Geschichten Tales

The owners’ association

Alicia Navarro - Fuerteventura

I live in a building, where, like in most buildings, there is an owners’ association, which consists of all the neighbours, the president, the secretary, and other administrators. I don’t know from which moment we stopped getting on well, nor when it became the “law”, to have to pay someone to bring some “order”, where before, we enjoyed a pacifist cohabitation, the good old days when people said “Good morning!”, “Would you lend me a lemon?”, “How is your family?”. All in all, we were getting along...

Now, basically, we pay someone to organise us, and there are big discussions about trivial, absurd things, which we didn’t even know existed. The title for the “promoter of community disputes” is Property Administrator. We also have our own little housewife, the telltale, the gossiper, depending on if she goes beyond her usual duty... A gentleman with excellent taste looks after the creation of the Christmas tree, the decoration of the entrance hall of the building with plastic plants, as well as the ribbons and baubles that decorate our doors at Christmas. Another of his roles is to inform the President when he believes to have seen a cockroach, and then, before he drowns with complaints, the President hurriedly calls the exterminator. He is my ally, for my quota of neighbourhood disputes, which is against football Sundays, made worse by the endless football season, we only see them getting out of their homes to take out big rubbish bags filled with beer cans and all kinds of drink bottles, as well as opening the door for fast food deliveries...

Don Juan macht seinem Namen alle Ehre; er ist um die siebzig Jahre alt, groß, schlank und elegant, trägt manchmal eine Krawatte, manchmal eine Fliege. Er macht allen ein Kompliment, das sich seltsamerweise nie wiederholt. Er benutzt ein italienisches Parfüm, eines von denen, die man nie vergisst...

Der Verwalter hat die Tagesordnung so kompliziert formuliert, dass diese die erste Diskussion auslöst, die mit dem Rücktritt des Sekretärs und seiner „Gehilfen“ beigelegt wird. Das Protokoll wird ohne Unterschrift in die Hände eines anderen Hausbewohners gelegt, der kaum Spanisch kann, diese Versammlungen aber sehr amüsant findet.... Er kommt zu spät, aber er ist sehr beschäftigt damit, sich zu sonnen, Rotwein zu trinken und „Tapas“ zu essen. Er erklärt uns mit seinen eigenartigen Sätzen, die immer im Infinitiv sind, dass er deshalb nach Spanien gekommen ist... aber da sich die Sitzung in die Länge zieht, geht er schließlich. Viele andere Hausbewohner nutzen die Gelegenheit, um dasselbe zu tun. Es bleiben nur noch der Vorsitzende und der Verwalter, die sich in eine weitere endlose Diskussion über ihre jeweiligen Zuständigkeiten verstrickt haben...

Then, we have Maruquita, who goes to mass everyday and invites us to come and pray at her house, and to do so, she goes to the automatic intercom in the street and reminds us that is it seven O’Clock...

Don Juan, who was appropriately named, at seventysomething years old, looks good, tall, slim and elegant, sometimes wearing a tie and other times wearing a bow tie. He always has a compliment for each one of us, which curiously are never shared, he wears an Italian perfume, one of those you can’t forget...

He has lived alone for years, our Don Juan, we have all fallen for him...

So, all those dear neighbours and another few, are ready in the hall of the building for the Extraordinary General Meeting.

World Cup, or the African Cup, which awaken all his enthusiasm... indeed, we have our own hooligans in our building; they are such fanatics that during the football

The Administrator has complicated the Order of the Day that much that it creates the first dispute, which ends up with the resignation of the Secretary and his “acolytes”, the minutes, unsigned, are left in the hands of another neighbour who hardly speaks any Spanish, however, he seems to find those meetings quite entertaining... he arrived late, but it is because he was busy sunbathing, drinking red wine and eating tapas, and, as he explained to us in his pigeon Spanish, only using the infinitive, this is what he moved to Spain for... but as the meeting is dragging on, he ends up leaving, and others take the opportunity to do the same. In the end, there are only the President and the Administrator left, who are arguing about their respective responsibilities, this seems endless...