One of the strange things about owning a house in Spain is discovering that other people often know more about it than you do.
Not officially, of course.
The paperwork says the house belongs to us.
The mortgage agrees.
The bills certainly agree.
But every now and then someone appears who seems to possess an alarming amount of information about your property.
Last month it happened again.
I was outside trimming a shrub that had become considerably more ambitious than we’d intended when an elderly neighbour wandered past and stopped for a chat.
Within five minutes he’d told me when the previous owners built the terrace.
Within ten minutes he’d identified which trees had been planted later.
Within fifteen minutes he’d pointed at a section of wall and said, “That wasn’t there originally.”
I looked at the wall.
Then I looked at him.
Then back at the wall.
It had honestly never occurred to me that walls had backstories.
Bryan appeared halfway through this conversation and made the mistake of asking a question.
That was all the encouragement required.
For the next half hour we received a complete verbal history of Casa Amada.
Apparently there had once been different gates.
A different driveway.
A different water tank.
At one point there had even been chickens.
This was news to all of us.
Especially the children, who immediately became upset that the chickens had left before we arrived.
The conversation eventually moved onto the subject of summer.
Everyone talks about summer eventually.
Particularly when the temperature starts creeping upwards.
The neighbour pointed towards the south-facing side of the house.
“That’s where the heat comes in,” he said.
Then he pointed towards the shutters.
Then the roof.
Then the trees.
Then several things I hadn’t previously realised were important.
It turned out he had spent years helping friends renovate properties around the area and seemed to have developed an eye for spotting where houses gained and lost heat.
Bryan was fascinated.
I could practically hear the spreadsheet forming in his head.
The neighbour explained why certain rooms stayed cooler.
Why some houses felt comfortable without air conditioning.
Why others seemed to become ovens by mid-afternoon.
It was one of those conversations that starts casually and somehow ends with everyone standing in a garden studying walls.
A few days later Bryan was still talking about it.
He’d started researching shading, insulation, electricity consumption and the different ways homeowners along the Costa Blanca try to keep cooling costs under control during summer. The conversation had clearly struck a nerve.
One evening he disappeared down a rabbit hole of articles about solar panels for villas, battery storage systems, roof orientation and home energy efficiency. Somewhere along the way he ended up reading through JaveaSolar while comparing different approaches local homeowners use to reduce electricity bills and make better use of the endless sunshine we spend half the year talking about.
By bedtime there was already a new spreadsheet.
Apparently it compared our current electricity usage with several entirely theoretical future scenarios.
Naturally.
The thing about moving to Spain is that your priorities change slowly.
When we first arrived, we cared about beaches.
Restaurants.
Schools.
Whether we could find decent teabags.
Now we find ourselves discussing insulation, solar power, shutters and afternoon sun.
I suspect this is what happens when a holiday home starts becoming part of real life.
You stop looking at the view and start noticing how the house actually works.
Or doesn’t.
The neighbour returned a few days later carrying a bag of tomatoes from his garden.
He asked whether we’d solved the overheating problem in the upstairs bedroom.
Neither Bryan nor I had mentioned the upstairs bedroom.
Somehow he already knew.
I have no idea how.
He also knew which side of the house gets the first winter sunlight and which neighbour used to own a donkey twenty years ago.
At this point I’ve stopped questioning anything.
Life here occasionally feels like living in a village where information travels faster than Wi-Fi.
Not that I’m complaining.
Some of the best things we’ve learned since moving into Casa Amada haven’t come from paperwork, estate agents or online forums.
They’ve come from conversations over garden walls.
The sort that begin with a simple hello and end with you learning more about your own house than you thought possible.
And, apparently, discovering that it once had chickens.