Dirty Cats and Oil Barrels

I always start an update and then stop before I really write anything and think “Why am I writing? I have nothing to write about”. Something always comes up though. My topic today is that everyone here always thinks that their land is a goldmine. They think it because a couple years ago when the Brits started coming here and buying land to live and enjoy their retirement, they paid too much. Or at least in terms of what land was going for they spent too much.

The story goes “An English man came to Spain and asked a farmer ‘I would like to buy your land. How much will you sell it to me for?’ and the Spanish farmer not really wanting to sell his land gave him, what he thought was a ridiculously high price, to which the English man replied ‘Really?! That cheap eh? Ok. You have yourself a deal.’

So the Spanish farmer walked away with more money than he could possibly imagine he could get for his land and went and told all his friends. And for a while a bunch of Spanish farmers sold their land for outrageous prices, not knowing that back in London you couldn’t buy a scone for less, until the prices of land in Spain finally caught up to the prices in the rest of Europe (thanks to the euro) and the British stopped buying land for ridiculous prices because it became a little expensive at that point.

Now while the British have stopped buying overpriced land the story of the Spanish Farmer who sold his land for a fortune still travels through Spain except that the price gets higher and higher each time." You know. Like the caught fish that gets bigger and bigger? So now what do the Spaniards who have land to sell do? They try and sell their land for waaaaaay more than it’s worth according to this story. I tell you this because we’ve seen it first hand.

The other day Miguel had an appointment to go and check out a piece of land that was described to him as “just on the outskirts of the city (Antequera)”. The truth is we drove past our place which is a 20 minute drive from the city and then we drove for another 15 minutes after that. What we ended up at was a piece of land that I can only describe as a dumping ground for rusted oil barrels and dirty unwanted cats (inbreeding was definitely an issue with these cats). To top it off it was between two mountains so what we had was a giant wind tunnel filled with oil barrels and dirty cats.

I was already upset by this point because I had an 8 o’clock swim class plus a possible interview for at a new sports club. It was 7:45 by the time we got there. So we get there and the wife (sweet but missing some marbles) has to say hi to the people who live there. Yes, people actually live in the giant wind tunnel with the dirty inbred cats and oil barrels all over their land. FINALLY, she gets around to showing us the place EXCEPT she forgot the keys. At this moment I turn to Miguel with the straightest expressionless face ever and say “I want a divorce”. He told me later that he wouldn’t blame me if I divorced him. After all he made the appointment for an hour before my class. Of course he was told the place was just outside Antequera.

Nobody ever really tells you what’s going on in this country. You have to experience it for yourself. By this point I was fuming so I went and sat in the car so as to not make a scene. Finally at 8:30 we get to leave after she’s shown Miguel everything she possibly can, except for the one part where she didn’t have the keys, including the neighbours to prove that English people will buy her oasis. Who knows if the neighbours really were English.

It was 9:00 by the time we got back to Antequera. I parked the car in front of Miguel’s work and said “I’ll be at the bar up the street”. I say that a lot lately. I don’t know why. Haha! I ordered a beer and eventually relaxed a little by the time Miguel and his work buddies came and sat down.

We told the story to Javier this one guy Miguel works with and he shared an experience he had a couple days earlier except that it was even further away (about an hour) and yet he was told the same “on the outskirts of Antequera” line and that it was in fact on the side of a mountain where you couldn’t even stand properly let alone build a house on. He said the guy was saying “see that goat all the way up there, that’s the end of my land and see that river down there ‘Don’t Trip’ that’s the other end.”

You haven’t heard the best part. Both mountain side man and oil barrel lady were looking to sell their crappy land for over 600,000 Euros. That’s close to a million dollars Canadian. Miguel said all he could hear when she told him her price was all the time we had wasted blowing in the wind. After Javier told his story I had to laugh at the whole experience. I mean what else can you do?

Everyone here thinks their land is a goldmine because of this one Spanish farmer, but what they don’t realize is that he probably sold a piece of land one hundred times the size of theirs and at the price that it would cost to buy a new car now. I hope he’s enjoying his new car if it’s not old and falling apart by now. The story has been around for a while.