Moving On Part 2.
Six weeks to vacate our home and nowhere to go, life was chaotic.
We had to:
• Pack, but keep the things out for a home to function.
• Complete the action list for the house sale.
• Prepare for the last annexe booking.
• Prepare for a friend coming to join in the mayhem.
• Prepare the house for the buyers’ inspection.
• Reactivate the Ajuntament de Felanitx project paperwork.
• Wind-down our holiday rental business.
18 September 98, we received a faxed quote from Madrid for a 6-metre marine shipping container delivered to our land for 310,000Peseta (₤1500), our storage fallback position.
Sandy and I visited our architect Bernardo to expand our house project. He said to build what we liked, he’d put the plans in for approval when the work was done. Providing the covered areas, terraces and pool didn’t exceed 4% of the 18,000 square metre land area, there was no problem. We could then add modifications as we thought of them. With ever-changing planning laws, that seemed a cavalier approach to dealing with a local council. We told Bernardo we’d give him a detailed design, when his official plans were approved we’d start building the house. We had enough to worry about. We spent the rest of the day, with no success, hunting for rental property on the coast in Porto Colom.
The next day, our final annexe guests, Sandy’s clients Erich and Ute, arrived from Munich. Sandy had worked hard on a deal to amalgamate plots of land so they could build a house near ours.
As we were known to rent our annexe, locals who couldn’t speak English or German asked us to rent out their properties. This resulted in a seven property rental business.
Erich was a German bank manager, we dealt in D Marks, so we opened an account in his branch. Mallorcan owners don’t like paying tax, with lots of clients but no official receipts we ended up paying all the VAT. Owners tended to up the prices annually, we thought there were easier ways to get a coronary, so we decided to close the business and focus on building our house.
We kept Antonia the cleaner, who arrived on her bicycle to prepare the annexe. She always brought us something, that day, it was a bowl of green figs. In her enthusiasm Antonia cracked a pane of glass, I couldn’t blame her, it was only one mm thick in an old door we’d bought in a scrap yard years ago. I’d often wondered how long it would last when I’d cleaned it myself.
Tayrne came home on Friday with her boyfriend Javie, a trainee airline pilot from Establiments who studied in Madrid. A long-distance relationship, but with Javie in the business, they managed by hitching flights between Madrid and the island.
On Saturday night, the kids went out with their friends, all was quiet until 5 am when a returning reveller fell over a box of books on the landing. After that I couldn’t sleep, so I did some stargazing in our old barber’s chair outside before working on the new house plans.
In Felanitx one day I was flagged down by Sebastian, who we’d known since we first came to the island. I told him we were looking for accommodation, and he said he had a house for sale and one for rent in Porto Colom. He also had a place in Felanitx we could use for free to store our things.
Sebastian is a partisan who kidnaps, mainly unsuspecting German’s from the mass tourist centres and takes them to his hideout. His ‘goat house’ is hidden in the woods on the mountain below the monastery of San Salvador. For the adventurous, if you drive out of Felanitx towards Porto Colom and turn right onto the San Salvador monastery road. After a long straight ascent, past the little parking area and stone crucifix, the road to the monastery gets bendy. On about the second sharp bend, a track leads off to the right. A hundred metres along that track is the ‘goat house’. It looks like a farmyard, but the clue is the car park. Once his captives pay for cheap wine, food and dubious entertainment, he sends them home with new insights into Mallorca.
He’s done this for over thirty years. It’s always the same old rustic menu, soup with Mallorcan bread, salads with stuffed artichokes and aubergines – sometimes a bit of meat -, with fruit salad or creme Catalan to end. For the finale, the lights go out, there is a striking of matches, the tension mounts, and there’s a spectacular blue flash from the kitchen. Followed by a guitarist, Sebastian emerges with a great bowl of flaming sambuca and chard coffee beans. One day, he’ll blow himself up.
With everyone lubricated, the lights come on and, encouraged by the guitarist perched on a stool in the corner, the dancing starts. Sebastian comes into his own, a Don Juan seducing his female clientele. Well, not so much now that he’s in the autumn of his years, but you can’t knock his enthusiasm. For the novice, it all has a charm difficult to generate in a mass tourist hotel. They leave the mountain by moonlight feeling they’ve seen the ‘real’ Mallorca. They love it, it’s a sort of Mediterranean variation to the Stockholm Syndrome.
One day the Tax Man will catch up with Sebastian if the health inspector doesn’t get him first. He likely breaks every health and safety rule from Brussels. But, that’s Mallorca and long may it last.
Two days later, Sandy and I drove to the ‘goat house’ for a 10:30am meeting with Sebastian, he wasn’t there. Sandy sat in the car, perusing a list of things to dump. I sat in the sun on a concrete step at the front of the house. The monastery of San Salvador towered over me on its pine-covered mount, reflecting the morning light. It was a typical farmyard, four mongrel dogs roaming around, one old plodder, two young ones, and a pup chasing around causing havoc. A couple of cats were languishing in the October warmth. A hen scavenging scratched, stared down, and with her chicks scurrying around her, clucked excitedly as she spied a wriggling morsel.
An old farmer passing through stopped for a chat, then left with his donkey to work a tiny field with a single blade iron plough, arduous work in the mountain’s rocky soil.
Sebastian and his wife Francisca arrived at 11:00 in a battered red Renault 4, impressively designated as a 4GTL. After a delay, while they fed their animals, Sandy, Sebastian and I departed in our Corsa leaving Francisca at the finca.
Sebastian took us to the old Cellar restaurant in Felanitx that he’d bought years ago for 300,000 Pesetas (the same price I was quoted for a shipping container). With large double doors as an entrance, he’d cleared the place out to make a lucrative car parking business. He offered us the vacant rooms on the second floor as free storage space for our things.
We left Felanitx for Porto Colom where, in the old part of the town, he showed us a small house that he wanted to sell for 10 million Pesetas (₤50,000). It had a tiny living room, a kitchen, one bedroom, an outside loo and shower room, and a small tangled garden. Mallorca property prices had certainly risen over the past few years. We weren’t interested, but we didn’t tell him that.
Next, he showed us his ground-floor apartment for rent on the old boat wharf that looks back across to the marina. The apartment was old with plastic panelled walls. It had three bedrooms, a living room, kitchen and shower room. It also had some interesting ornamentation, which included two large paintings of dead animals and fish on a table. The paintings must have been by the same artist as the pictures in the restaurant of the Hostal on Carrer d’en Cristófor Colom on the far side of the bay.
Despite its decor and unused dampness, we were both enthusiastic as it was in such a beautiful spot. We agreed on terms, and Sandy told Sebastian the paintings would have to go.
When we returned Sebastian to the goat house, the old farmer was still encouraging his donkey to plough the field.
It now seemed we had a place to store our belongings and a roof over our heads for 50,000 Pesetas a month.
But, as the old proverb goes, ‘There’s many a slip ‘twixt the cup and the lip’.