21st May CASTELO BRANCO

It’s ours!!!!!! Well technically it’s Brett’s; apparently the deed can only be in one name and as I have children the inheritance laws wouldn’t allow me to will it to Brett so it had to be in his name and then he made a Portuguese will (to will it to me) – the truck is going to be in my name (costs nearly as much!!). After paying all the taxes, solicitor’s and notary’s fees (and of course the 46750€ for the house) we have worked out that in real money (sterling) it has actually cost us £41329 – that’s ridiculous for 13.3 acres plus two big buildings.

At 12.00 noon we went to the Notary’s office along with the owner (Luis Aleixo de Figueiredo, plus his wife and daughter), our solicitor (Liliana), our translators (Leo and Erica), plus the secretary from the estate agent (Liliana). The notary read everything out in Portuguese and then our solicitor, the estate agent’s secretary, our interpreters and sometimes even the notary translated bits that they thought were relevant into English. We gave the owner a cheque for 40000€ plus 750€ cash (the estate agents had asked us previously to give it to him like this as, they said, he had some shopping to do); the owner immediately handed the cash to the estate agent’s secretary (who went bright red and said, give it to me later – or words to that effect); we concluded from this exchange that that was the balance of their fees (they’d already had a bank transfer of 6000€, our deposit) so they made 6750€ (nearly 15%)!!!! No wonder they are so pushy.

 Mr Luis (for some reason they call him that rather than Senor Figueiredo) then insisted on buying everyone a drink to celebrate; he kept crying (he did it when we were viewing the property too) which made us feel mean, but he assured us he definitely wanted to sell. We have an appointment with him tomorrow morning when he wants to walk us around the boundaries (again) and hand over the keys, he says he’s leaving us some equipment that he wants to show us too (a water pump, olive harvesting apparatus etc) – apparently his chickens and donkey are still there, we actually have this worry that he’s still going to turn up every morning and continue to work the land!

Mr Luis also told us that the olive trees produce enough olives for 500 litres of olive oil; apparently you take your olives to the local press and they will tell you how many kilos of olives they want in return for 1 litre of oil; Mr Luis says in Penamacor, our nearest press, they exchange 10 kilos for one litre of oil (which means we could be harvesting five tonnes of olives!). Leo and Erica said that the exchange rate can vary between 7 to 12 kilos/litre (no money changes hands).

We took Leo and Erica (and their baby, Aurora, and Erica’s dad) out to lunch to celebrate; we had lots of snacky food plus drinks and it came to a grand total of 12€75 – it is very cheap to eat out here.

Once again we’re feeling a bit flat after such a momentous occasion; I suppose it hasn’t sunk in yet. We’re still working on our house design – it’s all changed again.