I have asked myself a few times why I have yet to publish the story of Diego in my blog. It is an interesting story and one that is unique to Spain... I think. I have had clients comment on this man many times and even tell me stories of similar men in other places, well one man in England and the place benefited from having him around and publicizing the story. So here it goes, our story of Diego, but I am not telling it to benefit from him, only because it is such an intriguing story.

When we were looking at the purchase contract to buy the hotel way back in September 2004, there was one clause in there about this man called Diego Piña. He had the rights of a room and the right of 3 meals a day; our first reaction was what the heck is this? We certainly did not want something like this and firmly told the lawyer representing the seller. A few weeks went by and eventually we were on the phone speaking with the seller about a a couple of outstanding points to be resolved in the purchase contract including Diego. Antonio, as he is called, told us that Diego was the owner of the land that the hotel is built upon. When he bought the land from him, he made an agreement with him; the agreement was that he, Antonio, would pay some money to Diego and also provide him a place to live and his 3 daily meals for as long as he needed or wanted. Antonio informed us if we agreed to accept this obligation (which is in fact a legal right held by Diego and published for all the world to see in the land registry in Ronda), we would receive ownership to another house (Diego's place) in the purchase without any additional cost.

Does that all sound well and good or does it strike a note of concern? For us, in that moment, we thought that if we were going to receive another house in the deal at no extra cost, then what's the big deal? He would only require feeding 3 times a day and how bothersome would that be??

This is Diego, he is not drunk in this photo but he could be blowing.

Well, we did not think about the long term effects of this agreement. Nor did we think to ask the age of this man nor the state of his health. We thought we would get a house for nothing.... well, you get nothing for nothing so you must always pay something to receive a return... that is how life works. Someone must pay! That is the golden rule to life... there is always a fee at the end of the day, nothing is free.

So we have been paying that fee now for almost 5 years.

Diego is a simple man, a village person who does not work nor does he even like to work, or so he recently told Ivan. He lives in this small house that Antonio built for him and that neither Ivan nor I have seen the inside of... our house mind you. The house is located right at the entrance of the village, two buildings up from the hotel. It is more of a bungalow than a house as it has a tilted roof (in fact, the people of Juzcar call his house the cheese wedge as it looks something like that). He owns 2 or 3 other fincas, parcels of land in the countryside, from which he occasionally brings us chestnuts, vegetables, olives or mushrooms.

This simple man was kind of ripped off in this deal as he was paid very little money for land on which a hotel was to be erected, in a prime village location; his house is not where he was lead to believe it would either and he has to rely on a (unwilling at this point) third party for his meals. He has been the butt of many jokes in the village over the years as we have learned. He does not speak all that much but he blows a lot, sort of like whistling but not really. He does that when he is drunk which is normally several times a week. And rightly so I guess as what else is there to do for a single man who never wed, has no children or family to speak of, to do in a village this size? He wonders to his fincas, he hangs out in the village bar drinking a mix of white and sweet wine. He smokes a bit as well but not all that much. Occasionally, Diego helps/assists Francisco with a project he might be working on; Francisco is our maintenance man who lives here in the village and is quite entrepreneurial and so is always busy with one thing or another. On a very rare occasion, he might lend a hand around the hotel but we don't encourage that.

For us, he is mostly an annoyance as he is always there, waiting in front of the hotel first thing in the morning, waiting for his coffee and toast with garlic and olive oil (the traditional Andaluz breakfast). He is not really the first person one wants to see in the morning but there he is. And normally, quite punctually, he will be here at 1.30 PM for his lunch. I recently introduced a new policy where he has to pick up and return his tray to the kitchen himself. Dinner, well dinner is another story.

This man uses the sun as his clock basically. So in summer he will arrive quite late for dinner as the sun sets quite late here in Spain in summer; in winter it is just the opposite, he arrives quite early. Then there are days when he does not turn up at all which we like the best of course. Or he shows at 11 PM or later when we are about to close and retire for the day, expecting to get a meal. On one such occasion, I handed him a piece of fruit and sent him on his way. But to better manage this, I introduced a meal schedule for him which is hanging in the kitchen. It tells him his lunch and dinner times. If he shows later than 10PM, he gets no dinner and I think a two hour window between 8-10 PM is time enough for anyone to show up for a meal.

This is the thorn in our side. As you might be able to tell from this story so far, this man never, well, almost never leaves the village. He has no job so he takes no holiday (and where would he go anyway?). He is always here, 3-6-5 days per year. So what do we do you ask, when we want to escape from here ourselves? Again, Francisco to the rescue... he feeds Diego while we are away. But the rest of the time, it's mainly Ivan who feeds him, but I do as well some times and so does Ivan's father, Mariano, when his parents are visiting.

Diego was only 68 years old when we arrived here and he is in no doubt, better health today than when we arrived as Ivan feeds him well. My dad, Paul, was very friendly with him the two times he's been here and Diego has commented to me on that.

So what else is there to say? Many of our returning clients ask about Diego upon their arrival in the hotel. Those that have not been here before and pass a couple of days here, always inevitably ask, "Who is that man that comes in every day?", no doubt because there is normally little to no conversation between us and him, just a tray of food will be prepared and then he is called to take it away. He eats in the bar, puts his tray away and normally leaves. Sometimes, we have to ask him to bath before he comes into the bar. It is a known fact in Juzcar that Diego thinks that winter time is not the time to bath, it is just too cold outside! I don't believe this is a rule he follows only in winter, in fact, I'm certain. One can imagine that a man who does not bath will stink a bit with time. And on top of this, his cloths are not washed regularly either so add that on top of poor personal hygiene habits and it adds up to a stinky cloud around you that offends most people it comes into contact with. He is a bit indignant when told, "Please bath before you come, you smell" checking his cloths and saying "I just washed this", indicating his cloths.

Mind you, we don't dislike this man, it is just the burden of having to have him around every day. Fortunately, he is not demanding because there are days when we are just out from morning til evening and he gets no lunch as we made no arrangements for it but he does not complain. While he is a simple man, he is not a stupid man so if one tries, one can have a conversation with him, as demonstrated by my dad.

So that is the story of Diego Piña. I have thoughts lots about writing about him but never sat down and actually started the piece so here it is, rolling off the proverbial tongue. Any comments? Everyone who has heard the story tells us to write a book, or comments "only in Spain" or to that effect... but it is humorous, if you are not the one with the obligation to feed him. In fact, making light of it, when asked who this man is, I reply, "He came with the hotel, like a table or another piece of furniture."

We had another death in the village this week. This time a younger person who did not take care of himself. In fact, it was discovered that the house he and his brother were living in needed to be torn down as it was falling in on itself. Amazing conditions some people are willing to live in; the people from the village were even surprised at the mess in this house, filled to the ceiling with trash apparently.

The weather has been good and spring like. The temps have warmed and the flowers are sprouting. The forecast for Ronda is not good for today and tomorrow, rain, no sun. But here in Juzcar it is quite nice, sunny, clear, warm. Better to be in Juzcar than Ronda.

Our art gallery is almost there. The new closet is just about finished; now I have to move everything into it and organise it well. Then the place needs to be cleaned as there is a lot of dust around. We have had plenty of time to work on things upstairs these last couple of weeks as this has been the worst March for bookings, sadly.

And now people are arriving in the bar so I must dash... more later.

Today is Father´s Day in Spain. It is also San Jose Day who is the patron saint of carpenters. Things like that, I never knew growing up in New York. Here in Spain, one learns about patron saints. The calendar issued at each year end by Unicaja Bank, the largest in this area, has the names of the saints on each day of the year, so helpful, no?

We had a death in the village last Friday, a neighbour of ours as well. She was called Maria, what a surprise. She lived two houses down the calle from the hotel. She had a small dog that followed her, slowly, every where she went in the village. She was sometimes friendly enough to say ¨buenas dias¨ or ¨buenas tardes¨ to me or Ivan but she never failed to give a salutation to Lolita, one of our French Bulldogs; ¨Oh Lolita, Lolita, ¿que tal?¨ she would say. We would see her pretty much daily, going to take her trash to the bins or going down to the fountain to fill a bottle of water. Stopping at the mirador with another one of the villagers to chat and look at the view, speculate about the weather. On mornings when we were here early enough, we would see her waiting for the baker to arrive (the baker comes from Ronda daily about 9AM with fresh bread and sweets in his van). And once, we were clearing out some of the quantity of boxes full of vinegar and so we put a couple out in front of the hotel for anyone to help themselves to and help herself she did. She came along moments after the boxes were put out and said, ¨Oh, oh!! What´s this? For me? Ah, have you got some string for me to wrap it up to take home?¨ And off she went with all the vinegar, no word of thanks, no good-bye, just off she went, waddling down to her house, vinegar in hand, dog following behind her.

Her son, Javier, came into the bar on Friday a couple of times, also a new experience. Although they lived practically in front of the hotel and he even helped to build our pool, he never came to our bar before and he certainly never spoke. But on Friday, he was not himself as he had discovered his mother that morning. Now he would be all alone here in the village. He spoke to Ivan and explained a couple of things to him and had a couple of drinks. He came back to the bar later in the afternoon with some family relations and men from the village for coffee and copas of pacharan with ice. He came back in the evening with an aunt or someone that looked like that and wanted lots more pacharan for which I was admonished by this aunt as he was getting drunk.

On Saturday morning when I came to the hotel, the area in front of the hotel was full with cars. Just as I arrived at the hotel, the procession was coming up from Maria´s house with the hearse in front followed by Javier and Mª Carmen on his arm, a moody, somewhat deranged widow from the next street over. They were taking her to the village cemetary for internment. When our waiter arrived at 11.00, he saw all these cars and thought the hotel must be packed but no one was here except us as usual and one drunk called Paco from the next village (a whole other blog entry that is).

Friday was a glorious day as was Saturday, warm, sunny, clear. We had a table of four for lunch on the terrace of people from Ronda, called Rondeños, which does not happen nearly often enough. We had a lovely American couple staying with us for the weekend as well. They live in Cadiz where they have a business. We also had an English couple stay Saturday evening who publish a local English language monthly magazine called ¨Andalucia Life¨. They are doing a story about Bandoleros and this area and so planned to feature the hotel in the article.

We have a new waiter who started the weekend before; his name is Antonio like our previous waiter but that is where the similarities end. He is a very nice regular guy who also has a business which is struggling at the moment given the economics of the times. He and his fiancé, Mª Angeles, run a butcher business in Ronda but as business is down he is supplementing his income by coming to us on the weekends. They are both quite nice people, Sevillanos living in this area. We are now getting some of our meat supplies from him to help him out. In fact, I´m off to Ronda now to go and collect some suckling pig from them.

So I must be off. Another beautiful day here in Juzcar and warm as well. It had cooled a bit earlier in the week but it´s fantastic now. Ciao for now.

Today it is sunny, clear, bright blue and warm; the first spring-like day here in the Genal Valley and it is truly glorious outside. The temperature must be at least 20C. We have a group of Belgians coming for lunch shortly and one of them just arrived in shorts.

The strange thing though is that there is no passing traffic, things look very quiet and deserted actually which is a bit of a let down as one would expect cars passing through on a day like today.

I'm sure our Finnish clients who currently staying with us are out enjoying the weather on their bikes. They arrived on Thursday and went to the La Sierra de las Nieves Natural Park yesterday for a ride and found lots of mist and fog about the park. The park is at a higher altitude than Juzcar so of course it gets worse weather than here when the weather is not good. They had some cool photos of the mist and some ruins around there. It was too windy for them to stay too long but they informed me they saw lots of other bikers about so the park is a good destination for that.

We've been having pretty bad weather these last few days. Lots of wind and rain and cloud cover and power cuts!! It's the power cuts that are the most annoying. Last night for example, we were home watching a DVD and the power kept going off for 2 minutes every 15-20 minutes. So annoying as we had to restart the film from the beginning every time. And the wind has been quite strong too which reminds me a of wind storm we had last year about this time which completely destroyed a cover we had in the pool terrace and blew everything out of shape.

When I went into Ronda this morning, I left Juzcar which was in the sun, windy but in the sun at least. Ronda, on the other hand, was grey and cold. No rain today but just not a very nice day. Coming back to the Genal Valley, it was quite a beautiful sight actually. As I came down the hair-pin turn (there is a slope downwards at this point and the whole valley is lower than where the entrance is) at the entrance to the valley near the village of Parauta (pronounced "Pa-RAU-ta"), the whole valley was just under the cloud/fog and in the distance the cloud/fog thinned out and the sun was shining through. Cartajima was basking in the light with white puffs of cloud behind in and fog coming down off the mountain in front of it. It was quite a sight.

And then there are all the cherry trees which are now in bloom and are spectacular!! White or pink puffs of flowers adorn these individual branches from the tree's trunk up to the tip of the branches which are reaching skywards.

There is supposed to be lots of sun tomorrow and Sunday and then more clouds next week but the NOAA weather site says no rain for the next few days which is good. Temperatures up to 18 degrees... wwwweeee, happy times when the weather improves!

Our art gallery is coming along. We finally got that wall up to create a closet for the extra beds and cleaning items. It needs to be rendered and a door installed and then it will be almost finished. A couple of coats of white paint and then it will be done. Then we need to install the hanging system for the art work and then finally we can get some things hung there. I have a few items to hang already as we have been fortunate to have some gifts of paintings left here by a few of our clients. We are also speaking with some local artists to exhibit some of their work here. I hope this will be done by Easter as this whole project is taking a lot longer than I had anticipated. But given the fact that we have few booking so far this month, we will be able to spend more time working on this project as well as the flat and move it along faster!!

I have redesigned my website as mentioned in the last blog entry but I have now also included a new page which will be about the art gallery. A little history of what it is, why we have it and what is currently on exhibition. Hopefully this will draw more business. All very exciting stuff.

In the flat, the windows are finished as is the frame of the new terrace door and picture window. Now we just need the door to be hung and the glass installed. Still plenty of things to work on here.

The hotel is almost fully booked for Easter and Holy Week so if there are people wanting to come then, book now.