Claud's finca

Claud deBretteville, our neighbor in Urbanización Colombia, owned a small finca in rural Málaga province. What sort of pet or applicance is a finca you are probably asking yourself. It’s a small farm. At least, it was in 1975.

Now, thanks to Google, I learn that they are villas with indoor plumbing and everything. You can pay everything from 250,000 euros to over two million. The current exchange rate today (January 24, 2008) is $1.27 to the euro. Indoor plumbing costs a lot.

But in Claud’s day, a finca was a farm house. We had to drive through a tiny village to reach Claud’s finca. As we chugged up the main street leading through the village, we met what must have been the entire population walking the other way. They were on their way to the fútbol field to support their local team’s efforts against a neighboring village. Our progress was slowed. Impeded. Stopped. Everyone was good-natured about it. We couldn’t run over all of them, so why run over any?

Eventually traffic cleared and we drove a short distance out of town, probably a half mile, and parked under an olive tree by the side of the road. We could easily see the village sitting uphill of us. Her finca itself laid downhill of us, perhaps two hundred feet down a ridge, a small, whitewashed house with a thatched roof. Claud invited us in.

The first thing I noticed about Claud’s house was the floor to ceiling bookcase just inside the front door. I don’t remember any windows, but there must have been. I don’t remember any indoor plumbing, either. In the States, Claud’s finca would have been a “cabin.”

Her stone floor was unsealed so that she could use “Spanish air conditioning.” This involves wetting the floor with buckets of water and opening the doors and windows so the wind can blow through. The house is cooled by evaporation. It works great and doesn’t use any electricity.

The house had two doors, a front and back door which gave out onto a walled enclosure with walls four feet high. There was no way in or out of the enclosure save through the house. Smaller harder stones than those that paved the rest of the house led from front to back doors providing a path for the finca burro to take because it lived in the enclosure behind the house. The small stones had to be harder than the others so the burro’s hooves wouldn’t wear them out too soon.

Burros were very valuable and had to be registered in town. You even needed a pink slip for your burro. When he was in his enclosure, there was no way a thief was going to get him out unless he lifted him over the wall. If the thief was strong enough to lift a full grown burro over a wall, you probably didn’t want to interfere anyway. “Si, señor. Go ahead and take my burro. Bon apetít.”

Joanne has always had the gift to “witch” water, at least ever since I’ve known her. Don’t ask me how it works or why. I have no idea. But Claud persuaded Joanne to try to find her a well. If water could have been found, that finca would have increased in value tenfold.

It didn’t happen. Así es la vida. But even without water, it was a nice little finca.