We decided that we would buy the farm house. 'It has potential' as they say on those re-location television shows. Rural tourism may be one of those possibilities, and this is an area the Spanish government says it is keen to promote and see developed. It remains to be seen if any of that famous Spanish bureaucracy is streamlined to enable the sector to operate without unnecessary governmental burden.
The plot measures 14,000 m2. It is flat land, and up until 18 years ago it was used for the production of barley (ordi as it is called in Catalan). The needs show that the original landowner shared the name of two of the neighbouring land owners though their relationship is unclear.
For the last eight years, three horses have grazed the land and now in late spring it appears to be unimproved pasture. Maybe a good tidying up and a once over with the plough and we can begin think about how we are going to use the land.
The rural areas of Spain are protected by law which basically says that to build a big house in a rural area you must have a big piece of land, generally 10% of the land can be built upon.
We had been offered a building plot of 20,000 m2 but it was a little bit too remote for Carol who also wondered about the maintenance of the land. A neighbour offered to farm the land but because he wanted to grow artichokes on our slice of Spain we declined. Artichokes I mean they are not even a proper vegetable are they?
