The one bad neighbour (there's always one).
Monday, June 9, 2014 @ 3:13 PM
Just below the casa Andres was hovering as usual. I had seen him first when we were doing a recky one day with Benjamín.
'Sois ingleses?' he'd asked, calling up from his garden.
'Yes we speak English,' we replied in our diplomatic Welsh way.
'Ah, I only speak German,' he said.
'Sehr gut,' I answered. 'We can talk in German then.' I asked him in German where he'd learnt it; whether he had worked in Germany?
'Que?' he replied flustered. It seemed his Deutsch was a bit rusty.
Reverting to Spanish, on the spur of the moment I decided to ask if he'd mind us putting a window in an upstairs room which would overlook the path running towards his front door (Benjamín had said we wouldn't get agreement for a window, but I thought it was worth a try).
'Yes, I suppose that would be okay,' he said. 'As long as you can also put some guttering on the same side, because the water pours off the roof onto my land.'
'Muy bien,' I replied, really pleased to have thought of it. Before he could change his mind first thing the next day I got the Romanians to smash through a wall they'd built. It was south facing and the views of the sierra were going to be magnificent. We also got the electrician to install the TV point and a whole stack of electrical points in the room. This would be a stunning salón with the sunlight streaming in.
A few days later after the men had fitted the lintel, a woman was calling up from the garden. She wanted to speak to us.
'You can't do that!' she was shouting and pointing. 'You have no right to put a window in that wall!'
She was shrieking. 'Que cara tiene! What a cheek! You didn't ask my permission!'
'Who are you?' Adrian shouted back.
'I'm the dueña of this house, that's who!'
'Well we didn't even know you existed,' Adrian replied. 'So how were we supposed to ask your permission? And anyway, your husband here gave us el permiso.' He nodded towards Andres who was standing silently nearby.
'Don't ask him! He's an idiot!' she shouted back. 'You get rid of it. I won't have it! I want it gone by tomorrow!'
There was nothing for it. Although the window didn't overlook their house, it overlooked a slither of their land. And although we had no idea why it would have got her so enraged, you had to have the permission of the neighbours if you wanted a window to overlook their property. We now had to pay the labourers to once more fill in the window and the electrical points were all in the wrong place. It also meant we had to pay for an expensive velux window to be installed in the roof for extra light.
Benjamín thought we should try and get our own back:
'Mira. They've got their gate attached to the side of your house. Eso es ilegal! You can insist that they move it.'
But we didn't have the energy to start a legal case. We also could have reneged on the agreement to do the guttering, but Adrian still wanted it done (and over-ruled me).
We were, however, generally lucky with the attitude of the neighbours to the building work (even harridan and cuckhold below), in that they never complained about the noisy machines running six days a week. There was also mess in the streets, with dumper trucks unloading sand which had to be shovelled and wheel-barrowed in. Nobody said a word, and when we tried to apologise anyway, we’d be told: ‘No importa. We all do work from time to time’.
And another good thing (I like to look on the bright side) was that now we'd had the argument with old fish-face we could happily ignore her forever more. This was when we perfected the 'blanking technique.'
It went like this: you see someone in the street, outside the bar, or in the grocers' and you think:
'Mmm, I know that ugly, dyed-red hair, hard-faced cow with the square face. Who is she now? Oh, yes! She's my neighbour!'
They disappear so much from your mind that you could happily sit next to them in a cafe, oblivious, forgetting you'd ever spoken to them. It's a marvellous technique and one I thoroughly recommend.
We have two holiday lets in Spain, with some vacancies for this year:
http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p86636
And:
http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p475271