CHAPTER 2 --- GAUCIN REVISITED

My second visit to Gaucin was during the fall of 1977. It occurred under circumstances similar to my first visit there. I went to Malaga during the autumn break. While there, I contacted George who invited me to Estepona for a few days. After I arrived, he suggested we return to Gaucin for a short visit.

The morning after we arrived, we had coffee, toast and jamon serrano at Pajuelo’s bar. I knew that the Spanish liked toast for breakfast, but I had never tried it with jamon serrano, which is hard Spanish ham cut in very fine slices and served on toast covered with olive oil and topped with a few tomato slices. I learned that day that the jamon has to be sliced almost wafer thin. If not it can become very difficult to chew and seems to lose most of its flavor.

After breakfast we took a stroll around the village. As George and I were walking down Calle Alto, I said to him: "Is property very expensive in Gaucin because I might like to consider buying a small house here as a place to come to for a few days from time to time?" He said: "Well let’s look around and see what’s for sale."

We met Maria in the street and George asked her if she knew of any houses for sale. She said that her husband had the keys for a few houses. George asked me if I wanted to look at them and I said of course. George told me that he might also be interested in buying a property in Gaucin.

Maria told us that her husband would be home at six that evening and then he could take us to see the houses. Clearly she did not want to do it herself. However, George persuaded her and she got the keys and took us to the first house in Calle Lorenzo Garcia. She opened the front door and told us to enter, which we did. However, she stayed out in the street clearly visible to all who might pass by. The house was small, damp and in need of a great deal of repair. Both George and I had a number of questions to ask about the house and each time we needed to ask a question George would go back to the entrance and ask Maria. Finally I said to George: "Wouldn’t it be easier if Maria came into the house to show us around and answer our questions?" "Yes it would be easier, but most improper for her to do so." "What do you mean?" I asked. George said: "If Maria is seen by the neighbors entering the house with two men and her husband is not present then the neighbors will gossip." I was taken aback by this revelation. "You mean they would say that we are having it away with her in here." "Yes that is exactly what they would say," George replied. Upon hearing this I began laughing and said: " Fat chance, Maria is as wide as she is tall, her face is old and wrinkled and she has the beginnings of a mustache and people think that we could be fooling around with her in here?" "That is exactly what they would think."

We came back out into the sunlight and I observed that I did not see any of the neighbors in the street. George agreed, but pointed out that if I looked closely I could see that the plastic persianas, which are like venetian blinds, were moving slightly in front of all the neighbors’ doors. "You can be assured," he said, "that behind each door there is a woman watching every move we make, and if Maria had entered the house with us, if even for a moment, the news would be spread throughout the village within minutes, even though hardly anyone in Gaucin has a phone." On that second visit I was beginning to learn what every foreigner who lives in Gaucin for any period of time eventually learns. It is that no matter what you do or where you go, you will hardly ever be out of the line of sight of some old crone standing in her front door behind the persiana watching your every move and as you move out of her line of sight there will be another old crone behind her persiana eager to take over.

Back in the sunlight, we made our farewells to Maria and proceeded down the street. As we were walking I did notice the persianas in front of a number of doors moving ever so slightly as we passed. On a few occasions I saw a pair of eyes peeking around the edge of a persiana. We were walking down Calle de Piedras when we saw a tall, distinguished looking English woman enter an old house. George introduced her to me. Her name was Rosa. George told her that we were looking for property for sale. She said: "The house you are standing in front of is mine and it’s for sale, do you want to see it?" Of course, we would. This time she entered first and seemed to have no qualms about being in the house with two men.

The house was situated at the corner of Calle de Piedras. We entered the house through a door that was about two inches thick and that had a key about a foot long. Both door and key were obviously hand made. The front room was about twenty feet long by ten feet wide with a floor of stone with small rocks embedded in cement right down the center of the room. I was told this was a donkey path. This lead into a back area composed of a leanto and open area. This is where the farm animals were kept. In this same area, there was a water faucet and toilet in a closet, but with no holding tank. There was a second floor of sorts composed of one large room, in which you could not stand up, which had been the family sleeping room.

The ceilings were made of large wooden beams supporting the mix of concrete and tile that formed the outer layer of the roof. The walls of the house were close to a meter thick and were composed of a combination of clay, large rocks and cement on the outside covered by whitewash. All of the walls were stained with smoke from the charcoal stove used to prepare meals.

"How much do you want for the house," I asked. "Two thousand pounds," she replied. I made a rapid mental calculation as to what two thousand pounds was in dollars and I estimated that it came to a little over three thousand dollars. This is less than most cars cost, I thought. "Sold," I said. "Sold," she said. We shook hands to close the deal while George looked on approvingly.

I asked Rosa about the escritura or deed to the house. She told me that she had bought the house only about a year ago from a family down the street and they had never gotten around to changing the title, but she added that when I wanted to get the escritura changed to my name the original owner would go with me to the notario in Ronda to put the deed in my name. About this she was correct in that a year or so later the original owners and I did sign the papers to transfer the title to my name. However, as I would find out later having my name on the deed is not enough. I also have to get it registered in my name and that turned out to be a formidable task indeed. Ten years later and five thousand dollars spent on legal fees, I still did not have it registered in my name.

We went to George’s house, typed up a sales contract that Rosa and I signed all duly witnessed by George. For the rest of the day I felt like I was walking on air. I visited the house two or three times, took lots of pictures and envisaged myself living in it. It was hard for me to imagine that I actually owned a house in Spain and that I would be able to remodel it to look like an old Spanish villa similar to so many I had seen in movies about Spain. I imagined myself spending long hot summer days in the patio of my house, sipping drinks next to a small fountain and solving the problems of the world with like minded friends.

Reality came crashing down on me when I started the process of getting the house registered in my name. Actually getting the escritura was a piece of cake. I had no trouble getting Maria, the owner of the property at 27 Calle de Piedras, to consent to come to Ronda to sign the escritura in front of the notario; however, there was no way she would go to Ronda, a distance of twenty miles, without her husband, Juan. Since her husband worked every day, I agreed to pay him 3000 pts. for a day’s work so he could take the time off to accompany his wife to Ronda.

So on a bright sunny morning in March we head for Ronda and the notario’s office. Maria and Juan were in the back seat and Francisco and myself were in the front seat. Francisco was a neighbor who was helping make the arrangements for the trip to Ronda. I paid him with a couple of cartons of cigarettes and a few Playboy centerfolds. We were hardly out of the village when Francisco told me to pull over quickly because Maria was carsick. I stopped, she jumped out, heaved for a while and we took off again. The drive to Ronda normally takes about forty five minutes, but we had to stop every ten minutes or so for Maria to upchuck yet again and so we arrived about an hour and a quarter later.

The notario’s office was busy with lots of people milling around and confusion seemed to be the order of the day. Francisco got the attention of one of the clerks, who took from Maria and me all of the particulars needed to type up a new escritura. It was now about 11:30 and we were told to return at around 2:00 to sign and get a copy of the new escritura.

We whiled away the time shopping, eating tapas and having a few drinks. Obviously by now Maria had to fill her empty stomach. When I had a moment free with Francisco, I suggested that maybe it would be better if Maria rode with me in the front seat for the trip back to Gaucin, because she would less likely get car sick there. Francisco pointed out that it would be most improper for Maria to be alone with me in the front seat, even with her husband sitting in the back seat. People would talk.

We returned at 2:00 to the drab outer office of the notario to discover that our escritura was still in the process of being typed by a clerk who could barely type more than ten words a minute. Since escrituras are notoriously long that is they can be anywhere from six to ten pages in length, even for a small inconsequential property, I imagined that we could be here the rest of the day.

At 3:00 we were told that the notario was ready to receive us for the official signing ceremony. When we walked into the notario’s private office it was like stepping into another world from the drab outer office. The entire room was decorated with elegant Spanish antique furniture. A huge chandelier hung from the ceiling. There was thick carpeting on the floor. The walls were covered in heavy wooden bookcases laden with a few thousand law books. The notario himself was sitting behind a massive wooden desk. Everything in the room was decorated in superb taste. It was like stepping into another world after waiting interminably in the dingy outer office.

The notario himself was a thin, graying man with glasses perched on the end of his nose. He was dressed impeccably in suit and tie. He stood up to greet us after his clerk dutifully told him our names. As I shook his hand I had an urge to genuflect like a good Catholic in front of the archbishop.

The clerk explained to us the particulars of the escritura. The notario asked us if we understood fully what we were signing and what the implications would be. We said we did, he then gave us a cheap plastic Bic pen and invited us to sign the document. He then signed it himself with a great flourish and we were hurriedly escorted out of the office by his clerk. I felt the urge to back out of the office as one does when leaving the presence of royalty.

I was given a Xeroxed copy of the escritura which I was told would be replaced in a few weeks with the original after the escritura haD been registered at the "registro de propriedad" office in Ronda. I paid the fees and we were on our merry way. On the trip back to Gaucin, we had to stop about every five kilometers so that Maria, still in the back seat, could throw up all the tapas she had consumed in Ronda. We all parted friends. Later I discovered that this was only the second time in her life that Maria had ever ridden in a car.