Algunlugar is a pretty little pueblo blanco in the mountains of the Serrania de Ronda, where the local "mafia" is in full operation.
To look at the village, you wouldn't guess at this darker side of its life. Tourists and travellers don't notice the "mafia" at work in this village of fewer than 1000 inhabitants. Of these full-time residents some 40 are guiris, foreigners, and it is a small proportion of these incomers that make up the local "mafiosi". And not one of them is Italian!
Don't get me wrong - these people do not kill or kidnap, but a small number think they have the right to sit in judgement on and to control the behaviour of other outsiders who choose to live here.
These people have already seen off an English photographer and his wife, and an Italian chef, and split the foreign community into two. They have tried to get rid of an English architect and a retired Welshman. To their credit the architect and his wife have decided to stay on, despite the antipathy generated by the "mafia inglesa".
The latest "victim" has not yet decided whether to stay or go. This septuagenarian loves Algunlugar, but more for the village itself and the locals, rather than the "expats".
Fortunately, this gentleman is a fluent Spanish speaker and finds the local algunlugareños less complicated than the northern European "guests".
Quite a few long-term foreign residents have sold up and moved back home in recent times, although I cannot confirm whether or not they did so, because of the malign intentions of the local "cosa nostra". There are whispers that the village ain't wot it used to be.
Algunlugar remains split. There are a small number of guiri residents who keep themselves to themselves and don't mix a lot with the others. Whether they feel shunned or not, I don't know.
All in all, I find it quite intolerable that a small group of well-to-do guiris can exercise such control. They speak little Spanish and spend their retirement drinking and complaining about those who seek to integrate into the life of the village and its people, and who actively do "stuff"!
© The Curmudgeon
Tags:
Algunlugar, algunlugareños, cosa nostra, guiri, mafia, mafiosi, pueblo blanco, Serrania de Ronda,