Get the ball rolling. #2

The Unadventurous Traveller

So the decision was made, we're moving to Spain! Exciting! Could we actually buy this chapel with hermitage attached and live happily in Spain? Would the kids be ok moving to a new country, leaving their friends, their new language and their lives behind? How would us adults get on, not speaking much/any Spanish, let alone Catalan, would we make friends? If we had the internet, then I could work, but there were so many things to get arranged and sorted first.

We needed a 'holiday' or chance to tackle some of my growing 'To do' list to see if this was possible and to enable us to start our lives in Spain fairly painlessly. So we organised a five day trip, staying at a small hotel/villa with a pool in L'Ametlla de Mar.

Things we needed to sort out before we moved to Spain:

📑 Find a temporary house to live in, ideally in the same village to the chapel, while we do the work on the chapel 

(IF we do actually buy it!)

📑 Look at the chapel (again) to make sure it is the property we want to buy,

📑 Education - I needed to ensure the children were enrolled into the school system,

📑 A bank account - to transfer the money from the house sale in to,

📑 Start the process for getting our NIE and all that entailed,

📑 And try to ensure we have a lovely holiday too!

In order for me to start being able to sleep again (anxiety gets really high when things start changing too quickly or when I do not have a few basic fundamentals, like having a roof over my head and an income etc!); we needed to find somewhere for us to stay whilst we were working on the chapel. Dale anticipated in excess of a year for the works on the house (ha how wrong could we be??!), so we needed a long term let somewhere and ideally as close to the village as possible.

Whilst still in France we began contacting estate agents and local companies who could perhaps help us with rental properties, and we gained NOT ONE RESPONSE! So on arrival in Catalonia, we visited all the estate agents we could find to see who had places to rent. We also visited the agents we were buying the chapel through - Finques via Augusta, and they really worked hard to find us our current rented house. They organised a viewing for the last day of our holiday (Friday) so we could see the house, and it was actually in the village of the chapel, so it could be ideal, but as the landlady did not want to discuss rent costs yet, this didn’t sound so good.

Visiting the ruin

In the meantime we re-visited the chapel a few times. The access was very limited, as the road had several hair pin bends in it, with sheer drops over the edge. These rustic, mountain lanes take some getting used to! We would never have been able to even get to the chapel in my car, so a 4x4 was essential. We decided IF we bought it, we would HAVE to put in a decent access road, for us but also for all the supply lorries.

Once we could actually get to the chapel the peace and quiet was wonderful! The cicadas chirping, the birds singing, olive, almond and carob trees and nothing else - bliss. The heat was something else, as is normal for July in Spain. The Creuse does get very hot in the summer months too, but up on top of a mountain, with no shade bar a few trees in places, was a different level of hot altogether!

The chapel itself still had some architectural beauty left, with some detail on pillars and some moulding around the top. We fell in love with these beautiful features, along with Chapel and its location.   It had been constructed in 1793 according to the plaque but the Spanish Civil War activities had blown holes in the walls and not having had a roof for many years, the weather had taken its toll. There are many names that had been scraped into the walls like graffiti, with dates and love hearts etc. Over the years, the chapel had been a place for young lovers to go for some privacy, dog walkers and runners to run through and for kids to play in apparently. There was also a lot of vegetation and a mature olive tree growing in the middle of the chapel! It seemed such a shame, to us, that it had been allowed to fall into such a state.

There had been a fire some years before up the mountain, which had ravaged the hermitage. This, along with years of neglect and the elements, had caused much damage everywhere to the chapel and hermitage. The roof had collapsed and it looked very dangerous to me to even take a look inside. This didn't put Dale off in the slightest - he saw this a challenge and something that can just be solved step by step. In France, he had totally converted one of our barns into a gite, and had previously worked in construction for 30 years in the U.K. so this bore him no concern at all (and I trust his experience and knowledge in this area as I wouldn't have a clue about a reno of this size!).

Coco

There is also a cysterna, commonly known as a ‘Coco’, on the site which is very traditional and fairly rare in Catalonia. They are constructed to store water, this coco holds 21,000 litres. It was constructed at least 10 years before the chapel was made, in order to help build it, as there is no water in the vicinity.  It was still intact, but again, the weather, people and time had all taken quite a toll on it and it needed urgent partial reconstruction. This all filled Dale with a real buzz to get on and start immediately! I am a little more set in my ways, don’t like change so much and get bogged down with all the millions of details that must be dealt with before this can happen. But it’s safe to say, this project was definitely happening.

The Coco (now Dale has renovated it)

School enrolment

Next thing to sort out was the kids and their schooling. After many visits to different offices, speaking embarrassingly poor Spanish and using Google Translate, we were finally pointed to the right government department in the biggest town, closest to the chapel (Tortosa). The lady in charge of dealing with us was so nice and patient and I found that whilst she didn't speak English (it was terrible to have to ask but my Spanish really was THAT bad) she did speak French, so we could at least communicate. Result! (Interesting fact, under the old regime Franco was happy for the people to learn French as their second language NOT English, so people of a certain age in Catalonia, perhaps even Spain as a whole, speak French. Whereas the younger generation are all learning English at school and often speak English very well!)

She got me all the various forms that she needed me to complete, she took away the copious copies of documentation that I had brought with me - birth certificates, passports, marriage certificate (just in case), proof of their injections from the red book etc. Then she wanted us to choose which school Dalton should go to. How on earth did we know? We didn't know the area, this was our first time to this town! Patiently and kindly she gave us a list of schools, so after dinner and a swim later that evening, we started completing the forms (using Google Translate line by line) and googling the different schools to try to decide. We decided we didn't want the private school and took pot luck to one of the others. We took a recce by driving around to look at the different schools, but in truth we made our minds up based on their websites and Dalton chose one because of the sports facilities! 

Brooke’s schooling was fairly simple; we would be moving to a village and she would attend the school in that village. Hurrah! This school was very small with somewhere in the region of 48 students and her last school in France had 70 students,  so she would be used to a small school environment.

Getting organised

Whilst in Tortosa, we tried to try to arrange a bank account, but as the banks only seem to be open in the mornings, this took two or three separate attempts to actually get in to the branch and see someone. This would be the first instance of the ‘mañana attitude’ we experience often here, which can be what endears the Spanish to you, but can also be incredibly frustrating when trying to get things done. I try to be organised and had brought all the paperwork I could think a bank would require; including proof of earnings, passports and more. I just hoped this would be enough to open a bank account, with little to no language skills and without being a resident. 

A few months previously we had been speaking with some people in France while we were selling off our furniture. They advised us of some banks not to bank with in Spain and a bank they recommended. So essentially we went on their advice and looked out for any banks we could see in the town and nearby. We went into BBVA, and once again, the receptionist spoke French, we could communicate - result! She arranged a meeting with the bank manager immediately, who spoke very good English and was helpful and nice; she opened us a bank account there and then using our passports and the promise of the money from the house sale to be deposited. Easy! What a relief!

NIE and Padron

The NIE is equivalent to the National Insurance number in the UK but is more of an identity number and it is needed for absolutely everything in Spain. This number indicates that you are a stranger (Número de identidad de extranjero) but once you have that, and your padron (this is a formal listing at the town hall ajuntament/ayuntamiento that you are living in the town or village) you can do most things. You will certainly need both of these in order to gain your residencia.

We enquired about getting our NIE, but we were told we would need to be resident to start this process, so had to leave this until we actually moved here.

Roof over our heads

The last appointment we had of the trip was to view a house in the village of the chapel. Ideally I would have liked to see the house much earlier, so we could form a back up plan if necessary, but this was not possible - of course.  We had ruled out viewing a 5 bedroom house with a pool and gym as it was miles away (would we even use a home gym after the first month?) and a flat in Tortosa. It felt that everything was riding on this house and its suitability.

The village itself has approx. 800 inhabitants and is situated right on the river Ebre/Ebro, 20 minutes drive from Tortosa (so far enough to be quiet, near enough for 'things' when needed) and to us it seemed absolutely lovely. Trees line the road as you enter, the village nestles in between two mountains and there are orange and olive trees in groves dotted about all over the place. The primary school would be walkable, with a school bus laid on to Dalton's school every day, and there is even a municipal swimming pool!

The town house they showed us was great! With three bedrooms spread over 4 levels, a sun terrace and a garage. This was perfect as we were looking for storage in addition to a house. There was no garden; which is quite typical for Spanish/Catalonian town living, but it would be a huge wrench for us. It's something we would just have to get used to. There was some room for rabbit, and the landlady didn't mention anything about pets, so that was all good to me (although he was going to miss his garden). There was a (ridiculously) small kitchen with fridge freezer, a washing machine, three bathrooms/toilets, and it was furnished. The whole house was clean and the rent was very reasonable, the landlady was happy that we wanted to rent long term and her daughter, for future reference, speaks good English.

The house was set in a typical Spanish street, with neighbours either side, front and back. This was going to be a huge change for us, to actually have more than one neighbour, in fact a whole bustling street full of them (that's another story for another day). Hooray -  things were coming together!

Fun after all

It sounds like all we did this holiday was admin, paperwork and boring things. The kids were really good in tagging along for a lot of this mundane bureaucratic part (which was quite boring to be honest!) but we also ensured we had lovely time in the hotel pool, visiting the beautiful local beaches and eating some really nice food too! We even fitted in a visit to Port Aventura water world - which was fantastic for us all!

This was the first time the kids and I had ever been to Spain, Dale had been many times before. The roles were reversing a bit, as in France I was originally the main French speaker (before the kids became fluent) and Dale was quite reliant on me to ‘do all the talking’. Now Dale has a smattering of Spanish, so he had to order food and drinks etc. I quite liked it!

We returned to France after our five day holiday/recce feeling achieved, tanned, relaxed, motivated and less anxious than when we left. We would email the estate agents confirmation to proceed and start to negotiate over the price. We had to seriously start to pack and sell some excess furniture/antiques we had amassed from our big French house, and get ready for the move. We had so many people to say goodbye to, but life looked pretty fun here too. We had no idea what was in store for us.

If you would like to read more about our travels, adventures and happenings then you could join the facebook page for updates: The Unadventurous Traveller.

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