as normal, which of course to them as with the other Mallorcan children it was. That is a story, from a time now long gone and a Mallorca changed beyond recognition. Looking back on that period and place is like looking into history where we were the protagonists, but somehow now ancestors and distant from who we are today. We were very fortunate to have had the opportunity to experience a unique window in time before it was closed forever by modernity.