Mojacar: The Price of a Dream

By Kate Coxen

Mojacar The Price of a Dream isa story about a small Andalucian village much undiscovered until the 70's, built on a hilltop surrounded by mountainous desert. In those early days my husband and I chose this place to build a small house where we and our four children could enjoy our holidays in a wonderful climate. The story tells of the first few years of building and establishing our home to the present day and my life here. From the day I set foot in Mojacar it became my dream to live here. It finally cost me my marriage and almost my family, but I achieved that dream

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Feb 13, 2009
• ISBN: 9781491896242

Kate Coxen

I was born in 1938 and grew up in London during the second world war.  My latter years in Britain were spent in Gloucestershire, where I think of as my English home.  I have owned a home in Mojacar since 1970 and have lived here as a Spanish resident for the last 7 years.  I decided  to write Mojacar the Price of a Dream for my grandchildren and great granddaughter Grace.

Book preview

© 2009 Kate Coxen. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 2/2/2009

ISBN: 978-1-4389-0840-3 (sc)

978-1-4918-9624-2 (e)

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Contents

Introduction-The Secret Destination

Sounds Of Jingling Bells

After Hungry Harry

Stormy Weather

Army Fashion

The Film Set And Franks’ Place

Love In The Air

The World Is A Small Place

Wedding Preparations

Part 2 The Eighties

Sounds Of Bulldozers And Diggers

Grandchildren Started To Arrive

Our Second Beautiful Granddaughter

The Little House

In The Mid Eighties

The 90’S Part 3

The Nineties-Shocks And Surprises

1992 Saw A Lot Of Changes In Cheadle Road

Rita Had Been Very Homesick Over Christmas

1994 Saw More Changes

Some Pages From My Diary, Just As I Wrote Them In 1994

At College We Brought Recipes

I Decided That I Would Like To Have Under My Belt Just One ‘O’ Level

A Surprise

July 1997

More From My Diary:-

Crossing The ‘Tees’ And Dotting The ‘Eyes’

A New Life Begins

Capriana Must Be Sold

2001 We Leave Gloucester For Good

June 2005

Our Original Completion Date For Casa Roxana Was Early In 2005

Our First Year In Roxana

Hands, Knees And Bumps-A-Daisy Or A Day Out In The Cuevas De Sorbas

Christmas On The Med 1997

Mojacar Changed All Of Our Lives

Happy Ending Saturday June 14Th 2008

Walt Disney

Fiestas

This little book is for all my family

past and present but especially for Grace Williams

my beautiful great granddaughter

And her lovely mum, Helena

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Introduction-The Secret Destination

Whilst other Costa’s in Spain developed and grew in the 60’s, the Almerian coast remained undiscovered, mostly because of its isolation and lack of transportation, it was for the adventurous who would fly to Malaga or Alicante, (Almeria was still a toy town airport) and then take a car to look around, or the better off who had lots of time and money to meander down through France or Portugal, to discover at the end of their journey, Mojacar. That is probably how the first few foreigners came to make a home in here. We soon learnt that there was one other way, a travel firm known as Horizon Holidays, with whom for £25 one could buy a week’s package, be carried to the front door of the Hotel Mojacar, the village’s only modern hotel built to accommodate the first tourists, we would then hire a car, spend the week in our own villa, but call at the hotel for our all included evening meal and even a swim in the pool if we fancied.

My own first night in Mojacar was spent in the Hotel Mojacar, when I visited to view our partially completed house, whose construction my husband and daughter had set in motion the previous year. For those familiar with the Victoria buildings, and have called at the Jazz bar for a drink or to listen to some music, you will have sat or stood in the foyer of the old hotel, once so magnificent, with its chandelier hanging down in the cave bar, where then you could sit (and still can) with a quiet drink or a coffee. Only my second visit to the country, I was very naive in the customs and language and after ordering myself a jug of delicious, fruity sangria instead of a glass, I was determined to learn the Spanish tongue. I left the restaurant that night by pointing my finger to the door and trying to follow it, I never made that mistake again. Later when the hotel fell into disrepair, the doors held together by a rusty chain, one could peer inside and see the huge chandelier, laying in the dust and rubble like a scene from the Phantom of the Opera.

Early in the 70’s Horizon decided to curtail its Holidays to this outlandish place and the only way we could enjoy our second home, was to fly to Alicante and hire a car, until Tarleton Travel was born, it soon became an institution that we hoped would go on for ever, a phone call to Staffordshire, a chat with Dr Sethi who had made our lives so much easier, our tickets arrived, we were on our way. Waiting for us at Almeria, on our first of all fortnightly flights, would be Eve and the battered old coach. The Tarleton bus was where you would meet the fellow lovers of Mojacar, to wave to later on the beach, or in a shop or bar.

Puerto Rey was famous then for just one thing, something unheard of for most of us, a small ‘nudist camp’, which I believe we now refer to as ‘Naturism’ and is so popular with many people. In fact by the reaction of our smaller children, when we explained to them how it worked, their horror, was like mine when told at the age of 5 that we were to have an Italian prisoner of war camp a mile from our home. The Tarleton bus made many stops to and from the airport, picking up passengers between Mojacar and Carboneras, and one of these was Purerto Rey. The bus pulled into a lay-by in the road, by the side of a cluster of trees and 2 tall iron gates, which were the only landmark at the time for the village,( if there was one) and a family got on. The bus fell silent as they passed through and took their places at the back. A shrill little voice from a small boy who was clutching my hand, rang out ‘Mummy why have those people got their clothes on’!!!!!!! Silence prevailed for some moments and then laughter rang out throughout the bus, even the nudists laughed. From then on everyone chatted and laughed all the way to the airport.

We learnt very early on not to be ill whilst here in Mojacar, and for the first few years dared not venture out here before having typhoid jabs and anything else currently recommended, as like everything else it would be Almeria for anything other than a cough or a sneeze, and of course if it was dad who was ill it was a

problem as there was no way to get there, as no ambulance service existed. Doctor Diego had his surgery near

to where the market used to be held at the foot of the hill…….. you entered a door into a small dark room,

walls lined with a couple of benches, the form was to ask who was last…if that person was still there, there might perhaps only be 2 or 3 people waiting.it looked good. One after one the coughs and sneezes took their turn to consult Diego, as soon as you thought your turn was imminent another person came through door and stepped in before you. It seems the full procedure was to look in, check who was last, establish yourself as ‘next’ then go off to do your shopping, only returning when it was almost time to go in. I think I only visited Diego once, when my small son convinced me he had been bitten by a scorpion and it turned out only to be a large mosquito.

This was village life in the early days.

So now we go back to 1970……………………………………………………a villa in Spain in those days

was usually for the rich and the retired, we were neither of those, in our thirties, me working as a part-time play group organiser for the county council and my husband in the marketing department of the local pie and sausage manufacturers. We had 4 children ranging from 5 to 15 and so our lives were quite busy, but it was the age of property gazumping and we’d had a bad experience, so we decided to live in a bungalow with a large garden instead of a four bedroom house and look for a holiday home in Cornwall. We had exactly three thousand pounds spare money to invest, but that was not sufficient for a cottage in Cornwall so we started to look elsewhere. We were attracted by an advertisement in the Sunday Times offering apartments in Malta within our price range, sadly they were all sold by the time we picked up the telephone on Monday

morning…….lucky for us perhaps as within a few years most of the British people had lost their Maltese

homes courtesy of someone call ‘Don Mintoff. After a holiday on the Costa Dorada we started to research Spain, but again our funds would only buy us a one bedroom flat in Torremolinos, and then one day we saw the advertisement that would change our lives.

It was my dream from the moment I first saw Mojacar to live here and this I achieved in 2001, over thirty years later, not with Michael but with my new husband of four years, and it was after moving into our first home together here that I started to write things down. I started just with the ‘Sound ofJingling bells’, which fascinated some of my grandchildren, and after this I was impelled to continue to tell my story of the passing years that bring Mojacar to the cosmopolitan lively town that is it today.

SOUNDS OF JINGLING BELLS

Sounds of jingling bells and lowing cattle draw me to the veranda at the back of our house. Our village

with its centuries of history is perched on the skyline, so white against an azure background, glinting in the rays of brilliant sunshine. There is a nip in the air this early January morning in 2003 as the goatherd stands high on a hillock, snug in his woollies and cap. With the sharp mountain range they have descended just behind him, the goatherd holds a staff in his hand, his shaggy dog stands close to his legs. They watch the braying goats as they tear at what greenery they can find, rushing greedily along in what to them must be a lush valley, only days before we welcomed deluges of precious rain.

Fifteen minutes and they have passed by and I force myself to turn away from the view that can hold me for hours, bare mountains that must have stood there for millions of years, at their feet, houses, popping up here and there amongst the sparse ruins of cortijos from more recent years. In the 1940’s my son-in-law and his sister were born in one of these roofless little dwellings, now very overgrown by cacti and other fascinating desert-like shrubbery, poking its way through the crumbling stone walls. Their mother tells tales of how, in those days she would walk overnight with her donkey laden with oranges and tomatoes, the nine or ten miles as the crow flies, across ramblas, along the tracks and lanes to the town of Vera, where in the morning she would stand in the market and sell her fruit, before riding her donkey back home to arrive the next day.

Later the family moved up to the village, which in the fifties and sixties was rapidly becoming derelict. The walls of the houses had blackened with time and many had fallen down. The narrow streets were paved only with mud, and when it rained rivers ran down as the water poured from the gutter-less roof tops, rain was the only water to come to the top of the village. This particular hilltop had been chosen for habitation due to the fast flowing fountain in its lower region, it was not until the seventies that the villagers had the luxury of water in their homes. Every day, the womenfolk rode down the hill on their donkeys, to the fountain where they gathered chatting whilst washing their clothes, before filling pitchers for the donkeys to carry back up the hill to their homes. For many years after their washing machines had been installed, the women still came to the fountain, as no modern gadget could take the place of the companionship that existed as they washed out their smalls. We still now go every week to fill containers with the beautiful water, so much better to drink than the desalinated stuff that flows through our taps, for which our parched country must be so grateful. Today, the fountain is frequented by tourists carrying cameras. They love to listen to stories of how in the eighties, the mayor would turn off the village supply so as to water his tomato plantations. This practice could last several days so once again we would flock to collect water,

I wander through the house until I am standing on a terrace from where I can peer across rows of rooftops, with their satellites and blackened chimney pots. The sea is quiet and calm today between palm trees swaying their heads in the breeze, what have all the years done?

In 1970 very few people in Britain had heard of Mojacar, we certainly hadn’t. An Andalucian village, one and a half miles inland from the barren, stony, rocky beach, protected from storms and evils by a totem god, to be seen painted or inscribed on doorways and caves everywhere, dating back hundreds of years. The easiest way to describe the Indalo Man, is to compare him to a pin man, holding up a rainbow. Transportation was nil, so the only way from the airport of Almeria, if you could find a flight to get there, was by car. It was not any wonder that it was so little known, but something was happening, a British tour company was opening a hotel in the village and starting to bring holiday makers, one flight per week from Gatwick.

A newspaper column by one centimetre was to change our lives, and after a long, long drive from Malaga in a hire car we arrived. The ingenious mayor at the time saw a future for his village. To bring revenue for restoration and perhaps development of tourism, he offered free plots of land to people who would build immediately. Two young American brothers saw this potential as well. The younger man threw a pebble and where it landed would be one corner of our boundary, the second another, the third corner marked by a fig tree and the last a rock. The brothers could build us a house on this plot for £2,800, which would have three vital bedrooms and when we would be old, we could retire here for the rest of our lives. Nine months later we came to Mojacar again, and stayed in the new hotel. We found a promising shell of a house, to be completed in 3 more months, a few other shell-like houses stood convincingly around and a track ran down to the main road, where the only building was a rustic ‘hostal’ surrounded by pigs and chickens. Children could walk to the beach and safely cross to the rocks and sand, being seen for miles

School broke for the holidays and six of us piled into the car, taking pillows and pans and as many necessary items as would fit in, with the tent on top, needed for the overnight stop in Madrid. Three glorious weeks ahead to establish our new home……..we thought!

Some six or seven miles before reaching Mojacar we stopped in a town with a furniture shop and bought beds. The shopkeeper must have known a shortcut as when we arrived at the house, the beds were propped up against the outside wall. Then our bubble burst, not a stones more work had been done since we left three months ago. The houses around ours were finished and occupied. Sympathetic neighbours offered help and advice, we were to spend several more nights in our tiny tent, this time on a campsite a mile away from our house, but with showers and loos.

Next morning we returned to the town with the furniture shop as we were told that here we would find the local Notary’s office. He sat in a huge swivel chair at the top of a beautiful old building where my limited Spanish was enough to explain our