CASA BARRANCA

BED AND BREAKFAST

ALMERIA SPAIN

About Us

Hi we are Gavin and Elaine, we have been married for twelve years and have three children, one of which is here with us in Spain.  He is twelve years old, he has integrated well into the Spanish way of life and is now at the local school and learning the language quickly (much quicker than us).  Our two daughters have since flown the nest.

We also have two further members of our family:         

We decided after our first two trips to Elaine's Fathers timeshare on the Costa de Sol, Andalucia Southern Spain in the mid 1990's, we would love to move here (we fell in love with Spain and it's people).  We immediately began to look around for a property to buy, we really liked the idea of buying a Finca or an old Cortijo and reforming it into a lovely home.  We saw lots of properties in the Malaga province, but nothing took our fancy.  We then found out that in 2001 one of Elaine's relatives had moved to the province of Almeria.  We thought as we were going to drive to the timeshare we would detour passed and visit for a couple of days.

We left after a day or two and went on to Fuengirola for the rest of our holiday, we left our top box with them ready to collect on our return.  When we returned, we persuaded Elaine's Uncle to show us round a few properties that he knew were for sale in the area.  Needless to say we did not see anything we liked, that is, until the very last day.  When we saw a little sign on the side of the road -SE VENDE- for sale with a telephone number underneath, the little sign was no bigger than the top of a shoe box and was hand painted.  We rang the telephone number and to our surprise a Spanish voice (of the person we now know as Maximilliano) answered the telephone and then after some pigeon Spanish he put on his Son-in-Law who spoke good English.  We agreed to have a meeting that afternoon, whereupon we exchanged details.  Some months later and attempting to barter with a Spaniard (no hope) we agreed to purchase the land at the original asking price.  This was done relatively painlessly with the help of our English speaking  Abogado (Solicitor).

We knew that we would be unable to move to Spain until our twin daughters had flown the nest - gone to university.  Which they dutifully did at the tender age of eighteen.  To begin with we decided we wanted to fence off our property and put a main gate on the entrance.  In November 2002 we asked our solicitor to apply for a 'Licencia de Menor' - permission to erect a fence.  We had booked a two week holiday in the following February / March to carry out the work necessary.  Our holiday came round and we still did not have the licence, so we decided to get on with it and erect the fence.  We employed local Ecuadorians to carry out the manual labour, we also got our hands dirty digging post holes and mixing cement.  We also hired an English guy to put the fencing in and build the gate posts and hang the gates.  They all did a fantastic job and it was finished on time.  Whilst we were halfway through the job, we were approached by Spanish neighbours claiming that we were not able to erect a fence round our property because they had rights of easement across our land to gain access to their land, which was next door.  As you can imagine we did not speak Spanish and they were trying to get their message across to us.  We did not back down and as the days went by we could see that lots of locals were taking their daily walks by our land - in England we call it being nosey.  The Spanish neighbours got a little upset because we continued to block their access to their land, we tried to help out by leaving a section of fence that could be peeled back to make an access point and we would allow them to pick up the padlock key from our solicitor whilst we were away in England.  This was unacceptable to them, so at our expense we had a JCB make another access road into their land from the main road.  To this day we have not heard anything, nor a thank you.  We eventually received the 'Licencia de Menor' in the following May (phew).

We spent the coming months dreaming of a new life in the sun and kept sketching out ideas of how the house should be.  We kept basically to the same floor plan as the original barn, this was because we did not know that we could build whatever we liked there.  In November 2003 we decided that we needed to have official plans drawn by a local Architect, we asked our solicitor to find a reliable Architect, which she did, or so we thought.  We met him in the November and gave him our ideas for what we wanted to build, he took them away with him and that was the end of a satisfactory meeting.  We returned back the UK with a promise from our solicitor that she would send us the plans the Architect draws up for us to sort out any amendments.  Christmas came and went, we were now becoming anxious that we had not received anything from our solicitor, but decided to give it a little longer, knowing how long the 'Licencia de Menor' took.  That March we decided to call our solicitor and enquire as to the whereabouts of our plans, wholeheartedly believing that she was about to say "I have them here in the office and I can't send them by email".  Unfortunately, she didn't and just said she would ring him and find out what was happening.  She did just that and stated that he was extremely busy and the plans were nearly done.  The months seemed to fly by and before we knew it we were in September 2004, again still with no plans, we rang our solicitor again, who dutifully rang the architect again.  This time she found out that he had not done the plans and would not do them, because he did not want to upset his soon to be Father-in-law.  Yes, he was marrying the daughter of the neighbours we had upset with the erection of the fence, small world.  Our solicitor also stated that the architect had told her that if we did not have our plans in and agreed by the Ayuntamiento (Town Council) of Huercal Overa by the end of the year.  We would not be able to build at all, because they were going to re-classify the land to rustic from urban.  This now gave us approximately two and half months to find a new architect, have the plans drawn, agreed and submitted to the Ayuntamiento.  This all had to be done from our home in England.

As it happens, our solicitor contracted another Architect very quickly and gave him our proposed plans for our new house.  We returned to Spain at the end of November to peruse the plans and have them amended where necessary, this was all completed and they were submitted to the Ayuntamiento.  On the 30th December 2004 the plans were stamped with approval from the Ayuntamiento and returned to our solicitor.  We got our permission to build our dream home with hours to spare.  Little did we know that this was the start of many problems to come.

In July 2005 we asked our solicitor to find a few builders to quote us for the whole build, including a double garage, 10m x 5m swimming pool, 3 water deposits, sceptic tanks, stairs and ramps.  After a struggle and several months we had one quote, this is because the house was so large that smaller builders did not want to take on such a large project.  The larger builders didn't think the project was large enough.  The builder - Diego Parra Garcia - DIPAGA, gave us a quote for what we perceived to be a very good price.  We know, we can here you now, 'why didn't you get three quotes and choose the middle of the three quotes'.  Unfortunately we were not in control of this situation because we were not in the country, we put total faith into our solicitor.  For those of you looking to build or reform your own house, please take this advice - GET THREE QUOTES.  You also need to have a look at any previous work the company has completed.

We did employ Diego to build our house, just as an aside, we did visit other properties that were worked on by Diego and his work appeared to be good.  Diego offered up all the right answers to all our questions and therefore we instructed our solicitor to draw up a contract, in which we included all the aspects of the build and extras, and a schedule of payment and the all important penalty clause.  We initially wanted 100€ per day for the penalty clause, but this was argued down to 50€ per day.  The contract was drawn up to last 12 months and anytime over this would be charged at 50€ per day, excepting any inclement days.  We all dutifully signed the contract and work should have started on 4th November, 2005. 

With the contract signed and obviously expecting things to start happening.  We were asked by the builder when we were going to supply the water and electricity connections.  We were gobsmacked at this request, we asked our solicitor why this was not being paid for by the builder or why it wasn't in the contract.  She replied "you didn't ask him to quote for the water or electricity", it appears that if you don't ask the relevant question you will not get any other information than what you seek.  We therefore had to pay the builder to carry out the necessary work to supply water onto the land, so he could start the work on the property.  Because we paid for it separately we also had to pay the bills.

The work should have commenced straight away, but how deluded were we.  The work started on the 3rd December, when the builder demolished the barn and cleared the land.  The builder had sub-contracted another builder to build the foundations and structure of the property.  The foundations were started on the 8th January 2006, and continued through to mid March, when only the ground floor and the pillars for the second floor were done.  Then everything stopped and there was no sign of any work for the following month.  When out of the blue the builder that had been sub-contracted for the structure came on site to see us, he requested another 25,000€ to complete the structure.  We told him to speak to our solicitor and Diego, and they would sort this problem out.  Unfortunately as the months went by and the property had come to a stand still, we were getting more and more frustrated.  Eventually we were informed that Diego had sorted the problem out and the structure would start again, but by this time it was October 2006, and the contract had only one month left to run.  We found out that Diego had taken out a mortgage on his own property to pay the unscrupulous sub-contractor the money he had requested.  In October, work started again, in that December the structure was finished.

Here comes the roof!!  In January the roof's were on and the walls were starting to materialise.  The property was starting to take shape and started to resemble our plans and actually a house.  The property seemed to come on leaps and bounds.  The only problem was that now Diego was experiencing money problems, especially as it was now nearly 18 months after the contract had been drawn up and the price of materials had risen quite dramatically.  The problem is poor Diego was now tied to the contract and to give him his due he pushed on as well as he could, but it was quite evident that he was starting to cut corners in an effort to save money.  Also at this stage he was asking for money before the next stage payments were due, as outlined in the contract.

It then came to the middle of May 2007, the house is now resembling a house, when Diego asked us if we knew any plumbers that can do the first fit.  We presented a person whom we knew and was recommended by a good friend.  Diego asked him to quote for the work, Diego also had another plumber lined up to quote.  We thought nothing more of it and as time went by we learned that the person we offered up had had his quote accepted and was due to carry out the work.  In July this plumber started his work, we had since found out that the person Diego had ascertained a quote from had refused to do the work because Diego had not paid him 6000€ from a previous job, and would refuse to do it until this money was paid first.  Anyway our plumber was underway and when he had finished he received his money and it was unlikely we would see him again until he was needed for the second fit.

Then the electric company came on site to commence a walk through to ascertain an idea of what would be needed and then supply a quote.  We walked round with them and told them what we wanted.  At this time they had a copy of the memoria (a break down of exactly is needed for the build from the Architect), in this were the original specifications for the electrical installation.  Which had already been quoted for, for the builder Diego.  It transpires that the original memoria quote was for 4800€ and the quote for our extras came to 4500€ - another little lesson for you, make sure you put on the plans exactly what you require.  We agreed the price and the work commenced.

With all the first fit completed it was time to start laying the floor tiles, we had not been asked or shown any tiles what so ever.  We were informed that we had to go to a particular builders merchants and choose tiles for the whole build - bathroom and kitchen wall tiles, floor tiles for the interior of the house and tiles for all the terraces.  We were informed that we had a limit of 9€ per sqm.  This was OK and we dutifully went along to the builders merchants, needless to say we could not find all the tiles we wanted and had to look elsewhere.  We eventually managed to find all the tiles we wanted and they were laid within the following weeks.  The problem is that we ended up paying for all the tiles separately because we did not purchase them from his supplier.  This extra we would take from the last contractual payment or so we thought.

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