ANOTHER VOICE

MATTHEW PARRIS

My war in Spain with the the water terrorist

Last winter, from the town of Manresa in Catalonia, I wrote on this page about an ancient house in the Pyrenees; a wicked 13th-century bishop; and the mysterious (some say divine) death-ray which shot from a shrine in the sacred mountain of Montserrat, to kill him.

The house was l’Avenc, a fortified mountain mansion which dates from the 12th century and which my sister Belinda, her husband Quim and I have been rescuing from ruin. The bishop was Galzeran Sacosta, born at l’Avenc towards the end of the 13th century. And La Misteriosa Llum was the ray of light by which, in nearby Manresa, it was believed that in 1345 God dispatched Sacosta, because for five years he had blocked the construction by pickaxe of a canal across diocesan lands, to bring the drought-stricken town water.

For more than six centuries, every year since then, the town has celebrated the day of that miracle in their Fira de l’Aixada (pickaxe fair) in February, and it was from this fair that I reported. I was writing a book about l’Avenc. If only (I wrote here) the infant Galzeran born seven centuries ago had known the infamy, the darkness — and the Light — which lay ahead; and that an Englishman would one day own his house and write for The Spectator about him. What a twist!

It was not the final twist, I said. That obstinate old bishop ‘has the last laugh, and one day — perhaps in my book — I shall tell you how’.

The book is now finished. This is the tale, the final twist, which I relate: In the spring of 2002 my sister Belinda was walking along the clifftops not far from l’Avenc. She smelt a poisonous smell, as of corruption, and it seemed to be coming up from a thousand feet below. She reported it. The police found the source. A neighbouring farmer had been tipping dead animals over the cliff. This was around the time of an outbreak of swine fever on the Continent, and the farm’s owner — an obstinate old man — was landed with a hefty fine.

Unfortunately the obstinate old man owns the plentiful spring from which l’Avenc (as of right) gets its water. He cut off our supply. This happened just as building and restoration work at the house was getting into its swing. We have tried everything to get our water back. First we tried discussion and persuasion. Belinda (who speaks fluent Catalan and has been elected a councillor in the nearby village of Tavertet) just got shouted at. We decided to go to law. Depriving people of water is a criminal offence in Spain and we tried a criminal prosecution. This was unwise. We could hardly prove beyond reasonable doubt that the old boy had himself turned off the tap. The case failed.

All this time we were having to tanker in the water we so desperately needed, at huge expense. Once we snuck across our neighbour’s fields, located the underground tap, and turned it on, filling our tanks overnight. Our joy was boundless. The next night somebody snuck across our fields, found our taps and drained all our tanks, thousands of litres, on to the ground. The supply pipe was then cut and permanently stopped up.

In despair we turned to the civil law. On a frosty morning early last year Belinda, her husband and I waited in a passage outside the court in the city of Vic, praying that our four key witnesses would turn up: Joan Sarsanedas, our master-builder at l’Avenc, the mayor of Tavertet, and two building labourers who had been thrown off the old man’s land while trying to repair the pipe.

In the nick of time, all did. So did the old man, face grey with fury. I had the chance to watch Spanish law in practice, and was impressed at the absence of flummery and the coolly inquisitorial style of Judge José Luís Gómez Arbona, who was only thirtysomething. There was also in court a facility which makes such obvious sense that I dare say our legal establishment will adopt it here in about 40 years: the provision to counsel (from a slot-machine) of a DVD of the hearing, after the case has been heard. I too was a witness, testifying to an earlier time when the old man had himself shown me where to find our supply pipe. I funked the opportunity to try testifying without a translator, in Spanish. The outcome mattered too much. And we won. We won our water back, legal costs, and all the costs of tankering in the water in the meantime. Again our joy was boundless.

Again we rejoiced too soon. The old man took absolutely no notice. He refused to turn the water back on and refused to pay. With sinking hearts we learnt that we must now join a queue for a second judgment, enforcing the ruling made in the first. Pending this, a charge has been laid against our neighbour’s property so that it could not be inherited or disposed of without compliance with the judgment. But only death or sale could trigger this. A sign appeared, crudely painted in Catalan beside the main road to Tavertet: ‘Belinda torera, Quim cornut’ (Belinda man-eater, Quim cuckold).

And the wheels of Spanish law grind slowly, slower even than our own. We still wait for execution of judgment. Near our wits’ end we have, at great expense, dug a two-mile trench down the road from Tavertet and laid a pipe connecting to the village’s own water supply. But Tavertet is short of water too, and 300 feet below us, so two expensive pumps were needed to lift even a trickle.

We did establish a modest supply by this means, and then it stopped. Under cover of darkness someone had poured concrete into a breather pipe where the track goes through a copse. We repaired it. It happened again. We repaired it. A highly dangerous verge to the road between the old man’s property and ours, marked in DayGlo orange as a warning to motorists, had the warning paint mysteriously scraped off in the night.

And as the year turns, we still wait. From the boundary between the old man’s land and ours I can just see on the horizon the outline of the mountain of Montserrat, from a shrine in whose rocky folds came that mysterious beam of light, answering the prayers of a drought-stricken people ... but Christmas is coming, and I banish the thought.

Matthew Parris is a political columnist of the Times. A Castle in Spain is published by Penguin-Viking.