Nerja-based author and EyeOnSpain subscriber Eddie Crockett offers a tongue-in-cheek profile of Operation Overpaint, a benchmark event in the life of any typical Costa del Sol condo.
The ex cathedra proclamation comes as the perennially turgid AGM finally grinds to a close. Gravitas is indicated. The chairman duly lowers his voice a full octave before he solemnly directs the urbanización’s waning attention to agenda point 6.2(b): AOB – Any Other Business.
‘The Painters Are Coming …’
The news spreads like – well, like wildfire, I suppose.
A pulse of expectation throbs at every throat. ‘It’s three years since they were last here,’ volunteers one long-term resident.
‘Rubbish,’ counters his long-suffering spouse. ‘It’s been four years. They were supposed to come this time last year, but the committee decided the drains needed seeing to instead.
Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten already?’’
‘You could be right, darling.’
‘Could be right? I bloody well am right!’
For the edification of wet-behind-the-ears newcomers, knowledgeable owner-veterans hasten to explain the underlying rationale.
‘Painting every villa concurrently is a cast-iron guarantee of condominium continuity and overall site sustainability,’ intones Angela M., a retired management consultant who lives at number twenty-eight. She has clearly given the matter some thought and marshalled the appropriate buzzwords. Old habits die hard.
To my mind,’ she continues, ‘a first and overriding priority is to underpin and reinforce our pueblo blanco brand image and to preserve the essential Moorish village cachet that attracted us to this particular Urb in the first instance. Don’t you agree?’’
This meets with a collective shrug of the shoulders:
‘Seems reasonable.’ Especially if you’re into uniformity …
As it happens, Operation Overpaint is essentially a prophylactic measure. It is intended to discourage individual house-owners from going off half-cock and – God forbid! – doing their own thing. At this juncture, it seems rather churlish to point out that repainting the whole Urb in one fell swoop is an infinitely cheaper alternative to doing it piecemeal.
Cue Karl-Heinz, the angst-ridden Bavarian ex-pharmacist who winters at number eight and is rumoured to have something going with you-know-who in number twenty-eight (see above).
‘I must say, there have been some regrettable incidents,’ volunteers K-H.
‘Such as?’
’Such as the Swedes in number fourteen. A couple of years back, they were about to paint their front door in the national colours. We only got wind of their scheme at the very last moment. Blue and yellow. I ask you! Totally unacceptable!’
Quite. So what happened to the wretched Swedes? Were they lynched? Hanged, drawn, quartered? Burned at the stake? Tarred and feathered? Or merely ostracised? Sent to Borlaenge or whatever happens to be the Swedish equivalent of Coventry?
‘I for one have not said a word to them since,’ says K-H. triumphantly.
Gosh, golly, gee – now that must have taught them a lesson.
‘Most of the Brits are no better,’ continues K-H. with uncharacteristic candour. ‘If they had their way, they’d never lift a finger, let alone paint their houses. Too lazy. Or too tight-fisted, more like. No sense of community. Just look at their attitude to Europe. That says it all, if you ask me.’
As it happens, Karl-Heinz, we didn’t ask you …
‘The Painters Are Here ...’
Double-O-Day falls on an April Monday five weeks later. Four full weeks behind schedule, one might add. But who’s counting?
We are reliably informed that Operation Overpaint will take no more than seven weeks from start to finish.
Pull the other one, why don’t you?
Tyres squeal and churn up loose gravel as the convoy of Toyota and Cherokee flatbeds roars into the Urb.
White coats flutter in a gentle April breeze.
A gangrenous morning sun reflects back off the dense tangle of outsize aluminium ladders that protrude hedgehog-like from each vehicle.
The head honcho/alpha male dismounts from the lead van. He sports metal-rimmed sunglasses and a rakishly-angled baseball cap. He raps out a series of terse commands. His men scurry to offload ladders, paint pots and personal effects.
There are twelve of them in this advance combat unit. Dangling from the belt of each is a selection of pristine paintbrushes and vicious-looking scrapers. Each carries the house painter’s mandatory in situ survival pack: a two-litre plastic bottle of agua con gas, a portable radio-cassette player, a mobile phone with a disproportionately loud and insistent ringtone, and an unlimited supply of cigarettes. Each, one hopes, is grimly determined to give of his best in the days and weeks ahead.
Enlightened residents and bewildered holiday renters peer anxiously from behind curtains and security grills. Permanent residents are fully alert to what is happening on their turf; they quiver with anticipation. Renters are not privy to this information, however. As a result, they trade worried glances, at a loss to understand what is going on.
Out there in the middle of the street, Alpha Male assumes a predictably macho stance, legs akimbo. He points to each man in turn and rasps a monosyllabic order. They immediately disperse to their assigned positions.
Suddenly, Alpha Male pauses. He checks his watch. He removes his cap and holds it high over his head, waving it slowly from side to side.
The signal is indescribably poignant.
Flickering sepia images of the Somme trenches spring vividly to mind. It’s time, lads. Time to go over the top. Time to stick it to the Hun. Time for yet another pointless gesture.
Not quite.
It is simply ten o’clock. Time for the sacrosanct mid-morning break.
‘The Painters Are Still Here …’
The ninth week of Operation Overpaint. No surprise there, then.
Mercifully, there have as yet been no major transgressions – no reported incidents of attempted rape, manslaughter, looting or arson – but there is no denying that the continued presence of the ubiquitous Whites, as they have come to be known, has become increasingly invasive – and correspondingly irritating.
The actual size of the occupation force is now a matter for conjecture. There certainly seem to be many more of them than the original round dozen. The consensus is that reinforcements must have been brought in under cover of darkness. Either that or they’re being cloned somewhere on site.
The Whites are literally everywhere: on terraces, on rooftops, around the swimming pool, skulking in the shrubbery, churning up the flower beds. They perch perilously high up on flimsy ladders, cling Spiderman-style to cornices and gutters, dangle precariously from balustrades, tightrope-walk their way from the roof of one building to the next. Their equipment litters the area. Spare ladders rest forlornly against every other façade. Half-full/half-empty paint pots stand abandoned on every available surface. Dozens of thick grey blankets are arbitrarily scattered to catch stray splodges of paint. Items of clothing drape from trees and light fixtures.
Alpha Male continues to orchestrate proceedings as best he can, but to little avail. His command has been fatally compromised ever since Day Two (aka Double-O-Day+1), when the prescribed sequence of operations came under heavy and sustained fire from various quarters. With precious few exceptions, everyone had some personal axe or other to grind, some compelling entitlement to priority status.
Thus: ‘We insist our house be painted first/next/ immediately, because we (delete as appropriate) (a) are going back home for the summer months, (b) are desperate to sell before the bottom falls right out of the Spanish housing market, (c) are renting out our property as of next week for the usual extortionate amount, (d) are simply too bloody selfish and self-important to wait our turn, or (e) are Scandihoovians who, by virtue of our birthright, demand and deserve preferential treatment.’
Small wonder then that Alpha Male’s erstwhile authority has been largely eroded and his tactical options seriously curtailed. The chain of command has unravelled and the grim spectre of total anarchy rears its ugly head.
According to Barbara from number twenty-six, who has taken it upon herself to monitor day-to-day troop movements, matters are rapidly spiralling out of control. ‘It’s utter chaos out there in the field,’ she says. ‘They’re all at sixes and sevens, I tell you. There is no coordination, no sense of organisation, no discernible master plan. As far as I can make out, the bottom line is every man for himself. Do your own thing. Paint wherever and whatever you feel like painting. In any order whatsoever. If it doesn’t move, paint it. And, if it does move, paint it anyway, provided you paint it white.’
‘The Painters Are Leaving Any Day Now …’
Project Week Sixteen. The world goes on.
Spain wins Euro 2008. Rafa Nadal outlasts Roger Federer and triumphs at Wimbledon. Tiger Woods courageously limps his way to U.S. Open glory.
And the Whites are still here.
Inevitably, ad hoc pockets of resident resistance have formed. Meetings are clandestine, convened late at night behind the basura refuse shack opposite number five or, during working hours, in the dim recesses of the underground client parking lot at the downtown Mercadona supermarket. There, nuggets of information are exchanged, snippets of gossip passed on, grievances aired, prognoses shared.
‘I have it on excellent authority,’ whispers Peter G., ‘that they are about to call it a day. Beat a hasty retreat, if you prefer. Withdraw once and for all before the week is out. Call it quits.
Vamoose. Skedaddle. Take the money and run. ’
‘On excellent authority?’
‘Sure, that guy with the bushy moustache.’
‘But they’ve nearly all got bushy moustaches.’
‘That’s because they’re Turks.’
‘They’re Romanians.’
‘Whatever. Same thing, really.’
‘I guess so. More or less.’
Time and again during the forty years of the Sistine Chapel ceiling project, Pope Julius II expressed a desire to inspect Michelangelo’s work-in-progress. Julius would scale a rickety ladder and Michelangelo would stretch out a hand to help him onto the precarious scaffolding.
‘When?’ Julius would ask. ‘When will it be at an end?’
And Michelangelo would invariably reply: ‘When it’s finished.’
Of course, the burning question is no longer when the Whites will finish but whether or not they’ve done a professional job. On this, opinions are divided. The jury is still very much out.
Quotable quotes:
‘It’s taken us a whole day to scrape paint off the terrace tiles.’
‘This time around, I hope they do the security grills properly. Ours weren’t done at all last time.’
‘The paint was slapped on so thick that our gate was almost welded shut.’
‘Same here. We can’t open the doors to the back patio.’
‘At our place, they painted the front steps. Who on earth told them to do something stupid like that?’
‘You think that’s stupid? Our front wall has all these lumps and nodules. Seems they left the bird droppings where they were and simply painted over them.’
‘I swear, there’s more paint on our sun blinds than there is on the walls.’
‘It wasn’t a huge job, when all is said and done. It’s not as if they were painting the Forth Bridge or the Eiffel Tower.’
‘God knows, it took almost as long.’
Et cetera.
On the other hand, Angela from twenty-eight can scarcely conceal her delight that the key criteria have been met. The pueblo blanco brand image has been successfully underpinned and reinforced and the essential Moorish village cachet has been preserved.
And all this, let it be said, at negligible cost to all and sundry.
So who really cares if it all took too long and spawned a few minor crises and inconveniences along the way? Who knows, it may even be that some valuable lessons were learned – on both sides. Let’s not forget – Operation Overpaint is scheduled to kick in again three years from now.
‘ Four years from now, if the committee decides the main access road needs resurfacing.’
‘You could be right, darling.’
‘Could be right? I bloody well am right!’