Arguing about all sorts: the third year of our Spanish adventure

La Gloria didn't have anything like the number of expats as Adreimal, but there were a few dotted around in nearby villages. One woman I liked was an Essex girl called Tracy. She had a perm, lots of make-up, a bubbly way about her and a working class way of speaking. This meant that some British looked down on her, as though they were superior beings (the Spaniards didn't; they had no idea she sounded 'common'). She was in her 30s and her husband Barry was at least 50, but he seemed to have a lot of energy.  
The first time we'd come across him, it was the usual scenario. Pepe and Barry were trying to have a conversation in the bar without a common language. Pepe waved for Adrian to come over. 
'Oye! Adrian! Can you help? This man doesn't speak Spanish.'
Adrian had to forego his peaceful morning coffee and translate for the two of them for half an hour. It turned out that Barry and Tracy had bought a house in a nearby village and now didn't have a clue how to get an electricity contract, where to get bombonas, how to sort out a telephone...
As soon as Adrian had finished translating for them, Pepe rushed off to his next appointment, leaving Adrian with Barry. The conversation went like this:
'I'm Barry, by the way.'
'And I'm Adrian.'
'Are you Welsh? 
'Yeah.' 
'Oh. I've been to the north. It's absolutely beautiful there but the people are bastards.' 
'Oh. I'm from the south actually.'
'Aw, the people are lovely down there, but the place is a fucking shithole.'
So Adrian enquired: 'And where do you come from?'
'Essex.'
'Well, I've been there and that is a fucking shithole.'
A few days later, it was the same scenario, with Adrian being called over again to translate. I wasn't there but Adrian reported back on the conversation later.
'I said: "Right. This is the last time I'll be helping you Barry. You'd better learn Spanish. I know you English are crap at learning languages, but you'd better get on with it. It's not my job to do it for you."
And Barry said: 'Oh yes I fully intend to learn it.' 
The third time Adrian saw Barry trying to speak to Pepe, Barry turned to summon Adrian's assistance. Adrian held his hand up, and said, 'Keep on learning the Spanish, Barry,' and kept on walking. 'Because I don't bloody like the bloke,' he said to me later.
A few months afterwards Barry seemed to have sorted out his house issues and was now launching himself onto the Spanish employment market.
'I'm going to change the face of this place,' he declared. 'I'm going to bring loads of work here. They've kept it like a little backwater, but I've got some big plans. They're not going to know what's hit them.'
It was interesting to see someone with ambition. And he certainly had more vision than we ever saw in the local mayors, although both were to be equally ineffectual. Before he and Tracy split up (he'd been hitting her about) and he did a runner, apparently being chased by someone (it was all shrouded in mystery) - his impact on the area was so significant that I have no recollection of one thing he accomplished.
And the best the mayors did in all the time we were there was plant a few flowers, build a wall and re-surface some streets. This was despite thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands pouring into the area at one point, when expats were buying and developing properties and having money extorted out of them by the town architect, through whom all plans had to be approved (2000, 3,000 euro fees were common; if you didn't pay, your plans wouldn't be put before the Committee). 
At the same time the mayor managed to build and furnish five houses out of his mayoral salary and job as a part-time plumber and a few of the councillors seemed to be stretching their small salaries in a similar way, with fancy houses and fincas being added to their property portfolios. No-one even raised an eyebrow. It was the way things worked in Spain.

To see our current properties for rent take a look at. There is still one week available in the second property during the summer holidays (10th to 18th August): 

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p86636

And also another of our completed projects:

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p475271

Benjamín had recommended his cousin's son, Iván, for the plastering, saying that he was a brilliant plasterer and would do a really professional job. 
'Si, it's his normal job in the week, so he can do it for you un fin de semana.'
All rooms except for the kitchen and two bathrooms were to be plastered over the allotted weekend, and Iván would be helped by a few other men. So one Friday in April we vacated the house and went off to a lovely hotel called La Puerta de La Luna, in Baeza. It was in a beautiful medieval building, every bit as good as a parador, but we weren't bothering with paradores ever since they'd been so mean-spirited when my father died and didn't allow us to take our two nights we were owed over into January. We had a chat with the owner, a wealthy businessman from Madrid, and it felt nice to speak to that kind of Spaniard and have an intellectual discussion (he slagged off the andaluzes, which amused me: 'They think they're so abierta! Well, they're not. They're muy cerrada!'). It was lovely to sleep in a luxurious hotel, soak in the bath and just be away from our life on a building site. 
We returned to La Gloria around 8pm on the Sunday, feeling all refreshed.  But as we went in through the garden gate I could sense something was amiss. Adrian put the key in the lock in the darkness and then fumbled around for the light switch inside, only to find that the electric wasn't working, so we couldn’t see a thing. Also, the floor felt funny, very uneven, which was strange because we had all newly-laid terracotta tiles. Adrian managed to locate the electricity fuse box in the darkness and the lights came on. We couldn’t believe our eyes. The floors were completely covered in rubble. I started to question my sanity. Hadn't we had all the tiles laid here in the passage? And in the living room, which I was looking at as it was also covered in rubble?
We walked through the entire house, aghast to see that the tiles had completely disappeared under several inches of plastering rubble.
While we absorbed the awfulness of the situation, we decided to make a cup of tea, but we couldn't get any water out of the taps. It took a while to realise it had been switched off at the mains. Well, why should it have been? It didn't make any sense. And why couldn't the inconsiderate so-and-sos have switched it on again?
'I am absolutely furious,' Adrian was ranting. And I wanted to cry. We had to pick our way through the house and calm down enough to put the kids to bed and have a few glasses of wine to help us sleep.
The following morning, Iván came knocking on the door for payment.
'Do you like the walls?' he asked. 'They're very smooth, arent't they?
'Yes, but what about the floors?' I said.
'Que? What about the floors?
'They're ruined and they were new tiles.'
'Oh, that will take no time at all,' he reassured us, 'just a bit of quitacementos and they'll be muy bien.'
We didn’t want to fall out with them, as they were family of Benji, whom we considered (maybe stupidly) to be a friend as well as our builder; and we just didn't have the strength to put up a fight and tell them: 'Well, if it's easy to clean up the mess, you do it!' (I would have no problem saying that these days; but that was another time...)
We paid up and spent weeks trying to clear it up, firstly filling bags with all the loose rubble and then scrubbing as hard as we could and using a knife to get the worst bits off. Even then, we could not get all the stains off and paid one of the Romanian labourer's wives to do a few days scrubbing the cement off, but at 50 euros a day, we couldn't even see what she'd done by the end and instead spent time for years afterwards occasionally attacking some of the marks with quitacementos to finally clean up their damage.
Thinking about it some time later, I thought the only explanation must be that they’d thought our newly-laid terracotta tiles were old tiles that were going to be removed as the Spaniards never did their houses in the rustic style, using clinical marble and lino instead. It reminded me of a friend from my old street, when I showed her our new reclaimed wood kitchen in our Edwardian house (we’d all grown up in a street of council houses, where she still lived). 
‘Yes, it’s okay, but it’s a pity about the old sink,’ she said, referring to our newly-installed Belfast sink. The plasterers must have been stupid though to think they were old tiles, considering most of the house was a new-build, attached to a restored shed, that certainly had never had any tiled floors; just a load of dust. But then some people are thick.

To see our current properties for rent take a look at. There is still one week available in the second property during the summer holidays (10th to 18th August): 

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p86636

And also another of our completed projects:

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p475271

One day we were at the bar when Pepe López  came up to us and asked if we could help a British woman with un problema (neither could speak the other's language). Adrian went to where she was standing and it turned out we knew exactly who she was. She was a woman around 40 with a couple of young children in tow, whom we'd come across a few times. Both she and the children looked like they hadn’t washed in a million years. However, we'd heard she had a tidy sum of money and didn’t need to work. She owned a house in Adreimal and another in La Gloria. In fact, we'd bumped into her the previous month walking in the street in La Gloria.
'Hey. Can you tell me if the school in the village is any good?' she asked, without bothering with the social niceties. 'Because I'm thinking of moving down here, if it is.' 
Adrian said later: 'I hope to God she doesn't move here. I was hoping the Adreimal lot wouldn't get wind of this place.'
She was 'woman with white van.' This was a phenomenon in Adreimal – there were loads of them, women who could be seen riding high up on the leather seats, using all their might to tug and pull on the stiff steering wheels. They had scraggly looking kids and good-for-nothing men, who would lounge about in the crusties' bar. 
On another occasion when we bumped into her in La Gloria she was attempting to manoeuvre said van down a very narrow street. 
'Hey. Is  is possible to take the van as far as my house down the end of this road?' she asked Adrian. 'Because I've got a whole load of gear I want to unload.'
'No it definitely isn’t,' he replied. 'There's nowhere you can turn at the bottom. You'll have to park here and walk down or you could get into a right mess.'
The road tapered to a point and we'd seen a few people get into bother; if your car didn't have a lot of guts it was a hell of a job reversing back up the hill. 
She drove straight down it and got stuck. We watched as she then got some of the local men to help her get the van back up the hill. My question is: why bloody ask if you’re not going to listen? Anyway, that pissed us off and we decided there and then that she could just get on with it. We’d left Adreimal to escape drippy hippy types like her (who only spoke to you when they wanted something).
Anyway, back to the bar and Adrian being taken over to speak to her. 
‘I’m in a bit of a fix,’ she said, ‘my van has broken down and I need someone to give me a lift back to Adreimal’ (which was a one and a half hour round trip). 
‘I can't think of anyone here who could do that,’ Adrian said, although I could tell he was wavering. He can't resist a woman in distress. 
'You can't do it,' I warned him. 'You've been drinking. You can't drive up dark country roads for the likes of her or anyone else, when you're over the limit.' 
He told her he couldn't help.
'We're hungry,' she said then.
'Well, you've got time. If you're quick you can get stuff in the Coviran across the road. It shuts at 9.'
She ignored that.
‘I don’t know what to do,' she said.
Adrian explained what was going on to Pepe.
'Tell her to call her breakdown service,' he said. 'It comes automatically as part of your insurance policy.' 
So Adrian translated. 
‘No, I haven’t got any insurance’ she replied. (She could buy two houses but not car insurance) 
‘And the children are hungry,’ she added for effect. 
‘Well, if you don't want to go to the shop,’ Adrian said, 'they can easily do you some raciones here in the bar. They're still cooking.'
She didn't seem to hear.
‘But I’ve got to get back tonight,’ she continued,' and I’ve ‘phoned and asked everyone I know in Adreimal if they can come and give me a lift and none of them can.’ 
That didn’t surprise us; those people didn’t have friends just people who mutually tried to use each other. 
‘Well, if I were you,' Adrian suggested, sitting back down at our table, 'I’d sleep in your house here and then get a bus in the morning,’ and with that, he turned his chair back to face me. 
'I know what she was after,' he said to me. 'She knows I can't give her a lift so she wants us to offer her a meal and a bed for the night. Well, she's got money and she's got a house.' 
We'd had our fingers burned so many times in Adreimal that we just weren't having it. We'd allowed ourselves to be used so many times, that we'd lost count. 
The usual way had been the amount of meals we'd made for people who rarely or never reciprocated. We kept doing it, because we liked company and I was a 'feeder.'  But we started to get cute about it.
So one day, when Vicky and Harry had a friend and her son staying, Adrian and I took a liking to these Cymrophiles (people who like all things Welsh, including us, having lived in Cardiff - they even liked my accent, which was a first) and invited them all down, with Ingrid (Vicky's sister) and her son too, and Vicky and Harry's kids, making twelve of us in total. I set myself the challenge of making the cheapest meal with the cheapest ingredients that I possibly could, just because they so rarely had us back. So I made vegetarian spaghetti Bolognese with two jars of lentils, at 17 cents a jar! And I used the cheapest spaghetti I could find, at 30 cents a packet, times two, courtesy of Lidl. A couple of cartons of frito, onions, some peppers I had to use up, and lashings of our own olive oil. I reckon it didn't come to more than 10 cents a head.
I did splash out slightly on the dessert because of the visitors, buying sultanas for the Welsh cakes, which are quite expensive in Spain. But I used cheap flour, sugar, cinnamon and a bit of margarine (not butter). It might have come to 30 cents a head.

It was all washed down with cans of 25 cent beer and cheap lemonade (they hadn't brought a bottle), and some of the Costa which our Spanish friends always gave us (they made wine every year even though a lot of them were teetotal). They also ate piles of our delicious nisperas fresh from the trees and went home laden with bags of the loquat and avocados (Vicky and Harry always raided our trees). 

Thus they had the pleasure of a full stomach, lots of freebies and a lovely sunny day next to our cortijo pool (they lived in a house without a garden); not a bad afternoon from their perspective. But the main thing for me was that I tightly controlled the budget. It showed I was learning. And it amused me. It was a kind of damage limitation. 
Another time we did this was with Hannah and Bobby, some Brits who lived in a nearby village and whom we got chatting to now and then. I had a funny feeling that they too were unlikely to reciprocate. So this time I made a cheap vegetarian lasagne, with the cheapest lasagne sheets and 20 cent tins of red kidney beans and a fruit crumble for afters, using up left over fruit and cheap flour and margarine again (I should go into catering; I'd have fantastic profit margins). Over the course of the afternoon, next to our casa pool, we had to listen to Bobby regale us with various tales, including his greatest achievement; having £60,000 of mortgage debt written off by a bank during a previous financial crisis. He was as proud as punch about it.
It was to be six months later, just before Christmas, when we finally received our return invite, not for a meal but for 'a glass of wine and a mince pie.'  Since I'd just made a batch of 36 delicious mince pies (if I say so myself), and we had an invite to our friend Carmel’s for a slap-up meal on the same day, we declined their kind offer, later finding out from Simon and Charlotte who had also been invited that they cancelled at the last minute anyway – one of their children was ill. 
(NB. They had already told us the story of how they’d fallen out with English friends in their village who had had them around several times for dinner, but they'd never succeeded in reciprocating because they'd unfortunately had to cancel several dinner invitations at the last minute because their children were ill; of course you can't argue with that.)

To see our current properties for rent take a look at. There is still one week available in the second property during the summer holidays (10th to 18th August): 

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p86636

And also another of our completed projects:

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p475271

An advantage of village life for the children, now that we were living in the casa was that they were free to go out and play, meet up with friends independently of us, and there were maybe not as much dangers compared to living in a town (or perhaps the dangers were just different). The main road running through the village was a worry, as some of the drivers were idiots and there were some terrible lethal drops down into various abysses, that didn't have so much as a fence bordering them. There was also stranger-danger (or acquaintance-danger) like everywhere else, but because everyone knew everyone else, there seemed to be a better chance that the locals would spot anyone new hanging around.
The village school was infinitely better than the one in Adreimal however, with excellent teachers – mostly women, young and very smartly dressed – they raised the tone in the village. But some of the parents didn’t appreciate how good these teachers were – and indeed the only older female teacher, who had been there for two decades and had taught some of the parents themselves – used to speak her mind at the parent-teacher meetings about the negative attitude some of the parents had about the teachers.  
'I know you say to the children: "You don’t have to listen to the teachers; they know nothing about life,"' she said during one meeting.
 And she was right. My friends said exactly that to their children. So I made a point of speaking out loudly and clearly in support of the teachers whenever I could.
‘Oh yes’, I‘d say, ‘I think that this equal opportunities policy you’re following is excelente’. 
They couldn’t believe their ears, and the parents looked at me, like I'd gone round the twist. 
The school even won a prestigious award for this policy that they were implementing as part of the Junta de Andalucia’s attempt to re-educate boys in particular, so that they would not become macho wife-abusers. Domestic violence was seen as a big problem in Spain. We were all invited to Granada to eat delicious canapes and dainty cakes and the teachers were on the evening news.
To make a contribution, I often made cakes for the various school events and these were always warmly received – ‘Que pinta tienen!’ the teachers would exclaim (‘how nice they look!’). And our children thrived in the school performing at the top of their (small) classes. We, too, were made to feel we were appreciated as a unique element in the school; the teachers felt that Avril in particular was a good influence and would place children by her whom they thought she would influence positively. We British are known for our manners. So unlike Adreimal there was no animosity towards foreign children at all. 
We were in fact held in such high regard that the deputy tried to persuade Adrian to run for mayor.
'We need a britanico,' he pleaded. 'Estoy harto, I'm fed up of the political corruption. A britanico like you could be trusted.' 
I didn't like everything about the school, however. I disapproved of the teaching of Catholicism, in particular. Back in the UK I had seen grown women cry when they talked about the nuns at their Catholic schools. But my Catholic friends in the village and the local form of Catholicism seemed quite different. 
For one thing, it was very easy to get an abortion or a divorce and I never heard anyone saying anything homophobic. After Franco, it seemed to be all ‘live and let live.’ But I wouldn’t allow the kids to go to the Religion classes in school; they still taught it the old way, with the focus primarily on Catholicism as the one and only true religion. 
I detest the Catholic religion (and possibly every other religion) and don’t trust priests; and I thought that the local priest taught the lessons (I was wrong). When I told a teacher my views, instead of being offended, he was nodding in agreement: ‘What a good idea to keep them away from those classes,’ he said, ‘they really screwed me up.’
The teachers did complain about one aspect of Avril's behaviour, however. Apparently, she would not do the kisses. The teachers would say:
‘Oh yes, her school work is great. She’s a lider. Know that word?’ 
'Uh, yes, it’s an English word actually' (that they’d just introduced and spelt phonetically). 
But this failure to do the kisses sounded good to me. It was very handy with people whom you couldn't stand but had to kiss because of etiquette. Avril would simply not comply and regularly offended adults because of this. There was no way I was going to force her.
In most ways she was a star pupil. She was placed next to a boy called Franci one year and the teachers and the boy's mother were very pleased because his marks improved. They assumed it was the influence of sitting next to Avril; she said it was rather because he copied her work. And a girl in Avril's class, Beatriz, was another copier. She was the only other girl the same age as Avril. She liked Avril, but Avril said she was a bit sly and didn't return the sentiments. 
Beatriz didn't come from what was seen as a 'good family.' Her mother was a sour woman who only ever spoke nicely to me once when she wanted me to buy a massive box of ‘polverones' for fifteen euros. I bought them to be polite, as I found these almond delicacies tasteless and indeed like 'powder.' During the previous three years of our acquaintance, she’d never said one word or so much as given me the La Gloria nod. 
And Beatriz's grandmother was another one. The story went that she'd married a man who'd won the lottery and spent all the money - presumably on her matching skirt suits, made out of material that I felt would be more suitable as carpets - with matching tottering high heels (how they carried her massive weight would made a good scientific study) and tons of lurid make-up. When the money was gone she dumped the poor guy. The only evidence of the win left was her substantial over-the-top wardrobe.

To see our current properties for rent take a look at: 

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p86636

And also another of our completed projects:

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p475271

Parking is of course a big issue for many people the world over - one of those so-called petty issues which cause millions to fantasise about slitting their neighbours' throats. We were no exception. Marino became the focus of our wild fantasies in this regard.
One day he dragged another large pile of his larger branches and put them right where we parked our car below the house (in our original parking area). He then parked his van on our new parking area. We'd only recently cleared this area near the pool, put down a membrane and covered it with tons of gravel. So, he now had his things on both of our parking spaces, leaving us in the ridiculous position of driving up to our cortijo and having nowhere to park.
'Move that van!' I called out to him, when I saw that I couldn't get onto our land.
He shouted something indecipherable, but clambered down from his terrace, got in the van and moved it onto a neighbour's land. 
'Bloody hell,' Adrian moaned. 'Now we'll have to pay for Patrick to come up and concrete in some posts and shove a chain and lock across it. Just to stop that bastard.' 
He was clearly afflicted with what Marita described as the local disease – envidia (envy), and envidia often led on to codicia (coveting). Because he coveted what we had, he decided he’d just use it, as though it were his. 
On our nearby olive terraces we had a similar problem with a man called Pepe from Barcelona, who despite having a vast area of his own on which to park, would stick his car on our very small parking area where only one car could fit, so that if we went there we had nowhere to put our car and we couldn't leave it in the middle of the track that was in constant use. It was just him trying to bully us really.
Yet another time we found that someone had parked a large digger on our olive terraces. We had no idea whom it belonged to and put a note on the seat weighed down with a rock, telling them that they were on private property and to please  move it. It was a damn cheek, but the owner of the digger also could quite easily have crushed our irrigation pipes and if we knew one thing about the Spanish it was that if they broke anything of yours then that was your own lookout; they wouldn't be paying to fix it. 

To see our current properties for rent take a look at: 

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p86636

And also another of our completed projects:

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p475271

A month later Marino had some Romanians working for him, clearing his avocado terraces. He'd already explained that although the local going-rate for labouring was fifty euros a day, you could get them to work for just thirty, because they were desperate.
'No thanks,' we'd said. 'We'll pay them fifty euros like we pay everyone else.'
He worked them hard, ordering them about and watching them like a hawk until his terraces were immaculate, free of all branches, old fruit, leaves etc. But for some reason, he decided to get them to dump a large pile of the branches and leaves and mess on one of our terraces, right next to the house. 
The next time I saw him I shouted up to his terrace.
'Hey Marino! The peones have put some of your rubbish on our land by accident. Mira.' 
'What am I supposed to do with it?' he called back.
'I don’t care. No es mi problema,' I shouted back. 'Make sure it's gone by next week as we've got tourists dentro de una semana. Make sure they're gone by then.' 
In fact, we had tourists due in a fortnight, not a week – I’d said that to rush him along. However, it was ten days later, while we were about to drive past on the main road below, that I spotted smoke coming from near our cortijo.  We went up to investigate what the smoke could be and were amazed to see the smouldering embers of a fire on our land. Marino was nowhere to be seen so I couldn't confront him.
The next day we drove up again to try and catch him.  Now, where the ugly pile of branches and mess had been there was a massive black pile of ashes and the earth was all stained black. That would be one of the first things the tourists saw upon arrival.
I heard a rustle from the land above, so I knew he was hiding there amongst the trees. I shouted up in Spanish: 
'Hey, you haven't got rid of your rubbish from our land and you've now made it look really feo. We didn't give you permission to light a fire on our land. Light it on your own land!'
'Que?' he replied.
'I don’t want your branches, your leaves or your ashes on my land,' I went on. 'Get rid of them.'
'No t’entiendo,' (‘I don’t understand you’) he shouted back.
'Si, m’entiendes,' (‘yes you do’) I shouted back. 'And make sure this lot is gone by this time tomorrow.'
On the Thursday (the tourists were due on the Saturday) he apparently tried to place the ashes on the track below. Simon spotted him and shouted at him that he had better not put them there as the wind would blow them all into Simon's pool below. 
We drove up once more on the Friday; we were worried about the awful impression the mess would create for the holiday-makers. Fortunately Marino had got rid of the ashes, but there was a horrible black stain left on the earth of our terrace. 
I just couldn't understand the mentality. There had been absolutely no need for it. He’d got the Romanians to clear and burn mountains of stuff on his land, and stains on his land didn’t matter as it is pure agricultural land with no house, no holiday let etc., so why did he have to encroach on our land?
As we continued to live in Spain though, we worked out that it was part of the Spanish mentality – amongst the little shitty Spaniards – “los malos” (‘the bad ones’) as one of our good Spanish friends called them – whereby even though they didn’t need to, they liked to shit on your territory, like an animal marking it. They liked to steal something, sometimes a chunk of your land, even; they liked to walk on your land, even though that might mean they were going the long way around, and so on.

To see the end result of all the work on our casa, take a look at the house now: 

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p86636

And also another of our completed projects:

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p475271

Back at the cortijo, the neighbour above us, Marino, was getting tedious (we used to spend some weekends up there, to keep an eye on the place). He kept going on about a great piece of land he had for sale and I’d say, ‘No, the only bit that interests me is this bit,' and I'd point to the terrace of avocados overlooking our pool.  We finally gave in and followed his van up into the sticks. 
This piece of land he'd been convinced we'd want to snap up was tiny. And to get to it you had to scramble across a narrow ridge, holding onto someone else's boundary fence to avoid falling into the abyss. I couldn’t believe he was showing it with a straight face. In order to use it you'd have to build a bridge. 
When we pointed this out, he said:
'Mira, that's not such a big job. You just build a support here and another there,' and he started talking gibberish.
'If it's that easy,' Adrian replied. 'You do it.'
We had got into hiring big diggers, re-sculpting land, knocking entire top terraces off land and so on in Spain but I drew the line at learning how to build expensive bridges in order to get to crap pieces of land in the middle of nowhere. 
'What would anyone do with such a small piece of land anyway?' Adrian asked.
'Build a cortijo. It's a great piece of land,' Marino argued.
He thought we were as thick as he looked. 
One thing he wasn't though, was thick. How could he be when the logic always worked in his favour? 
You make a mistake when you think these peasant-types with their scruffy clothes and old berets are thick or simple.  Two hundred years before our stay in Spain George Sand had written, referring to the 'peasants' in Mallorca: 
‘They do not lack shrewdness, however foolish they seem from their appearance.’ 
That about summed Marino up. He had land all over the place - presumably the spoils of his time as Mayor in the 70s. The local mayors always ended up very wealthy after a spell in office, despite receiving only a small salary (strange, that).
But for the first two years we owned the cortijo, we couldn't have a falling-out with him and were forced to humour him. This was because our cortijo was built on land that had formerly belonged to his wife, but which he had swapped for his lower terrace of avocados that overlooked our pool. The arrangement had been informal and there was only one flimsy piece of paper proving the swap had taken place. We were now aiming to get a proper legal document signed in order to improve our legal position if we chose to sell. We had asked him many times to get his wife to sign, but they always had some excuse. This game of cat and mouse went on for 18 months.
So we had to be as Machiavellian as him, talking politely to him and regularly visiting his wife with the children in the nearby village where they lived. We did this until finally we got the requisite signature and photocopy of her NIE. It took several visits because – if he wasn’t there, she would say: 'I can’t sign anything without him being here.' 
We succeeded in the end by catching them both in at the same time and getting an elderly  Spanish friend of ours whose sister was related to Marino's wife by marriage to accompany us. 
'She'll do it, if I'm there!' the neighbour said, after we'd explained the trouble we were having.
It worked and the wife at last signed and handed us a copy of her ID.
And what a relief it was to finally be able to treat Marino with the contempt he deserved. 
A month or so after this, one night at about 1am Adrian woke up and thought he could hear water running outside the cortijo. He went out only to see Marino had twisted our big irrigation pipe again (which was now cracking where he'd bent it) so that it just about got to his lower terrace of avocados. He was stealing our water. 
'That's it!' Adrian was fuming. He pulled on his trousers, grabbed a torch and marched over to where he could see the scrawny figure in the darkness. Marino saw him but just carried on, holding our pipe with the water gushing onto his land.
'You've broken our pipe, you cabron!' he said and he grabbed the pipe out of his hands. He then caught Marino with both hands on his collar and said:
'Don't you ever do that again. Use your own water and don't touch our things!'
By the time he got back into the house, Adrian was shaking. He was never violent, but he'd finally cracked.
'I'll kill that f*cking weasel the next time I catch sight of him on our land!'
Oh, I forgot to mention he was a pervy Peeping Tom. One night I'd been in the shower in the cortijo. The bathroom was located to the side and back of the house with a window overlooking our vegetable patch. It was completely private and no-one could see inside unless they were standing on our land a metre from the window, staring in. As it was eleven o' clock at night, this was highly unlikely. 
As I got out of the shower that night, however, completely starkers, I had a strange feeling; as though there had been a slight change in the quality of the light outside; as though there had been the slightest of movements. 
'Adrian!' I called. 'Can you check outside? I've got a funny feeling someone could be there.'
'Okay,' he said and walked out onto the dark patio.
There was Marino, having just clambered down from his terrace and crossed our vegetable patch!
'What are you doing?' Adrian asked, shocked.
'Nada,' he answered and, mumbling something, scuttled off to his van and drove off.
'Oh, shit,' I said when I realised he'd seen me. I felt sick at the thought of the old perve gaping at my naked body.

To see the end result of all the work on our casa, take a look at the house now: 

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p86636

And also another of our completed projects:

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p475271