Fixing up this old place in Pampaneira wasn’t some romantic idea—I didn’t arrive with a toolbelt and a vision board. I just walked in, saw the cracked beams and sagging doors, and weirdly thought: yep, this is it. It didn’t make sense then, and it still doesn’t, not really.
The floors were all over the place. One room was somehow both uphill and downhill. A doorway led into what I thought was a cupboard, but turned out to be half a staircase to nowhere. Plaster flaked like snow every time I touched a wall. The whole place felt like it was holding its breath, waiting to see if I’d actually bother.
I didn’t know what I was doing. Still don’t, half the time. But I lucked out early—I met Diego.
Diego doesn’t say much. He builds things like he’s always known how. One day he stood in my kitchen (well, what would eventually become my kitchen) and ran his hand over the main beam like it was something sacred. “Castaño,” he said. Chestnut. Local. “Older than both of us.” Probably older than half the village, to be honest.
And then there’s Elena. She runs the hardware shop and has the patience of a saint, or maybe she just finds me entertaining. I held up a tool one afternoon and asked if it was for digging. She didn’t blink. “That’s a plaster trowel, Robert.” Said it like she was teaching a child. Didn’t even charge me full price.
People here don’t do grand gestures. They just… show up. Rosa from the fruit stall saw me struggling with a doorframe late one evening. I didn’t even hear her walk in. She handed me a pot of stew, said nothing else. Just nodded and left. I nearly cried. Over lentils.
Some days I wonder what the hell I’m doing here. Other days I get it completely. Pampaneira has its own pace. You either fight it and burn out, or you let go and fall into rhythm. The town kind of teaches you—slowly, without saying much. A bit like Diego.
When I needed a break, I wandered back to the market—the smells, the noise, the gossip around the stalls. If you want a taste of that chaos, I wrote about it in A Day at the Market: Embracing Local Life—because it’s one of those days that reminded me why I picked this place.
I didn’t come here to build a dream house. I just wanted to breathe. Maybe fix a few walls. Maybe fix a bit more than that. And bit by bit, it’s working. The door closes now. The kitchen’s more kitchen than chaos. The beam holds. So do I.
Most days.