ardbol

On Thursday 25th of January we got a message from our dutch friend in Spain, a link to an article. She had sent it to us although the expectation was we already knew this. As this article was about the Ardbol village.  But no, we did not know anything. And that was clear while reading the article. There was only vague and generic info which was only partly correct. There was an image of the journalist herself as she did not yet know who we were. Although the lack of information, the article was nice to read. And that is what the site Spanjevandaag also thought. From a friend in Holland we got a message: ‘read this article, it is about a project similar to yours’. Yes it was, better yet it was our project, the article was translated directly from the Spanish version. We also found the same article on the website inspanje.nl It did not take long before a large dutch news site the AD also copied the article. They copied the article from the Spanjevandaag website. Interesting to see ...

After the transaction we had time to think about what we could do in the village, as now we are the owners. The next option for us to go to Spain was in the autumn holidays. Earlier on we tried to combine it with Spanish classes for the kids, but we couldn’t arrange extra free time from school, so we had to stick to the one week of school vacation. We thought about starting at one of the houses which is in the relative good condition, like getting a door, so we could close it and store stuff there. But we had no electricity or tools as we had no space to keep stuff safe. So we were kind of stuck in a chicken and egg problem. To get out of this we set up a plan to get a container which we could lock. But that would not be there for this vacation. Then Maaike’s parents asked: “Would it be of any use if we were there with some tools to clear away the burrs, bushes and so on?” Of course that would be great! We were happy that they were enthusiastic and by itself there was a plan to do ...

We want to know what the ground is made of so we had a ground drill to investigate. In every piece of land, five in total, we drilled a hole to see what it was made of.  As you can see in the film there was not much to find. Only clay and a bit of sand. We even could not get the drill in more than 30 centimeters as the ground was made so compact from all the heavy machinery driving on it. Traditional farming will plow the ground loosening the top soil but compacting the soil bellow it. Making a plow pan or hardpan.    This is something we need to fix but for now we took a sample of soil from our 5 main fields to analyze at home.  Besides the hardpan layer we also noticed that there was hardly anything alive in the ground. No plants or vagetations and no insects. After many holes d rilled we finally found one worm!  

Our first attempt to add a mailbox to our 'office' building failed. When we attached it we had the right tools but they where not charged and without electricity in the village we could not fix that. So with some fiddling we added the mailbox. The next time we visited we noticed someone had added an wooden stick to it to keep it up there which was a real nice gesture from an unknown stranger. But in the summer the mailbox did fall off and disappeared.   In October 2023 we came back with a new mailbox and a charged drill. We attached it and also added glue to make it nice and firm.  To make visitors aware of the project we also added our flyer as a sign just above it. Lets hope it will make people aware of our good intentions and our nice project. 

Our third week of the summer holiday was all about learning Spanish. The kids went daycamp in Castelldefels, Tibor had a 20 hour course in Barcelona and Maaike 10 hours of private class also in Barcelona. The day camp for the kids It all sounded very well: classes from 9.00 to 12.30 and lot's of fun activities the rest of the day. We figured, if they wouldn't really learn anything, at least the would hear Spanish all day. After the first day we picked the kids up at 20.00, they were very tired and complaining. They didn't feel very well (we all, except Tibor, developed a stomach flu that day), which didn't help, but also they said that everything was in English. The girl that was their mentor during the afternoon, was surprised  when Maaike said that the kids didn't speak English. The next day they didn't go the class because of the stomach flu, but on Wednesday they went again. We agreed that Maaike would talk to the teacher, to tell her the kids don't sp...

Now that Ardbol Globo really existed, we opened the bank account and transferred the money to the account for increasing the capital of Ardbol Globo, we could sign the last things we had to sign at the notary, before we could sign the purchase contracts. This went all very smoothly, having done all we needed we released all the tensions and were really tired. So instead of visiting Barcena we went to Dorien’s place, did some work there and went to bed early. Ready for our first appointment next morning at 9:00 at the notary. Next day, Maaike woke up first checked the time and called out to Tibor: "It's already 8:15, we have to go now!". Maaike never wakes up that late, but on maybe one of the most important days of our lives we overslept! I think we were so relaxed because we had done everything we had to do, to be able to sign the contracts. Although there were still some uncertainties: we already heard from Ricardo, that one seller probably wouldn't come. He was s...

Because after our holiday in May, we thought that Ardbol Globo S.L. existed, we tried to figure out how to open a bank account online. Since we did the deposit at Santander, we tried there first. It looked all very promising; they had a page on their website for opening a business account online. The first thing that was wrong was that I wasn't able to choose a location where we wanted to do the banking (Miranda de Ebro). Which is surprising for us in itself that you are dependent on a location. Luckily, they have a helpdesk where you can ask for an English-speaking person. After a few days, they solved this bug. Then I had to upload some documents, the most important one being the escritura (the registration document of Ardbol), which I didn't have. So I asked the Notary, who was on holiday, then I asked the gestor, who didn't react. When the notary returned, she sent us the document we set up when we were there. I uploaded that and could continue, but then I got to the po...