Alfredo once lived in Bárcena

Finally, it's vacation time again. We're going to Briviesca for a week, a village about half an hour's drive from Bárcena. Our first appointment for renting a house in Lences is rescheduled, but the second appointment with former resident Alfredo is still on.

Just before eleven o'clock, we drive to our village, followed by a small car behind us all the way to Bárcena. Five people get out of the car: an elderly couple, two middle-aged individuals, and one younger person. The man turns out to be Alfredo, the 85-year-old former resident who wants to sell his property. Together with his wife and two daughters and his grandson.

He has four ruins and a piece of land, the latter of which nicely connects to our village. We all walk through the village together as he points out and explains things. He indicates where the school used to be, but his wife interrupts him, saying no, it was over there. He's also still upset that money once collected to connect the village to the electricity network, suddenly was gone. He was 25 years old when he married his wife and left due to the lack of electricity.

He also shows us his fruit trees bearing sweet plums and almonds. One of his houses has a beehive that yields 20 kilos of honey per year. As we were walking around, some tourists also passed by. Thanks to the nice weather, everyone started conversations, making the village lively and cheerful for a while.

Afterward, we went in search of the water well. According to Alfredo, it should be somewhere in the bushes. After searching for a while, we couldn't find it, so that will be a project for the future.

After this enjoyable walk, we went to Lences where they are currently staying. There, we finalized the deal and were given cookies and a jar of Bárcena honey. Before we left, they showed us a shorter route to Briviesca. This shows how important local contacts can be. We had a really nice day.

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The first week of work

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El Vicino

In May we went to 'our' village to show it to the parents of Maaike. So we drove there and after a half our drive with a lot of corners we were a bit drowsy getting out of the car. And there stood a friendly man in blue overalls. He seemed Spanish we asked Maaike to talk to him. But she did not know what to say. So we looked at each other for a couple of minutes. Then he started to tell that the village is empty which we agreed upon off course. He also told that the village was being bought by some people. Maaike asked if she should reply and we said yes please do. After telling the we are the mysterious people we are buying the village he started to tell a lot of stories. His name is Gerardo. He was born in the village and now lives in Burgos and in the summer in Abajas. He knew about the buy because he owns a parcel of land and did not want to sell. He want to keep it for income and only wants to rent it out. So we talked about that for a bit and as we were intereste...

Finding the right pieces of land

When we first visited Bárcena de Bureba we where guided by the current owner Marcelino. As we where interested, we told him about our project Ardbol. We explained him that we needed about 5 to 10 hectares of land. He replied that it was no problem, he knew many farmers in the area. Soon we got an image of the land area (See image below) from Marcelino without any explanation but it looked promising. We assumed the black crosses where the pieces of land we could buy. When I checked it on the Spanish cadastral website some pieces where quite clear but some existed out of many small parts. After the price negotiation we where anxiously waiting on which pieces of land we could buy. In august we got a large zipfile with new information. As Yasmin could not open it and we where on mobiles we needed to wait until we where behind a computer, which of course added on to the tension. Finally we could open it. In it where 64 files. 60 of each house and 4 for the land. See the next imag...

ardbol

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