Hills of Almatret, Spain - October 2012
It has been such a long journey since we started searching for the perfect place to develop our project. So many emails exchanged, photos viewed and descriptions of land for sale read, discussed and dismissed. It was while in the middle of the Serra da Cantareira mountains in Brazil, staying at the community of Matutu that this plot of land in Spain came to us. After a couple of weeks negotiating with Miguel the owner, we agreed to book a view with him. This made us so very excited and because of this we decided to leave Brazil five weeks earlier than we has originally planned to, so we changed our flights and headed back to Spain to view the land.
We arrived in Madrid, there we stayed a couple of nights with our dear friend Maite and got onto a night bus towards Lleida, a large city in Catalunya. We barely slept that night, the excitement, anticipation and the worry of whether we had made the right decision to leave Brazil early weighed heavy on our minds.
A few hours after our arrival we took another bus that would drop us outside the village of Almatret where Miguel had agreed to meet us. He was driving a Toyota 4x4 and with a warm welcome took us to see the land.
We were amazed by the location, the rocks and mountains around us, the way that in a place such as Spain there were still hidden gems, forgotten by modern society, the smell of rosemary, thyme and pine trees in the air was intoxicating.
We walked around the land for about a hour and a half. It certainly ticked all the boxes which we were looking for: hills, trees, no noise, close to water, easy access but away from motorway or busy centers, the possibility to expand, and most importantly astonishing surroundings that would fill our lives with endless joy, and warm the hearts of our guests.
On our way back Miguel decided to show us the view of the River Ebro, he drove us there and by the time we were up the hill viewing the river our chins were literally touching the chests! We do not think we have ever said wow so repetitively! Although neither of us said anything to the other, we both knew that this was the place, our decision was already made in our hearts and our heads, we were both in awe of what we had seen, and knew this was place we would spend for the rest of our life together.
We made a quick stop to talk over some more of the details that needed to be arranged, and we agreed that we would get back to him after a few days with our answer.
We headed for the capital city of the state of Aragon, Zaragoza, There we contacted our lawyer Raquel and from that point on she did all the arrangements with Miguel and all the paper work that needed to be signed in order to exchange the deed.
We bought the land!
