Hi all
I just found this article in SUR in English with the headline "loving your neighbours or not". Quite funny stories - but they should be told from the real life by administrators around Malaga.
Spaniards like to live in close proximity to each other. While this generally makes for a heightened sense of neighbourliness, close quarters can sometimes end in neighbourly dispute. There are numerous means by which one resident can upset another, ranging from the noise of a person walking across a room late at night or playing music too loud to disputes of a much more colourful kind.
One of the most popular television programmes on Spanish television in recent years dealt with this very subject. It was especially popular in Malaga, because it reflects a reality many city dwellers are all too familiar with.
We contacted a number of professional property administrators in Malaga to talk about some of the odd situations they have had to deal with in the past. Many of them agreed that the famous television programme fell far short of the real-life situations that they have come across over the years. We agreed not to publish their names, for obvious reasons, but that is unimportant. The stories they tell may have a Malaga flavour, but they could have happened in any block of apartments anywhere in Spain. When it comes to neighbourhood disputes, we are all more or less the same.
Security cameras - Caught red-handed in the garage
It all began when a resident spotted a scratch on his new car. The vehicle was parked in the apartment block’s car park, and its owner was very anxious to discover the culprit. It had to be somebody with access to the building, located in the northern part of Malaga city. He installed a hidden security camera in the garage to find out who was responsible.
He found out more than he had bargained for, although nobody came near his new car again, so the person who scratched it got away with it.
His own wife was not so lucky. Looking over his hidden camera tapes, he discovered that she had been having an affair with another resident in the garage, and our man now had it all on video. It may have made interesting viewing, but it spelt the end of the marriage. It was the subject of discussion for many months afterwards, we are informed by the administrator who told us this story.
Non-payment of fees - The Rumanian who spoke no Spanish
His name cropped up regularly on the list of non-payers of community fees, to such an extent that the administrator decided to have a little chat with him one day. So he knocked on the door. It was certainly a little conversation, because the Rumanian who opened the door pretended not to speak any Spanish, and our administrator knew not a single word of Rumanian. He tried English and French, but to no avail. The Rumanian stared back at him, poker faced.
There was only one thing to do. The administrator found another Rumanian who spoke Spanish and hired him to come along as an interpreter. “You cannot imagine my surprise when he opened the door. His children were at his feet, fighting among themselves. He let out a string of abuse at them, all in perfect Spanish. I must say I felt something of an idiot to have been taken in so easily,” said the administrator.
Blocked drains - Using the loo for rubbish disposal
Manuel Mora, the Audioconsulting administrator, has no problem in giving his name to this story. One day he was called to an apartment block whose drains had blocked up completely. The smell was disgusting, he was told. He brought along some workmen and attempted to tackle the problem.
Opening up the main outlet, he found household rubbish of all kinds blocking the drain. “There was even a leg of lamb there, along with potato peels and other kitchen waste. It turned out that one of the residents was too lazy to drop his rubbish off in the street below, and was simply dumping it all in the lavatory bowl,” he tells us. “That resident was not very popular in the block afterwards.”
Heavy metal - An extra room in the loft
The following story is about excess electricity consumption in a block of apartments in Malaga city. Some time ago. The bill for the common light and power sources was going through the ceiling, and nobody could figure out why. After three months of paying through the nose, the administrator was called in. “We spoke to everybody and put up posters around the building asking residents for any information that might lead to the cause,” says Manuel Mora.
There was a response a few days later, from the president of the community, as it happened. “It turned out that the son of one of the residents has installed himself and his music equipment in the loft, where he entertained his female friends. He even had a minibar in the loft, and was stealing the electricity from the mains. His father never knew about it, because he never went up there,” says the administrator.
Pets - Not without the dog
They say that a dog is a man’s best friend, and some residents insist on treating their dogs like their very best friends. Such was the case in an apartment block in Alhaurín de la Torre.
One summer’s evening, the residents were shocked to find the dog owner bathing his animal in the communal swimming pool. They complained to him, but he had his own argument. “The weather is very hot and my dog is suffering. He is much cleaner than many of the residents here,” said the man.
Bad smell - Relief in the lift
We have all been caught out at some time, and when nature calls, one must answer. The problem in this apartment block in the Ciudad Jardín area of Malaga city was that somebody was relieving themselves in the lift every night, causing a stink of urine every morning in the lift. This was a case for the administrator.
He stuck posters around the building asking that residents use their own bathrooms before taking the lift. But the problem continued. Somebody was still using the lift as a bathroom. “Then a few days later graffiti appeared beside one of the posters, with the words: ‘Be thankful I don’t do any more than pee in the lift!’,” says the administrator.”
Heavy metal - Hinting with classical music
One of the most common problems between residents is noise, and there are many different ways of upsetting one’s neighbours with the sounds one can make. In the case of Luis, a resident in a block in Torremolinos, it was his dislike of heavy metal at full volume. We can certainly sympathise with him.
The music came from next door, where the teenage son of the house played his music for all the world to hear. Something had to be done about it, and Luis was not anxious to simply barge in and demand that the music be turned down. “Then a friend of mine said, half joking, that maybe the boy would like classical music, if he heard it. At the next community meeting, the wife of my friends presented, on behalf of all the residents, a classical music CD to the boy’s mother,” says Luis. In the end, as in many such cases, the case ended up in the courts.