Pablo de Ronda is an honorary Spaniard. He has lived and worked in the Serranía de Ronda for more than 12 years. Yet it was all an accident really.

In Part One of his story he explained how he came to study Spanish at university.

In Part Two he tells us how his life developed over the course of his degree, and how he ended up in hospital in Germany.

As I outlined in The “Accidental Spaniard” - Part One I was good at languages at school and when I came to go to university to study French and German, the university I attended managed to persuade me to drop French and start Spanish from scratch, ie ab initio.

After a difficult first year as an undergraduate, I dropped out of the course. I was way too immature. So I went to work for a year, earning the princely sum of £10 a week in a small supermarket back in Exeter.

At the time it was enough for me to run a car, my mum’s Morris Minor, smoke and go out most nights. I was living at home. I made a contribution to the household, but my dad, bless him, put it aside and gave me it all back when I returned to my degree course after a year of “maturation”.

I didn’t have to repeat the first year, so joined a new cohort as the “older guy”. This new group of students made me very welcome. One, the dusky Hazel, from Kingston-upon-Hull via Vienna (her mum was Austrian) even asked me out on a date! Blimey!

That went very well for a while. She didn’t want a commitment, but we stayed friends for years.

Another, Welsh girl Jac, was in all my classes – she was doing Spanish from scratch alongside German, like I was. Another dark-haired beauty, I fancied her like hell, but I was too slow off the mark and my friend Danny snapped her up – and married her in our Final Year, while they were still undergraduates!

Not doing too well on the romantic front. Maybe I should try a blonde!

Well, you say that! Look what happened next.

At Easter 1970 we were sent to Spain for the first part of our year abroad. Seven of us flew to Barcelona, and then, because the trains were full (Easter), we all squeezed into a hire car (a BIG hire car) and travelled all the way across northern Spain to San Sebastián, where we were to attend university for three months.

I had to do all the driving, as I was the only one with a driving licence.

We arrived in the elegant Basque coastal resort at night and found that alcohol was very, very cheap, a mere one peseta (< 1p) for a glass of wine!

The worst hangover of my life later, I decided I really liked what I’d seen of Spain so far: seedy Barcelona, capital of Catalonia, and genteel Donostia (the politically correct Basque name for San Seb nowadays).

I was in love with Spain. Oh, and there was a bubbly blonde in our group, Brenda, who had snogged me in Barcelona. She won my heart too and we dated for a short time, but she soon replaced me with a local shop owner, so once again I was “single” and devastated.

Three months later, university course over, we were free to spend the next three months in Spain, doing whatever we wanted.

I’d landed myself a job in the office of a local Basque tour operator, Dorfe. The boss, Toni (Antonio Dorronsoro Feliner), was the Basque equivalent of a “wide boy”, but he ran a tight operation ferrying British and Irish Catholic pilgrims from Lourdes in France to San Sebastián, in order for them to let their hair down after all that praying and grotto-visiting at the French pilgrimage site.

After a few weeks in the office, Tony asked me if I’d like to have a go as a guide. I did and never looked back. I became his top commission earner (for selling excursions) in no time at all.

The other guides were all local girls, by the way, and all beautiful – of course.

There was Amaya, slightly older and the more experienced of the group, Marisa, engaged, Begoña, a good mate, giggly Carmen, sultry María and Coro. Coro was a stunner. I fell for her big style.

But this provincial Devonshire lad didn’t have a clue about dating. Remember: Hazel and Brenda made their moves on me, and I’d lost Jac through being too slow off the mark.

So, nothing ever happened between me and Coro.

Come the end of the summer it was time to head off to Germany for the second leg of my year abroad.

A quick stopover with Roger at the Munich Oktoberfest (it is actually in September, in fact!) and I found myself in Stuttgart, working as a translator at Daimler-Benz AG, the manufacturers of Mercedes-Benz vehicles.

Coincidentally, both Jac and Brenda had placements in Stuttgart too, at Bosch and Siemens respectively.

Then I got acute appendicitis and was admitted to hospital for an emergency operation.

What happened next? Find out in The “Accidental Spaniard” – Part Three.

Several years ago, when he first moved to live in the Serranía de Ronda, Pablo de Ronda wrote about three pueblos blancos in the area for a local website. He thought the wider readership of EyeOnSpain might also be interested to read about them too. Here is an updated version of the article.

Three of the loveliest pueblos blancos of the Guadiaro Valley in our part of the Serranía de Ronda are Monty Jack, its neighbour Ben and Joan and the stunning jewel in the crown, Big Ron. Otherwise known as Montejaque, Benaoján and Ronda

Montejaque, at 689 square metres above sea level, nestles in the shadow of two mountains, Hacho and Tavizna.  With a population of just below 1000, it’s small and quiet. The barrio nazarí, the old village tucked in at the top of Montejaque, is charming with higgledy-piggledy houses and narrow alleys originating from the days of the Moorish occupation, 711 to 1492, was designed to keep dwellings cool in the heat of summer and sheltered and warm in the cold of winter.

Over the years a number of these older houses, many of which were nothing more than ruined dwellings or animal shelters, have been bought up by northern Europeans and renovated into holiday cottages or permanent homes.  Some 40 or so guiris (foreigners, half of them British and Irish) live in Monty Jack on a permanent basis.

The surrounding land is given over largely to olive cultivation and cork production.  The village is now quite thriving, with significant construction work in the newer lower part of the village still ongoing despite the various recessions, estados de alarma and the Covid-19 pandemic.

Benaoján, by contrast, is a pork town, with a number of processing factories in the village itself and down the hill in Estación de Benaoján, its sister settlement alongside the railway line to Algeciras.  With an overall population of 1,500 Ben and Joan are famous for their hams, sausages, cold meats and other pork products, based on the ubiquitous black pigs which roam freely feasting on acorns from the thousands of oak trees. Benaoján is evidently more industrial and shabby than its neighbour up the hill. 

Also in the lee of a mountain, at 564 meters above sea level, it gets the early morning sun but goes into shadow early in the evening.  It too has had a small influx of foreigners, also around 40, and it is a friendly place.  Ben and Joan is larger than Monty Jack and has more amenities, such as a clinic, football pitch, petrol station and repair garage, a newsagents and a florists.

Both villages are about 20 minutes by road from magical Ronda, the highest of the three at 739 metres and the largest town hereabouts.  Big Ron has a population of around 34,000, over 1,400 of them foreigners.  Whilst the Ciudad Soñada (City of Dreams) has most amenities and is a great town, Montejaque and Benaoján are quieter and slap bang in the middle of the most spectacular scenery you could wish to see.  The whole of the Guadiaro Valley is a delightful area for a holiday, or even better, for living in.

Why not come and see us?  There is plenty of holiday rental accommodation of differing types and to suit all tastes and pockets, or your dream house could be just waiting there for you to discover it.

More information:

The following website provides listings and other information on the area: www.secretserrania.com

Recommended holiday rentals:

Casa Rita, Montejaque - https://www.secretserrania.com/item/casa-rita-montejaque/

Villa Indiana, Fuente de la Higuera, Ronda - https://www.secretserrania.com/item/villa-indiana-fuente-de-la-higuera-ronda/

Casa Real, Montejaque – available from July 2021

About the author:

After taking early retirement from his career in the UK, Pablo de Ronda lived on and off in Ronda for five years before settling permanently in the area in 2008. He lived in Montejaque for three years with his second wife before they moved to Fuente de la Higuera, just outside Ronda, where they still live after 10 years.  As for Benaoján he used to buy his Sunday paper there and Estación de Benaoján is home to one of his favourite restaurants.

Semi-retired, he dabbles in house renovations, as well as gardening and writing. He also offers a translation, interpreting, holiday rental and homefinder service. He can be contacted at paulwhitelock@hotmail.com

Pablo de Ronda is an honorary Spaniard. He has lived and worked in the Serranía de Ronda for more than 12 years. Yet it was all an accident really. He explains.

At school I was good at languages. I did German, French and Latin at GCE “O” Level (older readers will remember fondly those exams taken at age 16). My grades were pretty good (A, B, B respectively), so I did German and French at “A” Level, alongside Pure Mathematics and Art.

When the time came to apply for university, it seemed evident that I would study languages, so I applied for places on one of the new-fangled degree courses that had begun to appear, courses with more emphasis on communication and less focus, or none at all, on literature.

My first choices were the universities of Bradford and Salford, both former Royal Colleges of Advanced Technology, which were enjoying a growing reputation for the excellence of their modern languages courses in the late 60s.

I was called to the University of Bradford for a rigorous series of tests and interviews which took up most of a day, after which they put me on the “waiting list”; not an offer as such.

The next interview was a couple of weeks later at the University of Salford. Similarly rigorous interview process, followed by a final interview with two professors, Juan Sager*, Argentine-born and bi-lingual in German and Spanish, and Anthony Layton, English-born and fluent in Russian.

After some probing into my background – son of a South Wales miner, born in rural North Devon, no graduates in my family background, Dad a labourer and Mum an office clerk – the two professors threw a curved ball at me.

“Would you consider dropping either French or German and starting a new language ab initio?” asked Professor Sager.  I’d done Latin “O” Level so I knew that ab initio meant “from scratch”.

“Wouldn’t that be a bit daft?” I replied. “I’ve already invested seven years in learning French and five in German.”

“We would make you a lower offer.”

I was beginning to feel the pressure a bit. Bradford had only put me on their waiting list and this was my last chance to get a place on a modern course. The other unis on my list, like Surrey, were somewhat more traditional with compulsory literature, which I wanted to avoid.

Enthusiastically I said: “Oh, really? Which languages are on offer from scratch then?”

“Italian, Russian or Spanish.”

“OK. Can I think about it for a couple of days and let you know?”

“I’m afraid not,” said the other interviewer, Professor Layton. “You have to decide here and now or we shan’t make you an offer at all!”

Bloody hell! It’s like double-glazing salesmen. You know the drill: “This price is only available for the next five minutes. After that it’s back to full price.”

“Oh! Well, can I have a minute, please?”

I was completely on my own, about to make a decision that would have repercussions for my entire life.

I went through each language in my head.

Italian first. Back then, aged 17, I had an irrational aversion to Italy, to Italians and to things Italian. So, Italian was out.

Funnily enough I’ve never yet been to Italy, but I do like a lot of things Italian now. Sophia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida; Ferraris and Lamborghinis. I even had a Lambretta scooter for a while. The Italian Football team won the World Cup four times. Pasta and pizza are delicious and my Ferroli boiler is bloody good! It’s only ever not worked when I forgot to order oil!

Russian. I started a Russian “O” Level course as a subsidiary subject in the Lower Sixth, but gave up after a few weeks because the teacher was hopeless. He told the class that he was only a page or so in front of us in the course book, as he sought to add a string to his teaching bow by learning Russian.

So, that left me with Spanish. To my eternal shame I knew absolutely zilch about the second most important language in the world after English. I knew the capital was Madrid and that they had lots of tacky holiday costas, but that was about it.

“I’ve come to a decision. Can I drop French and do Spanish instead?

“Yes, of course,” they piped up in unison. “Instead of the normal two Bs and a C, you just need a B and 2 Cs. Congratulations! We look forward to seeing you in October.

It was 1968 and I’d just changed the course of my life – by accident!

Pablo de Ronda thought he knew the area where he has lived for the last 12 years like the back of his hand. You must be joking! The other day he went somewhere he’d never been before. And it’s right on his doorstep in La Indiana, a pedanía of Ronda.

I was in paradise again, for the second time this month (Editor’s note: You can read about Paul’s first visit to paradise here.

I went with my pal José to get some eggs from his friend Manuel, who lives in a tumble-down finca up a track near Benaoján. What a quiet and beautiful spot! I took lots of photos, some of which appear in this post.

Then we went to another nearby finca, also set in stunning countryside, to pick up some lawnmowers for my neighbour and friend Julian, who runs the delightful Cortijo La Perla Blanca hotel on the same site as up-and-coming winery Badman Wines and adjacent to my casa rural Villa Indiana.

By lawnmowers I mean lambs, of course. Julian decided that rather than buy an expensive lawn mower – he has lots of lawn – that he would have to push or ride, he would save four lambs from the dinner tables of the Ronda rich by getting them in as ecological gardening equipment.

He also needed 24 straw bales to build his flock a shelter. Because I’m quite well enchufado I was able to organise this within no time. Ellie and Ben, Julian’s children, and wife Jody are delighted.

Interesting that they have moved from the urban impresario life of Leeds, England, to little old Fuente de la Higuera, another pedanía, to become hoteliers and … sheep farmers?

I am currently helping them to obtain the permiso they need to operate as owners of livestock!

Links:

Cortijo La Perla Blanca

Badman Wines

Villa Indiana

Days of Ronda Wine and Roses

Paradise Found I

This is the title of 17^th Century English poet John Milton’s follow-up to Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. It is also the title chosen by Pablo de Ronda for an experience he had recently.

I entered paradise the other day. A friend of mine invited me to visit El Molinete, a defunct windmill with outbuildings slap bang in the middle of the last remaining rain forest in Europe, namely in the Genal valley below Algatocín.

My friend bought the place just before the Covid-19 lockdown in the UK and was trapped there for months. Now she’s back with a vengeance and her dream of creating a retreat for shiatsu, tai chi , yoga and other meditative pursuits is back on course.

With no mains electricity or water the place runs on solar energy and water from a spring up the hill.

“Green” to her roots my friend is dedicated to re-cycling what is on site, what she can find at the basura or what friends donate. This professional interior designer, furniture-maker and former teacher is the most competent female DIY-er I have ever come across. She can turn her hand to literally anything.

With the help of a few “workawayers” (see below for details of this scheme), she has turned a large wooden roundhouse into a delightful living space with outdoor kitchen, WC and shower. It is an official vivienda rural and is available to rent. It’s called the Round House in the Forest.

The first ever booking has just ended. A young Spanish couple, both doctors, spent the Easter puente there with their dog and were thrilled to bits with the accommodation, the location and the get-away-from-it-all atmosphere. They happily joined in meals and other activities with the two “workawayers”, one Italian and one Dutch lady, my friend and me.

After a couple of well-deserved days off, the work has started again to renovate a second roundhouse, to convert a large alberca into a swimming pool and make other improvements to the amenities.

For details of “El Molinete” and how to book, please click here: https://www.airbnb.es/rooms/3026075?previous_page_section_name=1000&federated_search_id=d13a4684-31ff-4940-af8e-5277e34b820d

The Workaway Scheme

Workaway is a worldwide platform founded in 2002 that allows members to arrange homestays and cultural exchanges. Volunteers or "Workawayers", are expected to contribute a pre-agreed amount of time per day, say five hours, in exchange for lodging and food, which is provided by their host.

For more details click on the following links.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workaway

https://www.workaway.info/

This Coronavirus is no joke. Those who deny its existence belong in a looney bin. To date this bug, in just over one year, has killed over 3 million people world-wide, 127,000 in the UK, nearly 77,400 in Spain. Millions have had their health and way of life ruined. Families have been bereaved far too early as formerly strong and healthy young men and women have just crumpled and died. They couldn’t even attend the funerals to say goodbye to their loved ones.

We’ve all been affected in some way whether we live in Hong Kong, New York, London or Madrid or in Ronda, Montejaque, Jimera de Líbar or Serrato.

Many who caught Covid-19 seemed to get off relatively lightly, only to find later that they have developed what the English-speaking world is calling “Long Covid”, in Spanish, “pos-Covid síndrome”.

Pablo de Ronda has seen much of this suffering and death close-up in Montejaque and Ronda (both Málaga province), the area where he has lived for the last dozen years.

He tells the story of one lady’s 2021 so far.

A lady I know in Ronda, a German, who has been resident in the area for 15 years, has had just three healthy days this year and it’s nearly May already. Those three days were 1st, 2nd and 3rd January. On 4th January she began to display symptoms of Covid-19 contagion: bad cough, fever, tiredness, pains throughout her body.

Despite a call on 5th January to the emergency number, 061, the doctor didn’t think she warranted a home visit, nor did she need to attend Urgencias. She also didn’t need to be tested. What?

After repeated calls to 061 and her surgery, Centro Norte de Salud in Ronda, she finally got an appointment for an antigen test and a PCR test on 9th January.  She had to struggle to the surgery under her own steam for this, despite being quite poorly by this time.

Not surprisingly she tested positive, but it wasn’t until the evening of the following day that she was admitted to hospital, at the relatively new Hospital de La Serranía on the south side of Ronda.

Admission to hospital proved to be a long and tiring process; long gaps between various tests and hours waiting in a wheelchair on an oxygen drip until a room became available.

The whole thing was compounded by my friend’s poor Spanish (her fault, she freely admits, but nevertheless traumatic in the circumstances).

This lady, from Montejaque’s German twin town Knittlingen, disappeared from view for 10 days. To start with she could communicate with family and friends via WhatsApp or normal mobile phone calls, but she became so unwell and confused that she stopped answering for several days, which concerned everybody.

No information was available about her condition or her reaction to treatment. Her husband rang the hospital umpteen times and nobody could tell him anything, not the nurses, not the admin staff. Only doctors were in a position to give out information about the health of their patients, he was told. There were never any available to come to the phone. After “losing it” a couple of times the husband did eventually get some feedback for the family.

We then began to learn that our patient was being left to her own devices for hours on end. The staff did not respond to the alarm button if she was desperate for a painkiller or needed to visit the bathroom. On two occasions the nurses found her collapsed on the floor of her room, lying in her own excrement.

Later when asked whether she was embarrassed about that, this feisty lady said no – it served them right to have to clean her up, for not responding to her literal calls for help when the alarm button produced no results. Well, I think she certainly has a point!

In the end the family were so distraught at the treatment their loved one wasn’t getting that her husband demanded she be sent home from hospital. He was told that no ambulance was available for patients that self-discharge. You’ll have to book a taxi, they said.

I understand that her husband, also suffering from Covid-19 by the way and quarantined at home, threatened to get in his car, drive to the hospital and collect his wife personally, despite this being a “crime” or “breach of regulations” and subject to a heavy fine.

Guess what? She was transported home to her husband by ambulance the following day. Well done, that man!

Her husband reports that it was like having a “corpse” delivered. This poor lady spent the next 10 days in bed, not sleeping, not eating, not drinking, not doing anything that she knew, as a former nurse, she should be doing to improve her health.

She was hallucinating frequently, probably as a result of the cocktail of drugs they’d been giving her in hospital to ease her pain, and , quite frankly to keep her tranquilised.

Her poor husband, not suited to caring at all, did his best. He was available 24/7, hardly sleeping, preparing healthy food from scratch, which went into the bin, hunting for non-existent duty chemists in the middle of the night and keeping the house running.

On one occasion he managed to persuade his wife to have a bath – she was getting a bit stinky. What a nightmare! They got her into the bath ok, but couldn’t get her out again. Despite having lost 10 kilos in hospital (1 kilo per day, by the way – seems like a lot to me!) she had insufficient strength in her legs to help in exiting the bathtub.

They eventually managed to extract her after two hours, by which time the poor thing was shivering with the cold – it was still January, winter!

So, no more baths. The next day her husband bought a shower stool from Ortopedia Carreño,  the orthopaedic shop in Ronda, and that worked much better. He also managed to “scrounge” a wheelchair from Santa Bárbara, the health centre in the south of Ronda – not even their surgery.

After organising several telephone conversations with medical specialists, eg two German doctors, family friends both, and a German-speaking psychologist through Sanitas, their private health insurer, things began to look a bit brighter. Our patient responded positively.

Then, out of the blue came the most amazing offer. My friend’s niece, a physiotherapist in Germany, offered to take unpaid leave to fly to Spain to treat her aunt for 10 days. She came, accompanied by our heroine’s younger son, to help the husband, who was exhausted after his own bout of Coronavirus and the home caring of his wife.

The transformation was unbelievable. Three treatments a day, including physical exercises, massages and short walks in the fresh air, started to do the trick. She went from being a “zombie” to a relatively normal, though still very weak and emaciated – yes emaciated – lady. She made the effort to sit at the table for every meal. She even insisted on preparing a meal on one occasion, but it was too much for her really.

The family turned its attention to aftercare. Sanitas would pay for 10 sessions of physiotherapy. Great, they thought. They were to be sessions ON THE PHONE! How does that work?

In fact, the new reality is that nearly all medical consultations are telephonic in this Covid-19 health world in which we live.

Behind the scenes our victim’s three children had been plotting and they decided that when the niece and son flew back to Germany after their 10-day mercy mission, our friend would go with them. They were convinced that the German Krankenkasse (Health Service) was better equipped to provide the aftercare she needed.

The only person against this plan was our patient, but they just told her to be quiet and do what she was told. On 15th February she flew to Germany and was admitted to hospital in Ludwigsburg, Baden-Wuerttemberg, the following day for tests.

Then another potential disaster struck. The doctors detected a 9cm long growth on her ovaries. Cancer? What next? They operated within days, removed the tumour, did a biopsy – benign. What a relief.

But our friend is still not well. She has had a very bad dose of Covid-19, which has left her weak and in constant pain, and she has had a major abdominal operation.

After several days of recovery in hospital she went to her daughter’s for a period of convalescence. The doctor’s request for a month-long residential rehabilitation programme was turned down on the grounds that she had caught the virus abroad, ie in Spain, so it wasn’t their problem. What on earth is the world coming to? I think the family are appealing the decision.

What happened next? When she was fit enough, she travelled north by car to her physiotherapist niece for a further 10 days of treatment. And what a difference that has made!

This has turned out to be so successful so quickly that this lovely lady is coming back home to Spain to her husband and her friends. She arrives next Monday, 26th April at Málaga airport at 9.30am.

She has been away for two and a half months.

Readers, this is a true story. I know, because that German lady from Ronda is my wife.

The lovely Rita.

My God! What have we done?

Pablo de Ronda recalls the time when he and his first wife, Jeryl, were looking for a property to buy in the Serranía de Ronda. Here is what happened during a visit to the area with their son Tom in October 2001.

27 October 2001

“Are you awake?”

“Yep. Can’t sleep.”

“Me neither.”

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?

“Probably...”

“My God! What have we done?”

Light on. 3 am. It’s mid-October 2001 in the tiny village of Montejaque in the Serranía de Ronda mountains.  The house is cold and damp. Someone has disturbed the dogs penned in on the outskirts of the village and all hell has been let loose!

The evening before we had agreed to buy and had put down a deposit on an apartment in the nearby town of Ronda.

We saw the flat in the late afternoon at the end of a long hot day viewing totally inappropriate places offered by our Spanish estate agent.

Had we panicked?  At the time we didn’t think so, as we’d been looking for over a year, but in the cold, damp, dark, sleepless early-hours of an Andalucían autumn morning, we had begun to question the wisdom of blowing most of our recently matured endowment on a jerry-built flat in a community of owners, all of whom were Spanish.

What had we done?

Fast forward nine years to 2010 .....

Well, our little flat, which we called Piso Blanco, turned out to be a sound investment.  It has given our family, relatives and friends several years of fun holidays.

When we bought a run-down little house around the corner in 2003, our flat was an ideal base, as we set about renovating the house, christened, rather predictably, Casa Blanca.

Forgotten a tool?  No problem!

Hungry? Just nip up the road to the flat for a bite to eat.

Loo out of action?  There was another 50 metres away.

Tired?  Take a siesta in the flat.

Five years later, Casa Blanca, now renovated, had to be sold to finance the purchase of a house in England for the recently divorced me to live in, but Piso Blanco, the apartment in Ronda lives on and continues to be enjoyed by family and friends, as well as Rita my second wife (we married in 2010) and I, both now residents. If we fancy a night out in Ronda and don’t want to drive home .....

Update - February 2021

Times and circumstances change and I sold Piso Blanco in February 2019. I even made a small profit, a rare phenomenon in the current financial climate.

Unhappy with the ridiculous interest rate on savings (0.025% I think) I decided to invest in another property to do up. I bought Casa Pablo in Montejaque in October 2020 and started work on the reforma. After several weeks of stoppages caused by Covid-19 lockdowns the work has stalled yet again, but we’ll get there in the end …..

Note: This article forms part of a trilogy with Montejaque Diary – First Ever Stay and The Houses That Jack Built , all available to read on EyeOnSpain.

Montejaque Diary – First Ever Stay

EyeOnSpain contributor Paul Whitelock and his then wife Jeryl were considering buying somewhere in Montejaque (Málaga) as long ago as the year 2000. So they decided to rent a holiday home in the village, in order to get a feel for life there and to ascertain whether it might be somewhere they would enjoy having a bolthole. The stay would also give them the chance to view some more properties in the Serranía de Ronda area.

Here’s an extract from Paul’s diary of the time.

Sunday 31 October 2001

Up at 3.30 am; left home at 4.20 and arrived at Liverpool John Lennon airport at 4.50 am.

Small queue, checked in, no problems!  Saw Janet T and her husband; also Anne-Marie, a teacher from my last school, St Aelred’s Catholic High School in Newton-le-Willows, Merseyside.

Front seats again!  Guess who was sitting across the aisle from us? None other than 1985 World Snooker Champion Dennis Taylor. He had his eyes shut throughout the flight. Fear of flying or a signal that he didn’t want to be disturbed? I left him in peace anyway.

We took off on time and arrived early in Málaga.  I went for the hire car while Jeryl and Tom waited at the belt for our luggage.

Had travelled 10 kilometres or so when Jeryl asked if my bag was handy or was it in the boot – no! It was at easy.rentacar.com! I’d left it behind!

We turned around and headed back to the airport on the ordinary road. Have you noticed how Spain seems to have fallen in love with the roundabout and the sleeping policeman? It was getting on my nerves, having to continually brake and slow down, so we resumed our journey back to the airport by motorway.

With my reclaimed luggage on board, we recommenced our journey to Montejaque. The journey to Ronda took us about 90 minutes, winding up the hill from San Pedro de Alcántara. After another 20 minutes we were in Montejaque.

Collected key and went to our casita, Puerta Verde, which, despite its name, has a brown door, not a green one!  It was nevertheless nice and rustic with many attractive features. 

It had been pouring with rain, however, so everywhere was rather wet.

After unpacking we went to La Casita for lunch on the terrace overlooking the gardens and pool and the mountains beyond.  Excellent lunch, though unfortunately I had to drink all the wine as Jeryl was still on penicillin.  The post-lunch brandy had to be the biggest I have ever had!! After lunch I went ‘de chiquiteo’ while J and T went back to Puerta Verde, only to catch up with me later.

Bumped into ‘Camper Van Couple’ again. We’d met them at La Casita that lunchtime. They are actually quite boring.

Joined up with Ron Watt and his latest ‘client’, Carol, who’d just bought a place for 5.000.000 pesetas in Calle Manuel Mañara, 5. Found out quite a lot about the housing scene from Ron (subsequently found to be false, or, at least, exaggerated!).

Juan, dueño del Bar Alemán, had sold his mum’s house (Calle Manuel Lopez, 24) to a retired English bobby, Philip, and his wife Sandra, who were later to become good friends. We’d looked at that house the last time we were here and were quite interested, but, hey ….. Juan told us his father’s house was for sale (Calle Manuel Mañara, 2), so we arranged to view on Tuesday.

Which we did, along with other properties in Arriate and Ronda. After a gruelling day viewing mostly totally inappropriate houses, we finally fetched up at a flat that had apparently come onto the market just that day. The estate agent showing us round hadn’t even seen it!

Well, we bought it there and then, agreeing a deal that very evening!

Small but ideally located in the Barrio San Francisco in Ronda, it was part of a comunidad of 10 dwellings with a shared garden and, wait for it, a pool! Practically unheard of in the town itself.

Needless to say, we spent a sleepless night worrying about what we’d agreed to.

To find out what happened next, read My God! What have we done?, which will be posted shortly on EyeOnSpain.

Note: This article forms part of a trilogy with The Houses That Jack Built and My God! What Have We Done? which will be available to read on this blog in due course.

The Houses That Jack Built!

Paul Whitelock was a languages teacher, a school inspector and a translator and interpreter. Since retirement 15 years ago he has also dabbled in journalism and blogging. But what he really wanted to do when he was younger was to be a tradesman, eg. plumber, electrician, carpenter, bricklayer, tiler or painter and decorator. Over the years he’s had a go at all of these on an amateur, DIY basis with relative success. Here’s the story of the houses that Jack – Paul - built! Or helped to build…..

I first started doing bits and pieces of DIY when, as a poorly paid young teacher, I bought my first house, a semi-detached in Walkden, Greater Manchester, for £11,000. A lot of money back then and the mortgage interest rate was around 16 per cent!

Unable to afford to employ professionals, I informed myself from books (no YouTube videos back then in the late 1970s) and tentatively did a bit of electrical work, plumbing and painting and decorating.

My first wife, Jeryl, and I then moved to our second house, in Thelwall, Warrington, not far from the infamous Thelwall Viaduct on the M6. A three-bed detached it cost us just £37,500, a huge amount in 1980. Over the next 20 years, the house grew in size to become a four-bedroomed, two bath-roomed house with four reception rooms and a third WC plus garage and large balcony overlooking the adjacent park.

Although builders did the main construction work, my DIY skills had developed so much that over the years I was able to re-wire the whole house, convert the original garage into an extra lounge-cum-music room, turn the separate toilet and bathroom into an ensuite bathroom with new suite, install a shower, replace all the guttering and drainpipes and build two patios and a pergola. Not to mention wall-papering and painting throughout. I even built a tree house for my two kids.

In the early 2000s Jeryl and I bought two properties in quick succession in Ronda. The first, Piso Blanco, was a small flat that needed little doing to it, but the second, an end-terraced house, which we named Casa Blanca, was virtually a ruin. Over the next couple of years I re-wired it, replaced a collapsed floor, upgraded the kitchen, re-built the terrace and decorated throughout.

Then disaster struck, or should I say three disasters! Redundancy, early retirement and divorce in quick succession, in 2005, saw me living with a new lady, Maud, in a beautiful cottage in Bryn-y-Maen, North Wales. I did a few bits and pieces there to keep my hand in and then, when I took her to Ronda for a long weekend, Maud bought a small house there on the spur of the moment.

We called it El Rincón, because it was tucked away in a corner. It needed a lot of work, which I happily took on. Maud was still working full time in the UK, but I was retired so spent months in Ronda re-wiring, building a new bathroom, tiling floors and creating a rather delightful terraced garden at the rear of the house. A good lick of paint and El Rincón was finished.

The end of that relationship put paid to my DIY activities for a couple of years, until an old university friend, Jac, who lives in Luxembourg, invited me to spend the summer of 2008 in the Grand Duchy helping her daughter and son-in-law renovate an old house they’d bought there. That was great fun and I developed some new skills, as building practices there differ significantly from the ones I had become familiar with in the UK.

After that busy but enjoyable summer of 2008 I was footloose and fancy-free again, so headed off to Ronda to stay in Piso Blanco for a few days, prior to moving into a house in Latchford, Warrington, which I’d bought with the proceeds from the sale of Casa Blanca, the Ronda house I’d done up a few years before.

The Warrington house was a real bargain. Tunstall Villa, as the “new” house in Latchford was named, was a “do-er up-er”. A Victorian detached villa, rather down on its luck, it had the potential to be a great house again.  It only cost me £119,000.

Still “unemployed” - by this time I’d been retired for three years - I had plenty of time on my hands, so I set about the renovation. Over many months I created a delightful winter garden, renovated the rear internal area to provide a WC and laundry room, re-decorated throughout, and then, after two and a half years ….. I sold it!

Why on earth …..?

Well, on that visit to Ronda in September 2008 that I mentioned earlier, I’d met a lady I nicknamed the “Meter Maid”! Yes, you guessed it, her name is Rita. We dated in Spain, the UK and Germany, where she is from, and quickly fell in love. I immigrated to Spain at the end of that year to live with Rita in her lovely village house, Casa Rita, in Montejaque. In 2010 we married.

The DIY didn’t stop, however! I built a kitchenette in a bedroom that we set up as a B & B and handled all the maintenance work at Casa Rita.

Both having committed to living in Spain, we needed a house that better met the needs of our respective families, eg her disabled grandson, my ailing mother. So I sold Tunstall Villa in Latchford and we used the money from the sale to buy our dream house in the campo just outside Ronda. That house is known as Villa Indiana. That happened in 2011, the year after we “jumped the broom” and we still live there after 10 years of married life.

The DIY and gardening have continued, of course, although, as I get older, I rely a bit more on local tradesmen to keep on top of things.

In 2019 I decided to sell Piso Blanco in Ronda after 18 years’ ownership. We had been using it as a holiday rental, but all of a sudden the bookings started to dry up, so it had to go.

Last month, October 2020, I used some of the money from that sale to buy a charming old house in Montejaque, where we had previously lived. I needed a project again and so I am currently restoring it to its former glory.

To be sure, I’m 70 now, 71 next month, but the mind is still willing even if the flesh is weak. With the help of professionals, Casa Pablo is currently being re-configured and re-wired, prior to re-plastering, installing a new bathroom and extending the roof terrace. Then it will have a lick of paint prior to being offered as a vivienda rural to any tourists who might possibly pass this way again during and after this challenging Covid-19 life we are currently living.

The work is progressing slowly, because of repeated lockdowns, but surely. And after it’s finished, who knows?

Maybe I should just hang up my DIY boots!

Note: This article forms part of a trilogy with Montejaque Diary – First Ever Stay and My God! What Have We Done?  which will appear later on this blog on Eye On Spain

On Being Retired in the Serranía de Ronda

It’s a bit of a cliché when retired people say they’ve never been so busy, writes Pablo de Ronda, but it’s true! Nevertheless Pablo likes the relaxed start to his day even if it tends to get hectic later on.

I wake early every day as my enlarged prostate pressing against my bladder sends me off to the loo (if you’re male and over 60 you’ll understand where I’m coming from!). Then it’s two cups of tea while I potter around or write something for one of my several blogs, before it’s time to go for a walk with Berti, my dog, and an early morning coffee or two with the workers and other old men between 7 and 8 o’clock. At this time of year it’s still dark at this time, but it’s fascinating to chew the fat with the locals as dawn breaks and the village slowly comes to life.

More walking with Berti before breakfast either at home or at Pepi’s, the first café to open for breakfast at 9 o’clock.

After that it’s time to get on with the daily chores: watering the plants; cleaning the pool; a bit of DIY and/or gardening; and shopping (if I really have to!).

Thereafter the day develops according to needs. Once a week it’s off to Luz, my acupuncturist, to have pins stuck in me and for an invigorating but relaxing massage. Other days bring other things.

Lately we’ve been renovating our home in the village, so that’s taken a lot of time. It’s been fun, though, but now that’s finished, what will I do to occupy my time? Well, there’s another house to renovate.

In August 2020 I bought an old townhouse in Montejaque, a lovely pueblo blanco near Ronda. Apart from needing a re-wire I could have moved in straightaway. The house was fully furnished and spotless. Although unoccupied for 10 years, the daughter of the lady who had lived there until she died, Paca’s mum, used to go in once a week to clean.

However, I had other plans – I wanted to create a traditional casa rural to rent to tourists, if any ever come again! So I needed to change the somewhat old fashioned layout and décor. For example the typical separate lounge, downstairs bedroom and kitchen will become an open plan L-shaped living, room, dining room and kitchen.

Out went the old doors and windows to be replaced by recycled ones from another house we own in the village. My builder cut out rébolas, channels for the new wiring sockets and lights. And I gutted the existing downstairs bathroom.

Then disaster struck – we discovered that the original vigas - wooden beams - in one of the rooms, the kitchen with a room above which was to become an upstairs bathroom – were rotten at the ends and had to come out to be replaced with concrete ones. That delicate job needing the use of a lot of puntales (acro-props) and great care, but my two guys did it and we are now making progress on that area of the house.

A frustrating thing – although it was absolutely necessary – we’ve been locked down for two periods of 3 months because of the Covid-19 restrictions. My builders and I all live in Ronda and we were not permitted to travel to Montejaque during those two lockdowns.

Evenings are for relaxing with a few beers, some tapas and conversation with the locals, before heading off for another sleepless night. My head’s buzzing with ideas for the house and for articles to write, plus, of course, my damned prostate continues to press on my bladder!

I should have done all this when I was younger, of course, but I wouldn’t have had the time, as I had a demanding full-time job and a family to occupy my waking hours. Basically, life is busy, whether you’re working or retired!

Love in the time of Coronavirus

PablodeRonda has fallen in love nine times in the year since March 2020 when the Coronavirus pandemic hit the world with a bang. Here’s what happened to him.

My wife Rita, a German, is fond of saying: “Alle gute Dinge sind drei”, which means “All good things come in threes”.

I can fully endorse this sentiment, as I’ve fallen in love all over again during the time of Coronavirus – literally three times in the last year. With “people”, places and “things”. And each of these, also three times!

Three places

Let’s start with the three places: Spain, Ronda and Montejaque. Although it was love at first site in each case - Spain in 1971, and Ronda and Montejaque in 2000 - I’d sort of fallen out of love with all three during the second decade of the 21^st century. Our relationship had become jaded. Spain was too corrupt, too noisy, too bureaucratic, parking was a nightmare, there was litter everywhere and the beer was c**p.

As for Ronda, in addition to the above gripes, the town was too full of tourists from 11.00 am to 4.00 pm, the andaluz accent was getting on my nerves and prices seemed to keep on climbing.

My dream village of Montejaque had lost its erstwhile charm, the steep climb up to Casa Rita, our house there, seemed to get ever more challenging and the guiris had become clique-y. In addition, until fairly recently, there was nowhere decent to eat in the village.

That all changed during the course of 2020, the year the Covid-19 pandemic hit the world with a hell of a bang.

I learned to deal with the issues I had with Spain. The pluses far outweigh the handful of negatives, which will probably never change, so I found ways to not let them bother me too much.

Ronda is of course one of the most stunning towns in the whole of Andalucía, and I began to appreciate once again what it had to offer: scenery, architecture, heritage, cuisine, culture, ambience and friendship. A very comfortable place to be.

Rita and I started spending more time in Montejaque in 2020. We decided to use the lockdown period, when our bookings were cancelled and there were no foreign tourists, to carry out some major renovations to Casa Rita.

We started living in the village again and we re-kindled our erstwhile friendships and made new ones. I got into the habit of going for an early morning coffee in Bar Peruco with the local working men and pensioners, which was immensely enjoyable and hugely informative! [Note: Andrés, the owner of Bar Peruco, sadly died of Covid-19 in early 2021. RIP. A nice man – he is sorely missed. The bar is alas no more as it is being converted into two apartments.]

Using some of the funds from the sale of Piso Blanco, my apartment in Ronda, I bought an old house in Montejaque to renovate and put on the holiday rental market as a vivienda rural. I needed a project to get my teeth into and this was it!

The house will be called Casa Real, in honour of the previous owners who had owned the house for three generations - their surname was/is Real. Although work was paused for three months because of the Covid-19 lockdown rules, work has recommenced. I hope to get it finished, registered and on the rental market this summer.

Three things

The three things I have fallen in love with all over again are, to describe them more accurately, activities. They are gardening, DIY and writing.

I began to garden again during the first lockdown, a year ago. What else was I to do? I couldn’t go anywhere and all you could get on TV was Covid-19 and repeats of old programmes. I enjoyed being out in the fresh air, getting some exercise and seeing the fruits of my labours.

I created some raised beds and planted some vegetables; I pruned the shrubs, bushes and small trees and I’ve had several larger trees severely lopped, which has given parts of the garden light for the first time in a decade or longer. I’ve acquired a lot of plant pots from Facebook Marketplace on the Internet and planted them up with flowers, plants and climbers. In my field next door I’ve planted a dozen or so fruit trees, although yesterday I noticed that the severe frosts we get here in the valley have done a few of them in! That’s a real shame.

Between my gardener, Rafael, my odd-job man, Jorge, and me, we’ve transformed the garden into a place to enjoy.

As for the DIY, as soon we could go shopping again last Spring for paint, tools, materials, etc, I renovated all the garden furniture, both metal and wooden, made a table and sun lounger out of old bits, built a carport with the help of two friends, and created three new patios/terraces with dividing screens for privacy.

Not to mention the work we’ve been doing on Casa Real in Montejaque. Oh, and on Rita’s house, Casa Rita, also in Montejaque.

I’ve found a few things at various rubbish dumps, which I’ve “upcycled”. These include a couple of coffee tables, a set of dining chairs, a beaded curtain, a child’s cot and a large rug – the latter just needed cleaning (with ozonised water, of course).

Partly through all this activity I found I wanted to write again. I approached Karl Smallman of Secret Serranía and offered to turn out some blogs for the website. He was delighted and so was I. Now I can’t stop. There are four blogs in English, namely A View from the Mountains, Living in Spain and Spanish Matters, plus I also contribute to the Recipes blog. In Spanish there are two, Una vista desde la montaña and Recetas. You can check them out by clicking www.secretserrania.com

I’ve also got a couple of books in preparation, on Ronda and on Montejaque. Karl is providing the photographs for both. There will hopefully be versions in English and in Spanish. I’m just looking for a publisher and a sponsor. Any suggestions?

Three people

Firstly I fell in love with PablodeRonda, me, again. The Covid-19 lockdown kicked me out of the slough of despond I’d descended into for some years. A period of time when I didn’t really like myself at all.

However, with millions of people dying randomly of this deadly Coronavirus, including local people we know; with my nephew-in-law, the husband of my niece, perishing in a plane crash in Australia; and me and the missus heading for our 70s, I realised how mortal we all are and that we could pass away at any moment.

I decided I needed to make the most of the time I have left on this earth. I needed to be more active, more positive about people and life in general, and more constructive.

I got new specs and some much needed dental work, and I took steps regarding my health (prostate, high blood pressure, a possible melanoma, thickened ankles and, since having Covid-19, breathing difficulties and lack of energy - long-Covid as they call it in the UK.)

I threw myself into various projects, such as upgrading the house and its contents, improving my “wardrobe”, restoring the garden furniture and building a car port with pals Michael and Kevin.

I got a rescue dog, Berti, bought a house to do up in Montejaque, as I mentioned above, and started to write again. I’ve worked hard on the garden and created some new spaces outside. I’ve even started growing things again, planting several fruit trees and sowing vegetables.

I bought a nearly-new Peugeot 2008, sold a pretty old and battered SEAT León and purchased a VW camper van.

Also, in the course of the last year, I’ve done a number of things I’ve never done before. And there are a few more things I plan to do – a sort of bucket-list.

And in doing all this I’ve begun to enjoy life again and started to like (no, love) myself once more.

The second object of my affection is Berti. It was love at first sight. When we went to see him at his foster home, I fell for him straightaway. He’s not, of course, a person, although he is definitely part of the family.

What a beautiful and good-natured dog. A pedigree, a German pointer, no less. How could his previous owner just dump him at the rubbish tip? Anyway we agreed to take him.

Berti settled in with us straightaway. He has issues, of course, as many rescue dogs have; he suffers from leishmaniosis and he has separation anxiety. We treat his leishmaniosis, a potentially fatal disease rife in Andalucía, with a human gout drug, Alupurinol, and we’re working on his fear of being abandoned - not very successfully, according to our friends.

Finally, I fell in love again with my wife Rita. In January, when the ambulance brought her home after a hellish 10-day stay in hospital with a really bad dose of Covid-19, I thought she was going to die on me. She was really poorly, she’d lost 10 kilos (that’s a kilo a day, by the way!) She had no strength, she was hallucinating, she couldn’t sleep and she had pains throughout her body.

I became her full-time carer. She was so dependent on me for everything. The poor thing couldn’t think straight and she became almost childlike. Actually, I don’t think I fell in love with her again. I simply realised how much I really did love this woman that I bumped into by chance at a fairground in Ronda in September 2008 and married in 2010 at the age of 60.

Rita has been in hospital in Ludwigsburg, Germany, following an operation. She went to the country of her birth to get some decent Covid after-care, not available here in Ronda, and they discovered something else that needed dealing with quickly. We are “grateful” to Covid-19 for bringing about the discovery of this other, potentially deadlier, health issue. After a further 10 days in hospital recovering from this operation, she is now staying at her daughter’s while she waits for a place on a residential re-habilitation programme. After that a period of convalescence, when I hope to fly over and join her. [Stop press: Rita’s rehabilitation programme has been denied for some inexplicable reason, so plans have been changed. She has gone to her niece in north Germany, who is a physiotherapist, for treatment for a week or so, followed by a bit more convalescence to build up her strength before flying back home to Spain accompanied by a friend towards the end of this month. High time; she will have been in Germany for over two months.]

So, Coronavirus has undoubtedly rocked the entire world and has been a terrible thing, causing sadness and grief to many millions of people all over the globe, not to mention suicides, mental health problems, financial ruin and the “lost generation” of students and schoolchildren.

Yet in our case, bizarrely, it has brought a number of positives. No doubt it has to others too.

Apologies to the Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez (1927-2014) for corrupting the title of his best-known work “Love in the Time of Cholera”, published in 1985, for the title of this article. It just seemed so appropriate to the situation.