Be careful with Rights of Way when buying property in Spain.
For instance, in olive harvesting season at the end of the year, you may well wake up to see an old man on his mule, with his little dog trotting happily in front, ambling down your “private” track.
Although there is no “right of way”, nevertheless the old boy has ALWAYS gone that way to pick his olives.
Not much you can do unless you seriously want to alienate your neighbours: relax, crack open a bottle, and ask him for some of his olive oil when it’s been pressed.
Other problems are not what they first appear…
An acquaintance, John, built a house on land bordering an olive grove. Along the border, partly on his land, partly on his neighbour’s (Paco), the previous owner of John’s land had given permission for Paco’s cousin to have access to his olives further down the hillside.
One day a bulldozer arrived and dug out a platform on Paco’s land next to John’s boundary, leaving a drop the height of a double-decker bus along the border.
For safety reasons John then built a wall along this cliffside, about 1.5 metres in from the edge. 1.5 metres just happens to be the accepted width of a path (camino) big enough for a mule with side baskets.
A few days later he noticed a gathering of people outside his gates, shouting and gesticulating heatedly. This ‘meeting’ was made up of: Paco (agitated and redfaced), Paco’s cousin with wife, son and mother (the latter elderly, stooped, dressed all in widow’s black, clearly upset); John’s builder and the builder’s brother; the Land/Property Broker (corredor) who had found John the land in the first place (a welshman, been there before, resigned to spanish dispute arbitration procedures) and of course, arriving late and apparently uninvited, John himself.
The reason for all this aggro was of course the access to the olives. Paco maintained that there had been a right of way for years and years; John had built a wall and not left enough room for a mule, not just a mule on its own, but a mule
wearing side baskets to carry the harvested olives to the mill.
‘But,’ the builder countered, ‘you have made a dangerous cliffside and bulldozed away half the ‘path’ anyway, if indeed any path existed in the first place.’
‘What do you know about anything, you’re not even from round here’,
retorted Paco. (True, but not as if he’s from the other end of Spain, only the next village about 3 miles away; in fact you can see the edge of it on the other side of the valley!)
On and on, backwards and forwards, argument and counter argument, until it was obvious that no agreement would be reached, and by now everyone was getting bored and hungry.
Eventually it was left at something of a stalemate; the only fair outcome being to refer the dispute back to the former owner of John’s land, luckily an upstanding and respected member of the local community, whose family had owned the land for 60 years.
He in fact categorically stated that there was no right of way, and that Paco’s cousin was definitely trying it on. Why? Because he wanted to establish access to his land; not to pick his olives, but to be able to sell his plot for building.
Had John given in to these demands he would soon have heard the unmistakeable sound of a JCB preparing the ‘mule-track’ for the construction lorries!
A year later and Paco’s cousin has managed to get access from another part of his land, so at last the problem has gone away.
Moral: don’t be bullied and bamboozled by crafty locals with tales of ancient rights of way, unless, of course, it’s a vía pecuaria.
Check, double-check and check again.
Watch out too if buying in towns or villages. There can be some peculiar access issues such as shared staircases, roof terraces, passageways and the like.