The transaction

Now that Ardbol Globo really existed, we opened the bank account and transferred the money to the account for increasing the capital of Ardbol Globo, we could sign the last things we had to sign at the notary, before we could sign the purchase contracts. This went all very smoothly, having done all we needed we released all the tensions and were really tired. So instead of visiting Barcena we went to Dorien’s place, did some work there and went to bed early. Ready for our first appointment next morning at 9:00 at the notary.

Next day, Maaike woke up first checked the time and called out to Tibor: "It's already 8:15, we have to go now!". Maaike never wakes up that late, but on maybe one of the most important days of our lives we overslept! I think we were so relaxed because we had done everything we had to do, to be able to sign the contracts. Although there were still some uncertainties: we already heard from Ricardo, that one seller probably wouldn't come. He was supposed to sell us a small landplot, not in our top 10 of important plots. When we mentioned it to the Notary, she told us that one of the sellers, of the most import land, wanted to do the transaction in cash. Since we wouldn’t be able to get 38.000 euro’s in cash in one day, we were happy that the notary said that paying in cash is not allowed. So we thought we'll see what happens.

10 minutes late we arrived, Marcelino, his cousin Ricardo and the first seller, Maria Natividad, were already there. Maria, a very neat lady, sold us one of the bigger lands. We expected to sign the contract first, but we had the pay first and send the Notary a copy of the transaction, because that was part of the purchase contract. That all went well and we could sign the contract. Yeay our first land was in our hands.

Then 3 brothers and their uncle came, they were there tot sell some land, one was from one brother, the other shared by to brothers. We paid, they signed and al went smooth.

Then the old man was supposed to come, but as we had expected, he didn't, so we went for a coffee with Marcelino and Ricardo.

The next seller was Virginia Rojas, who was represented by her son and daughter. They were selling us the land that is located next to the village, and also some of the nicer houses of the village. They were very sweet and sentimental about the transaction. They said, if we had the money we would have restored the houses ourselves. 

They are very happy that we are going to restore the village. The daughter had very nice earrings of witches and therefore we refer to her as 'the which'.  Tibor got her contact details and since than we get a lot of information about what it used to be like in the village.

Then it was time for the last seller (apart from Marcelino, restaura bárcena): Jesús Marie, who was going to sell us the land that was most important for us. It was also the seller that said he wanted to be paid in cash. It turned out that he was at another notary, luckily in Briviesca, so 10 min later he was there. 

He came in pretty agitated, saying that he wasn’t going to sign before the money was on his account, one of the reasons is that he didn’t knew us and therefor didn’t trust us. A discussions followed, were mostly Ricardo and the notary tried to convince Jesús Marie, that the reason we sign a contract at the notary place with the notary present is to make sure that the transaction would be fair for all parties. Explaining that as long as the money was not on his account, the sell wouldn’t be legal and the land would still be his. 

It all didn’t help. He didn’t trust us and he didn’t trust the system. After a while we decided to go to for plan B. We went to our bank, to ask what we could do to make sure the money would be in his account when we transferred it. They said you just have to check the immediate box and it will be on his account in 15 minutes. 

So we did, costing us 210 euro’s. And then all of us went to the bank of Jesús Marie to check if the money was on is account. It wasn’t there after 15min, it wasn’t there after an hour. Ricardo called a friend who worked at that bank, who said it could take 2 hours. After 2 hours of waiting it still wasn’t there. So all of us went back to the notary, asking what to do. We decided to go for lunch and come back at 16:00 (it was around 14:00 then). 

Walking back and forth between the two banks

 

Jesús Marie went back to his village and we went to a restaurant with Marcelino, Ricardo and Alejandro (Marcelino’s son, who also joined the party at some point). We had a nice and fun lunch with them. In the restaurant were also the three brothers and their uncle, enjoying the money they just gained, I guess.

At 16:00 we went back and so did Jesús Marie, but the money was still not on his account. In the mean time we thought about a back-up plan: we would already sign the contract with Jesús Maria and he would sign when the money was on his account. And we would sign the contract with Restaura Bárcena but not pay them yet, if the condition that the sell wouldn’t be valid, if we couldn’t buy Jesús Marie’s land, would still be valid. This was the case so we could do that. 

We couldn’t sign the contract with Jesús Marie before he would sign, but we could authorize Marcelino, so that’s what we did. At 17:00 Jesús Marie checked his bank account again, but still the money wasn’t there. So all we could do was hope for the best, that it would be there on Monday and that he would sign then.

In the car back to San Sebastian we (Maaike and Tibor) talked about the interesting situation we found ourselves in. What if Jesús Marie wouldn’t sign? Then we would still have bought about 4 ha of land and 5 houses. And we would have it for free, because Restaura Bárcena would have to pay us a fine as they could not fulfill the full contract. 

Would we be happy with that? When we hadn’t fallen in love yet with Bárcena, that was what we had in mind, 5 houses and some land.

But on Monday sometime around 13.00, we got the redeeming answer: Jesús Mari signed the contract!

The contract