Francine and I are both keen on decent coffee and coffee at home in Spain is a bit of a thorny topic. Over our set of trips out house-and-dog-sitting, we’ve settled on a pre-packaged ground coffee rejoicing in the name of Bonka Natural (it’s actually Nestle’s) for use in a cafetière for long coffees. It’s nothing like as good as our roaster’s Continenetal blend at home but it does. However, an after lunch/dinner espresso is a trickier problem. We are lucky still to have a coffee roaster chez nous en Angleterre making a proper espresso machine a realistic prospect but the same is not true here. Our friends have solved their Spanish coffee problem with a Dolce Gusto machine.

Now, I have a strong objection in principle to the latest fad for coffee pod machines such as Dolce Gustos or Nespressos. The John Lewis store back at home is utterly littered with the blasted things. I object for two reasons. Firstly, though I am not particularly interested in saving the planet – all we’d be saving it for would be the planet-raping Chinese, after all – I generally dislike waste and there is a stupid amount of packaging waste associated with such machines involving plastic for the coffee pods and cardboard for the boxes of coffee pods. Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, I object to being locked in to a restricted choice of coffee as dictated by the large company marketers – I much prefer to have freedom of choice and to help keep the small independent coffee roasters in business with, let’s face it, a superior product.

There was, until recently, a third reason for my objection: hitherto my only brush with a Nespresso machine and it’s coffee pods produced what I considered to be indifferent results. Our first few days stating with our Dolce Gusto friends, however, produced what I thought were much more appealing results. Dangerous!

When we were scouting out Moraira to find our Spanish meatball, close to where the offices turned out be was a shop selling electric domestic appliances. In the window was a Dolce Gusto Piccolo machine – it looks more like a penguin than a coffee machine – with a price tag reading all of 29€. As an away from home solution to a decent espresso coffee, this was quite appealing. It proved too appealing; principle was discarded in favour of taste bud satisfaction as today we headed back to Moraira to make Casa Libélule’s first purchase.

Our hearts sank a little when we saw a different window arrangement with no Dolce Gusto machine in evidence. We went in to look around fearing that it was no longer available. Our fears were groundless, we found the machine on a shelf. The helpful German owner/assistant explained that, to get the machine at 29€ we had to buy four boxes of coffee pods, too. Alarm bells rang but again, our fears were groundless and the pods in this shop proved to be no more expensive than those in a supermarket, so all was well. We selected four boxes of various blends to experiment. We were further surprised to find that a fifth box of pods were “thrown in” with the machine for free. We left with a carrier bag of machine and five boxes of coffee pods.

With a boot load of coffee pods and machine, our next port of call was Calpe to investigate a furniture company we’d been told about. JYSK is, I think, a Danish company. We walked in an instantly fell in love with a dining table in their Royal Oak range. It seemed to be solid wood, which makes a nice change these days. The dining chairs were comfortable too. We need to be space-efficient and the display table looked too large but a helpful assistant pointed out that there was a smaller brother. Francine excitedly muttered, “no debate, I want it”. The range also had matching coffee table, TV unit and small 2-door sideboard/cupboard. Furthermore, all these items were on sale but only, our helpful assistant informed us, until Saturday – next week the price goes up to list price. We placed an order for Casa Libélule’s second purchase. We’ll pay the balance and arrange delivery when we return in March.

There goes another grand! 😀 Well, a little more but not very much more. The furniture is flat pack so I’ll have a serious construction job but needs must and we felt as though we’d got quite a bit for little more than a grand.

… is mainly mixed with rain.

Snow? Spain? Yes, amazing though it might sound, this morning we had a snow shower. Well, I suppose to be more accurate, it was sleet, the fluffy frozen stuff being mixed with precipitation of the unfrozen, liquid variety. The morning dawned very grey, the hills/mountains at the head of the valley disappeared and rain began falling. After a little while, the rain turned heavier and structure began to appear in it; structure which floated down rather more gently. The higher hills surrounding the valley have a light sprinkling of icing sugar on them.

The snow in Spain seems to be quite widespread. Our friends, whose house we are now looking after, drove seven hours across country through snow to begin a 3-day visit to Cordoba. We also heard of a ferry load of cars piling ashore in Santander and having problems getting stuck in snow.

Quick, put the house back on the market – I didn’t sign up for this. 😀

A few years ago, we were spending some February lunchtimes out on the veranda eating prawns with alioli. Much better!

Day 2 of officialdom.

We now had our NIE numbers and had managed to purchase a house. However, before we could do much else we needed to open a Spanish bank account. We have our house but it lacks both a water connection (and associated meter) or electricity (and associated meter). Signing up for both services requires a bank account because both services require direct debits to be set up. Opening a Spanish bank account requires passports and NIE numbers. It would also need an address so our helpful estate agent – yes, you heard me right: helpful estate agent – offered to meet us at 9:00 AM today at the local Correos [post office] to arrange a postal address.

Mr Estate Agent duly turned up at 9:00 AM. We had two options. First, we could make a one-off purchase a personal mail box and secure it to the back wall of a shed-like building at the bottom of our development along with countless others. Anyone could drop stuff in a mail box such as this – circulars etc. Alternatively, we could pay a yearly rental of 62€ for a post office box inside the post office. This seemed more secure and, perhaps, more official so that’s what we went for. This is a cash-only transaction so I handed over my 62€ in exchange for our mail box key. Though the actual post office counter is open only for 1½ hours daily between 9:00 AM and 10:30 AM, we’re told the mail boxes are accessible outside of those hours.

Now life got a bit more scary. Up ‘til now, during our brushes with Spanish officialdom we’d always been accompanied by a native Spanish speaker. Not so at the bank; we were dispatched all alone to go and open an account, though we were told that the nice men in the bank spoke English. And so they did. After a relatively short wait we approached a bank teller and told him we needed to open an account. More paperwork to sign, of course, passports to copy and NIE numbers to note after which we had a new account. I had a quick walk through of the Spanish online banking system – too quick for me to remember much and, of course, it was all in Spanish though apparently I can change the language later. Mr Bankman also wanted me to prove that my funds, when they arrived, were not coming from the Russian Mafia so I’d need to supply details of the accounts used to fund this new account. That could happen later by email.

Now armed with bank account details, our next stop was to the Town Hall to arrange for our water meter. Once again, and very necessarily, we were again in the company of our very helpful estate agent. [I really can’t get used to regarding an estate agent as helpful. How refreshing!] Communication here in Jalón is a little more complex by virtue of the fact that some folks speak Valencianan rather than Spanish/Castillian. we sat, once again, like bemused lemons, signing as required, as water services were ordered. Though we had a bank account, it still contained no money. Fortunately, whereas the Correos dealt only with cash, here I could pay the water meter charge of 850€ using a credit card. Future bills, however, would be by direct debit.

I wonder how long the fitting of the meter will take? Progress, nonetheless!

What we couldn’t yet do was request the electricity to be connected because that would cause an immediate direct debit to pay for the meter and we had no dosh in the bank. So, last important job of this day was to email our new bank account’s IBAN number to the international currency exchange company I’d been using and wait, with bated breath, for funds to arrive. This is always a heart-in-mouth job the first time; you only need to transpose a couple of digits to make what I assume would be an unholy mess of it. Fingers firmly crossed!

So, yesterday we’d managed to locate our Spanish meatball’s office after a considerable amount of effort. Today, we were to meet them for the first time and have a busy time in their company with our first brush with Spanish officialdom. First contact was at 9:15 AM so we left Jalón at 8:30 AM to drive to Moraira. We parked in the big car park again.

I may have succeeded in finding the meatball’s office but I hadn’t found the correct door in. The brown wooden thing that looked like a door on the left of the building was, indeed, a door but it was locked and was not the way in. The way in was actually a glass thing that looked a lot more like a window on the right of the building. The céntimos dropped, we opened the window and entered.

The receptionist was very pleasant and our meatball, a lady, proved very personable, too. It’s much easier doing expensive business with personable folks, I find. As a foreigner, it seems that you can’t do anything official in Spain without an NIE number, a non-national’s identification number. Our first order of business, therefore, was to be driven off to Dénia by an assistant for an appointment in our first  official office to get our NIEs. We hopped in his car and off we were whisked. We have very little Spanish and he had little English – it was going to be a quiet journey.

Dénia was heaving; cars were parked/abandoned everywhere – not a kerbstone went unobstructed. We pulled up outside an office and were asked to wait on the path while our escort parked the car. He returned having magically found somewhere to park/abandon ship and in we went. We went straight to our desk and attempted to look as if we knew what was going on while both sides of the desk exchanged Spanish. Occasionally we had to grunt a parental name before signing on the dotted line. After about 15 minutes of fascinating confusion, mostly as onlookers, we apparently had our NIEs.

Well, almost. The next thing our escort had to do was whizz off to the police station to get some signatures. He had stylishly abandoned ship on a corner of the road. We got back in and were whisked off again. This time he double parked, indicated the key left in the ignition by which, I assumed, that I was in charge should the car need to be moved, and walked off. back he came five minutes later and muttered “done”. We were now official. We returned to the meatball’s office in some style, with our driver making the occasional phone call with his right hand and changing gear with his left hand whilst leaving the steering wheel unattended – this is a left hand drive car, don’t forget, so his left arm had to reach across his body to reach the gear stick in the centre of the car. I thought it best not to volunteer to help.

Next up, complete with NIEs, was a 12:30 PM appointment with the notario in Teulada to sign the sale documents and become owners. Now, in most mainland European countries, life seems to revolve around notaries. How Britain manages to avoid them, Darwin knows. This time we were to follow our solicitor herself. Clearly, we needed the big guns and an assistant was not sufficient. She told us to look out for her blue Toyota RAV4 in the car park whereupon we should follow. The RAV4 turned up, we began to follow. The RAV4 shot off, we got stuck behind another car which in turn got stuck behind a cyclist out on a training ride having fun trudging up the coastal hills. The RAV4 disappeared. Fortunately, we knew Teulada a little and new where to go.

Once again we were bad “sit down” and something unknown happened for about 40 minutes. Our estate agent turned up. Eventually, we were shepherded in to another office, sat down and had a contract read out in English whilst being asked if we knew what we were doing. Following a couple of signatures by us and by the owning bank’s representative, our cheque for the balance disappeared across the table and the deed was done – we owned an as yet unusable Spanish house.

Clearly being a notario is good business. This one looked like Richard Geere and dressed like him, too, in some very impressive looking threads. Still, I suppose that you need to look decent if you’re going to swan about in a yellow Ferrari.

No backing out now!

Our Spanish legal eagle is based in Moraira, a coastal town, one that’s a bit of a Brit stronghold, not too far from us here in Jalón. We have an appointment with them at 9:15 AM on Monday. Since we have an address but no directions, we decided to try to find their offices today so that we’d know where we were going early-ish on Monday. We took our rather scruffy looking piece of Italian automotive crap to the large, free car park in Moraira and abandoned ship.

A quick gander at the legal eagle’s address on the good old Internet had produced a marker on the map. However, there was no sign of the named plaça [Valenciana = place/square] that was named as the address. We wandered out of the car park, which should have been very close to the marker, to begin our search. Opposite the car park, the first thing I spotted was an abogado office; a solicitor/lawyer. My first thought was, great, that didn’t take long”, swiftly followed by, “bother, that’s the wrong name – not ours”. We wandered on looking for other lawyers. As we did so, Friend Liz referred to looking for an albóndiga. Hmm, OK, similar word, I suppose. Unfortunately albóndiga is Spanish for meatball so my amused brain immediately fixated on searching for our meatball. Neither Spanish meatballs nor lawyers will ever be the same again. :))

I couldn’t believe just how many meatballs there are in Moraira; almost every other office was for one set of meatballs or another. There are dozens and dozens of them. I don’t know what the collective name for meatballs might be but a Moraira of meatballs would be quite appropriate. Regrettably, none of the meatballs we encountered during our initial search was our meatball. To add to the frustration, Paul and I not only failed to find our meatball but also managed to lose Liz and Francine into the bargain. After a text message or  two, we were eventually reunited with Liz and Francine down near the harbour where we decided to take a  break from searching, have a coffee and ask directions. Our waitress did not recognize our meatball’s address. Neither did the barman, though he tried very hard to help by searching on his smartphone. He came up with the same marker on a map as I had. A helpful fellow customer, overhearing, suggested that the offices we were looking for might be one of those above a particular supermarket. We thanked them all, finished our coffee and continued our search.

We found the supermarket but not our meatball. There were a couple of police cars parked nearby, outside a  plaça  in which a police station was signed. We went over to ask there in our desperation. [Fortunately, Paul has enough Spanish.] Walking into the square, Francine spotted its name and, yes, you guessed it, it was the very plaça that we wanted. There, a few doors up on the right hand side, was our Spanish meatball with very subdued signage inside the windows, signage that was barely visible from the outside.

The square had two names, one of which was “Spanish”, i.e. Castillian, and the other of which, the one we had noted, was Valencianan. Perhaps if we had been equipped with the Castillian name, one of our helpers might actually have known it. Who knows? Anyway, we’d finally found our 9:15 destination for Monday – sighs of relief all round.

[Hopefully, you are now gently humming a very old and very silly song about losing a meatball when somebody sneezed. :D]

Our Spanish legal eagle informed us that completion of our house purchase was booked for Monday, 2nd February. So, I’d booked a 2-week trip to Spain to complete the legal formalities for Casa Libélule. As luck would have it, our English neighbours are travelling out to their place for the same two weeks. So, we have travelling companions. Even better, we have a place to stay for the first few days before we move on to our normal assignment of house-and-dog-sitting. 🙂 What it is to have friends!

Today we had “an interesting” departure from Luton Airport at the usually crowded 7:30 AM. Snow had been forecast for a while and, just when you want the weather guess to be inaccurate, it proved to be spot on – it did, indeed, start snowing as we arrived at the airport. Fortunately, conditions didn’t get bad enough to stop air traffic and we boarded the plane, standing on the aircraft steps in the snow as our fellow passengers took their own sweet time getting themselves seated and blocking the aisle while they did so. How can people take so bloody long to sit down when they have an allocated seat? Normally I like walking across the apron to an aeroplane – you get more of a feeling that you’re flying – but on this occasion in snow, a jet-way would have been very welcome. Eventually we got inside out of the snow and took our own seats in what must have been Olympic record time. No one awarded us a medal, though.

Snow had accumulated on the aircraft’s wings and control surfaces so El Capitan announced that he would first have to taxi out to a communal de-icing area. Progress was slow but eventually it was our turn and a truck with a large hose-on-a-boom device approached the plane and began squirting a strong jet of pink fluid all over the port wing, just outside out seating row. The pink fluid was followed by green fluid all of which must have made a bit of a mess of easyJet’s orange corporate colour scheme. The queue of planes approaching the communal de-icing station reminded us of larger fish waiting for Remoras by coral reef cleaning stations. Well, you have to do something with your mind at such times of delay. Our cleaning was eventually finished and we were away about 45 minutes late.

Our flight was blissfully uneventful until we began approaching Alicante when, as El Capitan warned us, turbulence began and the plane got into the rock and roll spirit with some shake, rattle and roll. A 50mph wind was blowing off Spain and across the sea. Fortunately, the wind was blowing straight down Alicante’s runway so the actual landing was very nicely handled. Well done First Officer!

We usually borrow a car when in Spain but this time our friends will be here, too, so I’d booked a rental car, not something I usually enjoy, just because of the insurances and so on. Picking up a rental is never quick so I was relieved to see just one couple ahead of us in the queue for Centauro. The queue of people waiting to collect from Goldcar, on the other hand, was huge – about 20 strong, which would have taken most of the afternoon I should think. Our paperwork seemed straightforward and was swiftly dealt with. We wandered into the car park and collected the keys for a car that turned out to be a Fiat 500L, the Large version of a Fiat 500. The thing was pretty beaten up with dents, scrapes and creases across several panels. I returned to check that all the existing damage was noted which, apparently, it was. Meanwhile, Francine performed miracles finagling our two modest cases and camera rucksack into the crappy boot space. Let’s face it, Italian cars are crappy all round.

We made our way to Jalón while I tried to get used to the Fiat’s gearbox – one or two changes fluffed – and other controls. Strange cars always take a while. We made it safely, despite a buffeting from that coastal cross wind, where we re-joined our English neighbours to bed down with them for a few days. Well, we had a quick drink first, of course, just to recover from the journey.

It might be windy but the skies are pleasantly clear and blue.

I was going to call this “Completion in Sight”, as in completing the purchase, but I’m reserving the term completion for the time when Casa Libélule  is habitable. 😉

So, for now, we’ve been exchanging fairly regular emails with our Spanish Legal Eagle preparing the groundwork for our purchase of Casa Libélule and we have an exciting expected completion date. We should become proud owners on 2nd February. Yikes!

One interesting [euphemism] possibility was raised by our Spanish Legal Eagle which might be a little less than welcome. These properties were built in 2012 and are now the subject of a repossession by a bank, the builder having hit financial difficulties. It seems that local bills for rates and rubbish collection – yes, rubbish collection is separate from rates, it seems, in Spain, become due as soon as the property is completed. Whilst the current owner is technically responsible for those outstanding amounts until we become the owner, Spanish law allows for the new owner to be held responsible should the current owner default. Hmmm. Since no bill has yet been issued by the local authorities, we don’t know how we’re talking about but it shouldn’t be too horrendous.

The bottom line is that we may have to cough up a bit more cash should the bank decide not to do the honourable thing, and given the deserved reputation of bankers the world over, …

Oh well, hey-ho!

Anyway, from 3rd February, we should be owners and can kick off the next important task which is getting meters fitted so Casa Libélule can be connected to water and electricity supplies. We have to pay for that, as well, of course.Once that’s done – estimated time was a week or so – we can think about getting some heating/cooling and some white goods in the kitchen to make the place usable.

[Yes, I know, another retrospective post. I’ll catch up eventually – maybe!]

All I can say is that it wasn’t me. Despite the name, it was Francine who coined it. Her getting to the name stemmed from a couple of different things.

First, during a pre-Christmas girlie trip to Oxford, Francine bought me a splendid metal dragonfly to go with my obsession. This really is a quite magnificent creature with a wingspan of 45cms/18ins. Let’s call it Aeshna metallica. I particularly like the use of twisted wire mesh to resemble the wing veins – very clever. It’s clearly designed to be screwed onto a wall, given the holes in its two front legs.

Then Francine remembered that one of our friends lived in a house in Dorset called Dragonfly Cottage. That led to Francine wondering what the Spanish for dragonfly might be so we looked it up: it’s libélule. It proved a little tricky for us to say correctly – that accent on the first “e” is a stress mark and stressing that particular syllable proved less than natural for us. No matter, we’ll keep playing the sound of the word to ourselves and get used to it in the fullness of time. Anyway, with a magnificent libélule to screw to the wall, our intended Spanish property naturally became Casa Libélule. I’m not really given to naming houses, although I do tend to name many other inanimate objects, like Billy, our caravan, but I’ll make an exception this time.

Acting on information received, Francine strengthened our Casa Libélule theme by presenting me at Christmas with a wine decanter decorated with a subtle dragonfly design, too. Well, we’ll definitely be needing a wine decanter to go with our 5.75€ for 5 litres flagons of top quality Jalón valley rosado, won’t we? We very briefly considered the “matching” glasses but, unlike the decanter,  they are made of very thick glass, for some reason. Shame, really.

Coincidentally, my dragonfly obsession led to our American friends giving us a magnificent set of drink coasters decorated with dragonfly motifs. These are very clever absorbent coasters that wet bottomed glasses do not stick to limpet-like when you pick them up to take a drink. They will be on a southerly migration to Spain as soon as possible.

We’ve also had for some time, another gift, a handy-dandy napkin holder with a dragonfly on it which will also be on a southerly migration course, together with a not-so-handy-dandy nightlight/tea light holder. Basically, I regard tea lights as utterly useless. Furthermore, when did nightlights suddenly become tea lights and why? Answers welcomed in the comments form.

[Retrospective again. I might be up to date, soon. ;-)]

The next step in our attempt at a Spanish house purchase.

I’m quite used to buying currency to travel in Europe. My currency requirements are normally either for our regular 6-week or so trip around France in Billy [our caravan] or a couple of weeks house-and-dog-sitting in Spain. A long trip round France soaks up, say 2500 euros. Saving a centimes/centimos on that saves about £16, worthwhile but hardly a big deal. I now normally use a prepaid euro card issued by CaxtonFX for such transactions because they give a consistently reasonable rate, not necessarily the highest but OK, and do not charge for hole-in-wall cash withdrawals abroad.

Where a house purchase is concerned, the multipliers are much bigger, though. For the sake of argument, let’s say the Spanish hacienda costs 100,000€. At my first Barclays High Street bank rate [1.2330 on 9/12/2015] used to pay my 3000€ holding deposit, 100,000€ would cost me £81,103. However, using a currency exchange specialist, for example Smart Currency Exchange, which we found from the Spain Buying Guide, today I would get a rate of 1.2580 which would make my 100,000€ cost £79,491. That would save me £1,612. That’s enough for some decent furniture. 😉

Smart Currency Exchange is just one example of such a company. Already having a CaxtonFX currency card account and now a CaxtonFX international payments account, I went ahead and set up a Smart Currency Exchange account. I told them I wanted 100,000€, they quoted the rate as of today – if the rate goes down in the meantime, I still get that rate but, of course, if the rate goes up, I also still get that rate; didn’t matter, I was happy with the rate. I now have theoretically five days to send them the Sterling equivalent to fund the purchase.

Now the fun starts. I log on to my online bank account and try to transfer £79,491. Bleep! “You have a daily limit of £10,000”. B****r!

I call Smart Currency Exchange and explain my predicament. “Oh, we’re used to bank limitations, you can drip feed it if you want.” Well, that’s counts as flexibility. Nonetheless, I decided to call in to my High Street bank and get them to transfer the amount. Bleep! They can’t do that much in one transaction either; they can do more but not enough. The only way to do that amount in one go is to cough up £25 or a CHAPS transfer. B******s! OK, I’ll drip feed it, I explain to the helpful cashier – the restriction isn’t his fault, after all.

So, I spend eight working days transferring £10,000 a day to fund my euro account.

Bloody bankers! At least I’ve saved the price of some decent furniture, and we aren’t quite done yet. 😉

[Another retrospective post. ;-)]

Having secured our intended property in Jalón, and by secured I mean that our 3000€ deposit was accepted which apparently “takes the property off the market” for 3 months, our next task was to find a Spanish Legal Eagle to act on our behalf. The agent who showed us around the property, Jaime, at Garcia Villas in Jalón itself, had put us in contact with one particular law firm, based in nearby Moraira, that was supposedly familiar with these properties. A bit of prior experience sounded good. They emailed us a list of their services together with an estimate of their charges, which was noted as being 1500€ plus VAT @ 21%, i.e. 1815€.

Meanwhile, Francine had been rummaging around the Internet – what did we ever do without it? – and found the Spain Buying Guide. Clearly this had something of an axe to grind but it at least provided a sense check. Francine downloaded some documentation which, of course, put them in touch with us. They may well have an axe to grind but they do seem to be genuinely helpful. One thing that happened was that a solicitor, based in Alicante, got in touch with us offering a very package for 950€.

Time for a swift aside. As well as the normal legal stuff involved in buying  a property, searches etc., various other bits of bureaucracy have to be dealt with when buying a property in Spain. In order to buy in Spain, one needs something called an NIE [Número de Identidad de Extranjero, which translates as ‘Identification number for foreigners’]. I believe this is also necessary to set up a bank account from which direct debits for utilities, etc. can be arranged. Speaking of utilities, utility meters need to be organized for the new property (if it’s new, as ours is). These things were mentioned in the “packages” as being dealt with by the Legal Eagles.

The packages from both Legal Eagles looked very similar – good thing – but one, the one based in Alicante, was about half the price of the other in Moraira. I emailed the one in Moraira explaining that we’d prefer someone more local but that they seemed very expensive compared to others. Back they came saying that they could shave off 500€ for properties up to 100,000€.

Ah ha, ours, being an end unit, was priced at 105,000€. Awkward! Back I went explaining in another email and asking if there was any flexibility or whether that meant we were stuck with the higher price. They agreed to the reduced fee. They were still a tad more expensive but we’d avoid any 2-hour round trips to Alicante and the agent seems to have a reasonable relationship with them. So, I accepted.

50% of the Legal Eagle’s fee is payable up front to get them started so I was in to my second international money transfer and second attempt at not transposing any of another 24-character IBAN number. This time I tried one of the companies specializing in international transfers. Being a modest amount, the rate wasn’t exceptional, 1.24 – they are better for larger amounts – but I quickly set up an account at CaxtonFX and 605€ entered the ether. Heart in mouth once again.

A second sigh of relief was breathed as my money arrived at the correct Legal Eagle’s account.

I guess someone finds all this kind of thing less than nerve-wracking but that someone isn’t me. 😀