Small town in Spain

 

Our first stop is a house-sit in a small town in Valencia on the East coast of Spain.  Our house-sitting hosts live in Potries which is named for the pottery produced here since the 1st Century during the Roman occupation of the area.  The town is close to Gandia which is 90min south of Valencia by rail.

Map by Peter Fitzgerald

It is interesting how different reality is from preconceptions about a place.  I pictured a house on a smallholding on a hill in the country for some reason and didn’t imagine a small double story in a street of attached houses.

If I had thought it through a little more I suppose I would have pictured the house on a street like the houses we had seen in Florence (in other words a typical European town street) and would have been closer to the truth.

The town is beautiful with narrow lanes and terraced houses and we realized that the tempo is so much slower than what we are used to.  The streets are deserted for most of the day with roll-up wooden shutters down over the doors and windows.  No more than a few cars drive by the house every hour even though it is on the main road between a neighboring town (La Font) and Potries.  The towns are small and we are able to walk to two other small towns within 15 min.

 The roads are narrow and  pass between orange and olive groves.

 Some of the orange groves are blossoming and on our walk back from La Font we come around a corner and are surrounded by the scent from the blossoms.

Our daily ritual doesn’t align with that of the town because of the way the work day unfolds for town's people.  Our hosts explained that construction or repair work in their homes would follow a similar pattern each time.  The plumber or construction worker would arrive at around 8am with their tools, unpack everything and do a little prep work and then head out at about 9am to the local Bar (this is more than a bar - it offers coffee and light breakfasts as well) and then return at about 10 or 10:30.  They’ll work until noon and then head off to lunch followed by a siesta from 2 to 5 and then back at five to work until eight.  Dinner is at around 10pm at night.

We have settled into the ritual of walking the dogs at 9am and ending up in a bar one town over for “las tostadas con queso”  (toasted baguette with cheese) for me and a “café con leche” for each of us.  

After that we relax for the rest of the morning and then I work US office hours from 3pm to 11pm and in bed by midnight.

The beaches of Gandia (20min drive) on the Mediterranean sea are beautiful and we took some trips there over the weekend.  We’ll no doubt be going there again  a few times before we move to our next location.

Something quite striking about the towns is the number of apartments and land with “Se vende” (for sale) signs up.  Some look pretty run down but some are in fairly good condition.  We asked our guide at the local pottery museum about this and she explained that there has been a general shift in population away from these small towns.  Young people move to the cities and homes become available as the aging population dies out.  Our house-sitting hosts said that the economies of the small towns have also been disrupted by the rise of supermarkets which have made small local shops redundant.

Prices of houses range between 40 000 Euros and close to 300 000 - in the lower range are terraced houses in poor repair and the higher prices are for detached houses on larger properties.  

There are complications to buying property for newcomers that might be significant obstacles.  Some people buy sight-unseen and discover when they come here that the area that they bought in is pretty rough and possibly less accepting of strangers.  Others discover when they have settled down that their neighbor or neighbor’s best friend was born in the house they bought and that they all resent the fact that the family home was sold.  The town officials have to sign off on renovations which may also be a big obstacle to overcome - and of course when the renovations start all the neighbors are intensely curious and maybe even antagonistic to the work being done.

I guess the lesson is to make sure you are someone who can build relationships with those around you so that you are able to work through these obstacles with the community once you settle in.

A common sight in mornings sitting at the bar and drinking our coffee are old women with walkers or shopping carts making their way to or from some shop.  These casual sightings have convinced me that these women are the source of all the power in these cities.  The know everything and have communities of similarly aged women who are matriarchs in their own family.  I could be wrong but I feel that it would be important to stay on the right side of them just to be safe.  In Potries a common scene is a narrow street, empty but for a single woman in the distance with a walker - making her way home or to some meeting where they’ll decide what to do about their new neighbors.