Puntos de vista - a personal Spain blog

A 71 –year-old British man has just completed the total reforma of a village house in the tiny pueblo blanco of Montejaque (Málaga).

Pablo de Ronda, a former languages teacher, school inspector and translator, has been a resident of Montejaque and Ronda since 2008.

But his relationship with the northern part of the Serranía de Ronda began eight years earlier, in 2000, when the Devonian visited Ronda for the first time with his then wife, Jeryl.

We came to Andalucía to celebrate our silver wedding  anniversary. We did a circular tour which incorporated Ronda, Arcos de la Frontera, Jerez, Cádiz, Sevilla, Granada, Córdoba, Antequera and Málaga.

All beautiful places in their different ways, but the place we liked the most was Ronda, and, after viewing umpteen properties over the following 18 months, we bought an apartment in the town in December 2001. We called it Piso Blanco, because it was (ie white) and reflected a part of our surname.

In 2003 we bought an abandoned house just 50 metres from Piso Blanco.

I had learned many DIY skills from my dad, and I had already carried out some major work on our house near Warrington (eg re-wiring, creating an en-suite bathroom, converting a garage into a music room/2^nd lounge and even building a tree house for my two children).

With great enthusiasm I took on the task of converting this run-down house in Ronda into something liveable.

Over the course of two years, with the help of my family and friends Alan and Johnny, we created Casa Blanca in the Barrio San Francisco.

A period of turbulence in my life – redundancy, nervous breakdown and divorce all in the same year, 2005, coincided with me renovating a second house in Ronda which belonged to my girlfriend of the time, Maude.

The house was located in the Las Peñas district near the town centre and was named El Rincón, because it was tucked into a corner.

When my relationship with Maude ended, I returned to the UK and went to live with my mum in Thelwall near Warrington.

Out of the blue an old friend from university contacted me to ask for help over the summer of 2008. How could I refuse?

Jac, a Welsh lady, had studied the same languages at university as I had, namely Spanish and German, and we were in every class/lecture together. I had fancied her back then, but my pal Dan was quicker off the mark and indeed the couple married while we were all still undergraduates.

After graduation Jac and Dan moved to Luxembourg to work for the European Commission as translators. They soon had two children and their lives seemed settled. However, Dan was experiencing mental health problems, went off the rails, started taking hard drugs and had several affairs. Sadly, he ended up taking his own life.

Jac decided to stay on in Luxembourg, despite being a young widow with two small children. She left the Commission and developed a new career as a piano teacher.

Fast forward to 2008. Jac had just bought an old house for her daughter Miriam and husband and needed my help to get it into shape.

The deal was that Jac would pay for my flight and give me board and lodging in exchange for my labour. Sounded good to me!

With my mum’s blessing off I flew to Luxembourg for the summer. The renovation project was fun and I was surprised at how much I was able to contribute at the ripe old age of 58!

It turned out to be a great summer. Jac and I even had a short romance, but there was to be no future in it, sadly from my point of view, as 40 years on from our student days I still fancied Jac.

Disappointed, I did not go back to the UK with my tail between my legs. Instead I flew to Spain to spend a long weekend in Ronda.

Little did I know that I was destined to meet the lovely Rita …..

In the meantime, retired and single, I had decided it was time to stop living with my mum and should buy myself somewhere to live in the UK.

I sold Casa Blanca in Ronda and bought Tunstall Villa, a run-down Victorian villa in Latchford, Warrington. This “reform” was to be my project for the next couple of years. Three years later I sold it to buy a home for me and Rita in the Ronda area. We had married the year before, in 2010.

Back to the present, married to Rita for 10 years and a Spanish resident for 12, and after a significant gap in terms of DIY, I sold Piso Blanco and used some of the proceeds to buy an old house in Montejaque. I needed another building project.

From August 2020 until August 2021, with four months working time lost to Covid-19 lockdowns, I worked with friends Jorge, José, Stewart and Miriam on renovating the house which is now an exciting mix of traditional and modern.

I have named the house Casa Real, in honour of the family that owned the house for three generations. Their surname is Real.

Note: Casa Real is now available to rent as a vivienda rural. The first guests arrive on 19 September and are staying until the end of the month. Thereafter, Casa Real is available from 1 October. You can contact Pablo via the Comments section of Eye on Spain.

If you have been coming to Spain for many years you may well have asked yourself at some point: “Whatever happened to the Osborne bull?”

El Toro de Osborne, the image of a black fighting bull that used to dominate the skyline all over Spain since the 50s, seemed to disappear, only to make a comeback in recent years. Pablo de Ronda traces the history of the emblematic publicity hoarding which was such a comforting feature of the Spanish horizon.

The Osborne bull, el Toro de Osborne, is a 14-metre (46 ft) high black silhouetted image of a bull in semi-profile. Nowadays there are just 92 of them located outdoors all over Spain.

Only two signs remain in Spain with the word "Osborne" still written on them. One is at Jerez de la Frontera airport in the province of Cádiz, and the other is in the nearby town of El Puerto de Santa María, where the Osborne headquarters are based.

The Osborne bull is the silhouette of a fighting bull, approximately fourteen metres high, originally conceived as a large roadside billboard to promote the Osborne Group's Veterano brandy.

History

More than 60 years ago, Osborne commissioned the Azor agency to design a billboard to advertise its Veterano brandy on the roads. In 1956 the designer Manolo Prieto created the design of a bull that would be easily integrated into the landscape.

The billboards were distributed throughout Spain, generally next to roads and on hills in order to attract attention. Although the initial purpose was advertising, with the passage of time the Osborne bull has become a cultural symbol of Spain.

In November 1958, the first boards, made of wood, began to be installed, but since adverse weather conditions damaged the wooden hoardings, they switched to building them out of metal.

30 years later, in 1988, the General Highway Law required the removal of advertising from any visible place from any main road. So, the name Veterano was removed and the hoardings remained.

In September 1994 the General Highway Regulations were published ordering the removal of all Osborne bulls. Several autonomous communities, numerous municipalities, cultural associations, artists, politicians and journalists spoke up for keeping them. The Junta de Andalucía, for example, requested that the bulls be classified as "cultural assets". In the same year the bulls were declared by the Congress of Deputies as part of the "cultural and artistic heritage of the peoples of Spain."

In 1997 the Supreme Court issued a ruling in favour of the maintenance of the Osborne bulls due to the "aesthetic or cultural interest" attributed to them.

Distribution

Currently there are 92 Osborne bulls distributed irregularly throughout Spain. There is a concentration around Jerez de la Frontera and in the provinces of Cádiz and Sevilla. The rest are dispersed throughout the country in a haphazard way, while some autonomous communities have none (Cantabria, Catalonia, Ceuta and Murcia) or have just one (Balearic Islands, Melilla, Navarra and the Basque Country), there are other small concentrations around Asturias, Zaragoza and Alicante. The image of the Osborne Bull also crops up in many other areas of daily life apart from advertising: it is frequently seen on car bumper stickers, on travel souvenirs (T-shirts, caps, key rings, ashtrays , postcards, tiles, coasters, etc.), even overprinted on the Spanish flag as a shield, often appearing between the stands at sporting events and in international missions of Spanish soldiers.

The Osborne bull in the rest of the world

In Spain, the image of El Toro de Osborne is widely known, but what many people do not know is that it is also well-known internationally. In Japan recently a billboard of El Toro de Osborne was installed, and others also adorn the landscapes of countries such as Denmark and Mexico.

With acknowledgements to Wikipedia.

Since the Covid-19 pandemic began last year, there has been a noted increase in the amount of begging going on around Ronda (Málaga) and , most likely, all over Spain. Do you understand that people down on their luck need to resort to this undignified practice or are you bothered by it? Pablo de Ronda has had it “hasta las narices”. He’s sick to death of the whole thing.  He explains why.

Up to the age of 20 I had never seen a live beggar. Born and raised in a small North Devon town, there just weren’t any. When I moved up north to Salford to go to university, there was the odd busker in nearby Manchester, but at least they were doing something to “earn” their donations.

It wasn’t until I went to Spain in 1970 for my year abroad (as part of my languages degree) that I came across my first “genuine” beggars. Barcelona was “teeming” with them, some of them legless (No, not drunk, literally “legless” – Civil War-wounded, I later found out).

In San Sebastián (Donostia), where we studied for three months, we had to cross the bridge over the river twice a day to go to and from the university and there was always a huddle of gypsy women and their children begging for alms. One evening I saw a large, top-of-the-range Mercedes-Benz pull up and the beggars all piled in with their grubby offspring and their “ill-gotten” gains. Well, I never! Quick way to a million? Why didn’t I think of that?

Move forward 50-odd years to 2021 to Ronda, where I have lived for more than a decade. There was always the odd beggar accosting people on Calle La Bola, but since the pandemic began, the numbers have rocketed. There are several on the above-named street alone, each with their own pitch. At ALDI and Supersol they appear to work a shift system and the large lady outside Mercadona seems to be ever-present. Perhaps she lives there and sleeps in the doorway at night.

It may sound mean, but I am sick of it. Some of them intimidate you by thrusting their paper cup at you and asking you directly for money or by fake-sobbing. I used to always give because I felt a bit guilty that I was fortunate enough not to need to beg, but now I rarely give anything. The polite man outside ALDI gets something normally, as he at least collects your trolley from your car when you’ve finished unloading your shopping, but the ladies who just sit their sniffling get short shrift, I’m afraid.

As Carmen, one of the checkout girls in ALDI wryly remarked to me recently, the beggars earn more per hour than she does!

I notice too that most of the beggars wear better trainers than me. They wear Nikes or Adidas, while I have to make do with LIDL’s best. Some of them sport designer-wear by top brands like North Face or Tommy Hilfiger. Mine are all marcas blancas, like ALDI’s SU or LIDL’s Livergy.

When I asked in ALDI why they didn’t do anything about the begging problem, they said they’d contacted the police who’d responded that their hands were tied, as it’s private land. That has to be nonsense, surely? If LIDL can stop it, so can the other supermarkets. I shall be interested to see what happens when Supersol converts to Carrefour later this year.

It’s become so unpleasant lately that I find myself shopping more and more at LIDL where there is no gauntlet to run.

Well, I’ve said my piece. Sorry if I’ve offended anyone’s charitable or Christian instincts, but that’s the way I feel. At least the beggars in the London Underground and the Paris Metro or on the tube trains sing, dance or play an instrument, so that the punter is getting something for his/her money. I find that much more acceptable.

Update: I wrote this piece on the morning of Saturday 17 April but didn’t submit it for publication straightaway. Eight hours later, on the same day, I had to nip to ALDI. The sniffly woman with the sad eyes (I’m convinced she trained at RADA or somewhere similar) was by the entrance.

I could start to feel my blood boil. As I entered the store she greeted me with “Hola, niño!” I’m 71 for God’s sake! To be courteous I muttered a greeting in return and did my shop.

As I left she started grizzling, could I give her something. I said, “No , not today, sorry”. She got up, lurched towards me in what felt like an aggressive manner, and thrust her plastic cup in my face!

I got in my car, wound the window down and said that I was sick of the intimidation from her and her “colleagues”. “¿Por qué no buscas un trabajo o aprendes tocar un instrument para entretenarnos?” ( Why don’t you find a job or learn to play an instrument so that you can entertain us?)

She seemed quite taken aback by the thought of working for a living and as for playing an instrument …. Well!

Her reply? “¡Ojalá!” (If only!)

I drove off, still fuming.

In Andalucía pretty much the only places where grass grows are on golf courses, in public parks and on the lawns of British residents. Spanish homeowners have long since twigged that trying to sustain a good sward of green in this climate is well nigh impossible without an army of gardeners and a whole lot of water. Pablo de Ronda has a large lawn. He was delighted when he and his wife Rita found the house in 2010 with the big garden and grass everywhere. How naïve can one be?!

Grass is a good thing. It’s easy on the eye, soft to walk or play on and performs an important ecological function by converting CO2 into oxygen. The dried cuttings provide mulch and/or can be left to compost, along with other green waste, such as vegetable peelings, leaves, teabags, coffee grounds, etc.

Golf courses need grass, of course, for the fairways and the greens. So they hire a team of gardeners who are constantly cutting, trimming, weeding, patching and maintaining and making sure the intricate irrigation systems are working properly.

Public parks are maintained by the local ayuntamiento, also with their dedicated teams of gardeners.

But what about the poor old British immigrant who buys a nice finca and sows grass seed or lays turves to make a nice garden?

Well, maybe he should have thought twice about it.

In our case, the house was already 25 years old and the lawns, about 2000 square metres worth, were well established. They looked great in the photos on the estate agent’s website. They looked great when we first viewed the house in September 2010 and on subsequent visits before and after we agreed to buy.

We went to the Notary to sign and pay in early February 2011 and moved in the next day when my container of furniture and belongings arrived from England.

(As an aside, the removal company we used, Roy Trevor (https://www.roy-trevor.com/european-removals/removals-spain/), is a Warrington-based company with a Spanish branch in Mijas Costa. My move was from Warrington where I had lived for over 30 years prior to emigrating here. The guys in Warrington and from Mijas were terrific. They did all the packing in my house in Warrington and all the unpacking here in Fuente de la Higuera. Nothing went missing and there was not a single breakage. The foreman even re-assembled a valuable antique French clock, which had been dismantled and wrapped separately for protection, and the clock still works to this day, 10 years later.)

Back to our move into Villa Indiana and the matter of the grass. I debated whether to get a ride-on mower, but opted instead for a large British-made rotary machine. It was a good buy. I could mow everything in about three days at two hours a day!

When the heavy rains came that spring our back lawn became a lake. My stepson Johannes and I dug an extra acequia which drained the water off into a gully in the next-door neighbour’s garden.

But the water had obviously transported lots of weed seedlings onto my plot, because within days, the place looked terrible. There were clover, dandelions and God knows what else. They grow to this day; I can’t get rid of them. We can only cut them off when we mow.

The other problem is the harsh continental climate here in the Serranía de Ronda – very hot summers and very cold winters. In the summer the grass gets burned by the sun and in the winter it gets burned by the heavy frosts of January and February. Sometimes the lawns look dreadful, but somehow the grass always grows back, so it’s not as bad as it sounds.

By the autumn of that year (2011) I had injured my back quite badly from all the physical work I was doing to keep on top of the garden through that summer. Although only 61 at the time I had clearly over-estimated my physical capabilities, or as Rita says, I overdid it with 16 hour working days not uncommon. She’s right, of course! As (nearly) always!

I could no longer garden at all; I could hardly walk. I got a walking stick and everybody thought I’d had a stroke. So I ditched the stick.

The fact was I needed a gardener urgently. I approached an English guy who had done gardening work for the previous owners of our house, but he had too many clients on his books and couldn’t fit me in.

I didn’t know of anyone else, so I asked María, my elderly next-door neighbour if she knew of anyone locally.

Within 20 minutes there was ring at the door and there stood a stocky, strong-looking, weather-browned Spanish man.

“Hola, mi nombre es Rafael. Me ha dicho mi tía, María, que usted necesita a un jardinero. Yo estoy interesado.”

Blimey! That was quick! His aunt, María had phoned him to say that her English neighbour needed a gardener, and here he was reporting for duty.

I asked what his hourly rate was and he said he normally got paid 7 or 8€ an hour. I offered him 8 obviously.

When can you start?

Now, if you want.

Wow!

So I showed him where the mower, the strimmer, the hedge cutter, the loppers and all the other gardening tools were, and off he went. He did a great job that afternoon and has continued to do so ever since.

We have a lot of land so I said he could use as much as he wanted for his own personal huerta. He was delighted and the result is that throughout the growing and harvesting season he gives us a great selection of produce, all organic of course, from his allotment in our adjacent field.

He is still with me a decade on. He’s only a year younger than me, by the way, but he works like a Trojan (you’re allowed to say that, I think!) …..

He is very conscientious, takes the initiative, gives good gardening advice, based on his long experience and is reliable.

Well, he can’t be an andaluz, then, you say. Oh, yes he is! A born and bred rondeño.

I now pay Rafael 10€ an hour and he’s worth every céntimo.

During the first lockdown last year he couldn’t come because of the restrictions on movement, so I had to go back to mowing the grass. What a nightmare! I’m glad that since the lockdown ended last summer he’s been able to come regularly again.

I’ve got over the back problem with a mixture of osteopath (Stephen Cook [https://www.osteopathy.org.uk/register-search/practices/1142-centro-osteopatico-de-rhonda/?country=spain] in Calle La Bola, Ronda) and acupuncturist (Luz Calderón [https://www.espainfo.com/calderon-garcia-luz-F120DC6061FD147]  in Calle Jerez, Ronda), so I am gardening again and enjoying it immensely, but I leave the grass to Rafael.

No, the grass isn’t always greener, but it definitely is here in Fuente de la Higuera.

Pablo de Ronda thought he knew the area where he has lived for the last 12 years well. 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 year. I went with my pal José to get some fresh free-range eggs from his friend Manuel, who lives in a tumble-down finca up a track near Benaoján. What a quiet and beautiful spot!

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 from the Junta de Andalucía to operate as owners of livestock!

Most of us only go to the Notary when we buy or sell a house here. However, Pablo de Ronda has discovered that these legal officials offer a range of other services, which preclude the need to hire expensive lawyers, accountants and gestores.

What notaries can offer

The first time I went to a notario here in Spain was nearly 20 years ago when my first wife and I bought a little apartment in the Barrio San Francisco in Ronda.

As a precaution we had arranged for her to get a Power of Attorney, again at the notary, in case for any reason she was unable to fly out to attend the notary’s office for the completion on the property purchase. A good job we did, as our daughter had an emergency appendix operation just days before our scheduled appointment with the notary and mum couldn’t come after all.

So, with my brother for moral support, we flew to Málaga airport on the 1 December 2001 and drove in our hire car up to Ronda for a long weekend, which included the signing at the notary on the 2^nd.

Since then, I’ve been to the notary for the purposes of buying or selling houses a number of times, either for me/us or as an interpreter for other people.

One conclusion I have now drawn is that for transacting property you don’t need to bother to have a lawyer in tow; that’s just a waste of money. I know that’s contrary to all the advice, but the notary is there to ensure “fair play” and to protect the interests of all parties, and is more than enough as a safety net. If you don’t have Spanish, invest in a translator or interpreter instead – they’re much cheaper than a lawyer.

Other matters which you can deal with at the notary, apart from transacting houses and taking out powers of attorney, include changing the title on a property, leases, making a will, prenuptial agreements, divorce, inheritance issues, usufructs and much more.

Who or what is a Spanish notary?

Although they earn their fees from private individuals and companies, notaries are essentially public officials who play a neutral role in drafting and witnessing many types of contracts in Spain.

Notaries are both civil servants and legal professionals, dedicated to confirming the nature of a document or testimony according to Spanish Law. Therefore, once a document is validated and signed by a notary, such a document will be fully legal for trials, complaints, police reports, registries, or any other legal procedure.

The type of final document produced by a notary is called an “escritura pública” (public deed). These documents have a legal, authentic and executable nature, which don’t require any further validations, and are recognised and approved by all Spanish public entities, the judiciary, as well as the whole of Spanish society.

Once the final notary document is produced, you will get an attested copy, called a copia autorizada or copia simple. The original document with the signatures is kept at the notary’s office or archive.

My experience of notaries

I’ve used a notary on three occasions for changing the title on properties here, at the time of my divorce, when we owned two properties which were to become mine under the terms of our divorce settlement, and recently when the Meter Maid and I decided to tidy up our somewhat complicated inheritance affairs. With my first wife I had to effectively “purchase” her half and pay the purchase tax. Not cheap!

In the case of my current wife we did it differently, in that she “donated” her half share in our marital home to me. Because of my advanced age, there was no tax to pay, although the notary’s fee was a lot higher than expected.

By the way, notarial fees are laid down in law and cannot be altered. So you pay the same amount for the same job whichever notary you go to.

Most recently I used a notary to write a new Will. I just told the lawyer at the notary what I wanted to do, who was to get what, and, Bob’s your uncle, a few days later I had a last Will and Testament in both Spanish and English ….. for just 45€!

My previous Spanish Will, done through a lawyer 10 years previously, had cost me a hefty 300€!

So, nota bene, the moral of this story is, for anything legal, consult a notary before you go to a lawyer. You could save a small fortune!

© Pablo de Ronda

Acknowledgements (Photos):

Derecho Virtual

Eficacia Juridica

Fotocasa

Idealista

La Vanguardia

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