SUNDAY IN MEMORY LANE (Episode 39)

Financial crash - 2008

I found this wonderful video on YouTube and it conveys the Garganta de Alardos in all its glory. You even glimpse the snow covered peak of Almanzor, so it is well worth watching to see the reality of the place, thankfully as beautiful now as it was in 2008 when I last saw it….

The winter of 2007 was colder than previous years and I needed to keep a fire burning all the time, or the well shaded house became icy very quickly. My journeys for usable, seasoned wood were getting longer and I was depleting my reserves too quickly. In the cold spells I had far fewer visitors and had to walk home from the village by torchlight after classes. It was a tough time, but I remember creating some amazing stews for myself and the dogs. I cooked and boiled water for drinks on the fire. The fireplace was huge so I could set up various arrangements, depending on what I was cooking. Rasta, Ben and Pearlie would always crowd around to watch me cooking, as if it was a spectator sport with benefits for them!

I did have a small television tucked into the corner of a high shelf but I seldom watched it. When I had been living in Madrid I had become fond of Mexican TV novellas, which are over-dramatised romantic soap operas. I loved the colourful houses and clothes especially. The beautiful pronunciation helped me perfect my spoken Spanish enormously. Other than that, I was happy to sleep a little more in the winter than I ever could in summer!

During my time teaching at the private school in Madrid I had enjoyed access to computers. On my farm, I was missing the convenience of the internet and mentioned it to a few of my adult students. They told me that I could get a landline laid on by Telefonica really cheaply and I was amazed when this proved to be true. A team of men turned up and quickly put up telegraph poles from the main road all the way to my house. The foreman of the team was a Peruvian guy, about 25, who was very keen to chat with me. His name was Pedro and wanted to learn English because he planned to go to the UK for future work. We became great friends and he took me to the nearest big town, helped me to choose a laptop, installed it and gave me some basic lessons.

Pedro always called in to visit if he was working in Madrigal. He told me about Peru, his family and especially his girlfriend who he was going to marry and bring to Spain. I told him about missing my family and friends.

One old friend in particular, Danny Hemstock, was very unhappy. His teenage son Khan had left home. Danny had moved from Cornwall to Boscombe in Dorset and had lost touch with Khan completely. I wanted to invite Danny to the farm for Christmas and New Year because his first Christmas alone might be tough. Pedro showed me I could get cheap flights online and offered to lend me his car for the round trips to the airport! He didn’t use it during his working week because he had a large Telefonica van.

I was amazed at his kindness and called Danny to invite him to Spain. Danny was overwhelmed and hardly knew what to say. I told him to think about it and let me know as soon as possible so that I could book the flights early. To be honest, I was very surprised when he took up the offer. I collected him from the airport near Madrid and, unfortunately, he did not see the beautiful landscape because it was already dark when he first arrived. As soon as he was able to see it, Danny loved it immediately. He was delighted that I had a chainsaw and disappeared into the woods with it on the first morning! I sent Rasta with him to make sure he didn’t get lost!

We went to Plasencia for a traditional Peruvian Christmas dinner with Pedro and his team of telephone engineers who shared a very large apartment there. The food was gorgeous and very spicy. We loved it. The most striking thing I remember about that visit was an enormous fragrant kitchen cupboard, full of south American herbs and teas that the guys said had been sent by their mothers who distrusted conventional European medicine. The holidays were over too quickly and I drove Danny back to the airport, hoping that he would take a bit of Spanish sunshine home with him.

A few weeks later, I happened to say to Pedro that I missed having conversations in English and he mentioned that he knew of a British couple who had moved into another village on the Vera. I think it was Losar de la Vera. He had fitted their landline a few weeks previously and said he would see if he could introduce me to them. That turned out to be a blessing.

Shirley and Colin were about the same age as me and had sold their home in Solihull, near Birmingham, in the midlands of England to buy a lovely large single storey house with a modern sparkling swimming pool set in a pretty garden in the Sierra de Gredos. Colin worked in his home office. I was never entirely sure what he did, but he was always busy online during my visits. Shirley had escaped from a horrible admin job in the NHS that she had hated. She was very keen to learn Spanish. Frankly, I don’t know how anyone manages in central Spain unless they speak the language, so I invited Shirley to join me for some of the kiddies classes from 5pm until 6pm in the evenings.

“The kids will teach you Spanish!” I said, knowing my youngest students would jump at the chance to practice their skills. They did such sweet things. They would always greet me in English, especially if they were with their parents or grandparents. They showed their proud family members how they could talk to Rasta and Ben in English, whenever they saw us on the street or outside a local bar. But, best of all, they took me seriously when I asked that they correct my Spanish if I made a mistake. They were my keenest teachers! I remember the largest class of fifteen year olds crying laughing during one lesson when I happened to say, “Oh dear!” They thought I had said, “Joder!” which happens to be said, in Spanish, with exactly the same intonation but means “Oh fuck!” We had many hilarious moments during my classes because I was not a particularly disciplined teacher! I believe that learning should be fun and memorable so I incorporated translating English popular music and children’s comic books to keep their attention.

That reminds me. Parenting in rural Spain is an impressive thing to see. They adore their children and give them far more affection and freedom than children in Britain. Their culture and warm lifestyle does not exclude children at all and they nurture vast extended family networks. Everyone in Madrigal was someone’s cousin! The children are brimming with energy and health so they are boisterous and confident but also, they are extremely polite. Some of them were developing into committed academics, determined to get a place in a University.

Image: The Ayuntamiento of Madrigal de la Vera (Town Hall and Square)

I loved teaching, but came to the conclusion that English, with its ludicrous spelling and erratic pronunciation, is a very awkward and confusing language. I did the best I could to simplify and explain some of its oddities. Spanish is, for the most part, written and spoken phonetically and I love the simplicity and logic of its grammar.

I was asked to take part in some local council meetings purely because I was a land and a business owner. The meetings were very informal affairs, usually conducted in the Alcalde’s bar and they were an excellent opportunity for me to socialise with the village elders. I was the first female resident to own her property outright and the first foreigner to take part in discussions about local affairs. The older women of the village were delighted to have some female representation and they were highly amused at the effect I had on their husbands! I noticed that older men were culturally restricted from actually making eye contact with me and seemed really awkward and embarrassed when I addressed them directly.

One of the local ladies explained to me that until 1976 women in Madrigal had not been educated, did not hold bank accounts and traditionally required chaperones when in the company of men. They had been strictly obedient to their fathers, husbands and the Roman Catholic church by order of Franco during their youth. The fact that I could read and write was unusual in a woman of my age group there, but additionally, financial independence from men was considered absolutely astounding!

I remember being quizzed by a few of the ladies when I was paying my local taxes. “Did you inherit your money from a husband or a parent?” came the first question as several people listened in with interest. “No, I had worked and bought land in England since I was young. When it went up in value, I sold up and came here!” I told them truthfully. When I told them that I had been married twice before, they were even more surprised and laughed at my candid admissions - especially when I joked that I preferred dog companions due to their loyalty and was not interested in bagging a third husband, at all, ever! Besides that, I told them that I couldn’t afford men, they were far too high maintenance!

It was at one of the council discussions about water conservation that I first met a popular retired couple who were leading members of Spain’s Ecological Society. They invited me to join them on an excursion touring Celtic village remains and preserved artefacts. They were compiling a book about Extremadura life before the Roman occupation and I was amazed at some of the beautiful photographs they had of ancient Celtic jewellery and artwork. I spent many happy hours with them, learning the folk lore of the land I loved so much. I encouraged them to get their book translated into English because there is a lot of interest in all things Celtic in the United Kingdom. I don’t know if they ever did.

See also: A magnificent collection of photos.

2008 is etched in my memory quite sharply because Spain was one of the first countries to feel the effects of the severe financial and banking crash of that year. It impacted Madrigal de la Vera overnight. One day all the working men were on their building sites in suburban Madrid and the next they were back in the village, all laid off. Work had stopped.

The immediate effects were a tightening of family belts around the village and so, extra-curricular activities, such as my classes, were among the first luxuries to be sacrificed. My students reduced from fifty down to five and I did not have savings to act as a buffer while I found another income.

Then I shattered the thumb knuckle joint on my left hand when my chainsaw flipped back on me. I was deep in the woods when it happened and, in shock, I simply popped my thumb back into its correct position and held it pressed to my chest, thinking it would be fine. But it was not. It was sickeningly spongey when I tried to grip anything and I struggled to get the wheel barrow full of cut wood over the rocky route back to the farm. I immediately headed to the local doctor’s surgery where the local people insisted I jump the queue.

Upon examination the doctor arranged for me to be taken to the county hospital in Caceres, at least a hundred kilometres away. I finally got home very late and my left hand was in plaster to the wrist for the following six weeks.

You need two hands to control a chain saw. I was not only unable to cut wood for my fire, but also began finding every other basic chore very difficult. For example, I had been doing all my washing in the bath, carrying big buckets of fresh water from the pond as I needed it. Then I would stomp the washing in detergent by foot and rinse it similarly. I wrung it out by hand usually, but that also required two hands. Even washing my hair had become extremely difficult with my left hand taped into a plastic bag.

Realising that I needed more modern facilities, I walked to the nearest campsite and asked the owners if I could use their washing machines temporarily and they, very kindly, gave me access to their shower block too. It was out of season for them, so there was nobody around to inconvenience.

I called Angel and Javier to explain my situation and thankfully, they arrived with other friends to prepare a big heap of firewood and fuss around me like mother hens for the weekend.

By April 2008, I had spent all the profit from my December bumper harvest of oranges. Without an income, I was almost destitute, not entitled to any form of benefits and unable to find alternative work. Madrigal de la Vera’s population was around one thousand at that time and everyone was unemployed and feeling the pinch, even the bars were deserted.

When I contacted my family back in the UK, I was dismayed by the news I received from them. My mother had died in a fire. My father had been diagnosed with prostate cancer. My ex husband, Tony was told that he had Hodgins Lymphoma and my son, Dan, had been injured in a street fight.

I had offered all of them accommodation for holidays but none ever took me up on it. They were all too caught up with their own struggles, I suppose. I felt guilty and selfish, living in such a heavenly place, while they were all facing such existential difficulties. I was especially concerned because, when I had spoken to Tony, he had said that my son had ‘undergone a change of personality’. Apparently Dan was stabbed in the back with a screw driver while defending a younger neighbour against three intruders. His father stressed to me that Dan was frequently very angry and hard to reason with. He had to attend court and two of the men were facing jail. Dan had moved out and was virtually hiding out in his father’s flat to avoid further confrontations or repercussions.
It all seemed so very grim at the time.

I weighed all this up carefully in my mind every day and could not devise a workable solution, until one landed in my lap from the local estate agent. Some time during the previous year he had received an inquiry about my property from a wealthy Madrid couple, who owned a chain of lighting shops. Apparently they had seen the lush green diamond that was Avalon during their holidays and fallen in love with it. They had asked the local estate agent to inform them immediately if I ever considered selling my finca. He said I could name my price because the local planning department did not permit the building of new homes on the river banks. However, if I delayed there was a strong chance that the value of the property would decrease due to the growing national recession.

I arranged a viewing and the couple from Madrid arrived with several family members, all enthusing about the mountain views, the trees and the beauty of the house interior. They made me a very generous offer and added an extra six thousand euros deposit in cash, if I would leave the equipment, tools and furnishings exactly as they were, including my collection of artwork. It was an incredibly good offer and later that night I was sitting in front of my fire, silently gripping a fat envelope stuffed with euros.

I had agreed to the sale.

There was no going back on my decision, even though I knew intuitively that it was the wrong thing to do. My dream off-grid life was over and I felt demoralised and defeated. Almost immediately, I began to have panic attacks, which would make it impossible for me to think straight or hold back the tears.

I contacted everyone I could think of to ask for accommodation in the UK but nobody wanted to help, mainly because providing or finding room for three animals is a big ask. Danny Hemstock was the only one who offered to put me up and he only had a tiny one bedroomed flat in Boscombe near Bournemouth. I had never been there, so I had no idea what it was like.

Marta and I arranged for Soldato to go back to the riding stables and I literally ran away from him without looking back, because he knew I was going to leave him there and I felt sick to my soul for doing it. I was betraying his love and his friendship.

A local man, who had a large organic finca close to the village, took my cockerel and chickens to join his flock, promising that they would remain free range. My heart broke when there was no cockerel call and no reason to prepare breakfasts at 5am the next day. Finca Avalon had fallen silent. Even the resident wild birds seemed eerily quiet.

All I needed to do was arrange for the final vaccination details to be entered on the Pet Passports and organise transportation for me, Rasta, Ben and Pearlie.

Online, I was able to find a very kind pet transporter who operated regularly between UK and Spain by van. I asked if I could travel as a passenger, with my pets and some limited personal possessions. He agreed to this arrangement and the journey was set up to include staying overnight in a pet-friendly hotel in France.

By June I had signed the deeds and we were on our way.

I was numb with waves of anxiety and depression throughout the journey. Inside my jumbled brain and sometimes aloud, I was singing Bob Marley’s song, ‘Don’t Worry About a Thing’ but I felt wretched and lost. Rasta, Ben and Pearlie sensed my emotions very clearly and they were equally despondent. The weather reflected our mood by being unusually grey and overcast for that time of the year. It stayed that way until we arrived on Danny Hemstock’s doorstep in Dorset.