Spanish Property Press and TV

Enchanted with the cave homes of Andalucia, one enterprising woman bought six of them. Barbara Lamplugh witnesses the transformation from bike shed to home for one of them

There is nothing typical about Carole’s cave home in the hills of Sacromonte, Granada. While many of the surrounding caves are inhabited, few have basic services, let alone the kind of decor one could imagine gracing the pages of a beautiful homes magazine. Originally from Finland, Carole has lived in Spain for 30 years, Granada for 18, and Sacromonte for approximately the last nine.

She spotted the potential of the abandoned caves on the hillside several years ago and decided to buy as many as she could afford. This proved no easy matter. Certain members of the local community of gypsies claimed ownership but no paperwork existred to bear this out.

The normal laws of the land remain an irrelevance in the eyes of many gitanos. Clearly a middleman was needed for the negotiations to take place. In fact, Carole never really found out who owned the six caves she bought â€�€� or indeed whether the money she paid ever reached the putative owners. Making her ownership legal was a process requiring the utmost patience and persistence. Because the caves were not on the map, she had to bring photos, piece together several different maps, undertake endless paperwork, “It took me five years and a thousand visits to the castro,” Carole said. Now the cave she lives in is registered in her name, she has official deeds and even a proper address.

Caving in

It has taken a great deal of work to make her caves habitable. Seeing the lovely home she has made, one would never guess that when she acquired the cave it was in such a primitive and filthy state. “The caves are often used as rubbish dumps,” Carole explained.

“But this particular one was being used to strip down and reassamble stolen motorbikes. There were oil stains everywhere, the walls and floors were black from fires; it was a total mess”.

For the building work needed to carry out her plans, Carole employed Mariano, a local man whose day job is driving a dumper truck. As a native of Sacromonte (though not a gypsy), his knowledge of the specific building problems relating to caves was born of experience. He knew, for example, about the load-bearing properties of arches and that they must be rounded rather than square, otherwise the ceiling might fall in. Chipping away to create more height is a risky business and has to be done with great care.

Whitewash job

The walls and roof of the cave needed three separate layers of rendering, a liquid wash applied with a paintrbursh, plus the usual white cal followed by Carole´s chosen colours. Damp is always a problem but one useful tip given by a French architect who happened to be passing by was to mix chalk in with the cement. So far, this seems to have paid off. At the entrance to the cave, the floor is just concrete painted with red ochre but once you penetrate deeper inside, every floor has beautiful wood panelling. To prevent rising damp, this could not be laid directly on the concrete, even with sheets of plastic covering it. A platform of wooden slats had to be built to create a two-centimetre space between.

Essential services

Water pipes and electricity cables had to be brought some considerable distance. In the case of the electricity, the nearest supply was several hundred metres away. A hole 40 centimetres deep had to be made in the concrete so that the cables could be taken through the rock of the hillside to reach Carole’s cave. Then, before supplies could actually be connected, safety inspections had to be carried out and yet more laborious paperwork completed.

Underneath the arches

The cave was already divided into separate rooms in the traditional way, by means of archways. It has a large living area, bedroom, kitchen and bathroom. Alcoves in the walls provide ideal storage for everything from food provisions to books as well as the perfect setting for ornaments and lamps. Larger ones are cutained off, hiding the less attractive modern covenience of TV and computer. In the kitchen, all the usual necessities can be found: a fridge, neatly hidden behind a curtain, cooking rings, stainless steel sink, attractive polished wood worksurfaces.
Everything is within reac yet it does not seem cramped. The bathroom is even more diminutive but this, too, has every facility with the exception of a bath: somehow toilet, basin and even a tiny shower room have all been fitted into a truly minimal space. Like everyone else in the barrio, she uses butano gas for cooking and hot water. “But do they deliver right up here?” I asked. “Of course, if you tip them well.”

Colouring in

In addition to all the interior work, Carole has created a patio-style garden outside using clay tiles, some with tiny stones of coloured glass set into them. Using the traditional cobbles, a stepped path has been painstakingly laid down along with a rustic wooden hand-rail, to ease and prettify access to her new home. She has built a wooden storehouse for the gas bottles, another for logs to be used in the fireplace. Everything is neat, diminutive and tasteful. A profusion of flowering plants adds colour to her garden area, adorning the many decorative archways; from one of her pots she picks a bunch of mint and offers me an infusion.

Moving mountains

Originally she intended to keep her more conventional house a few minutes´ walk away and use the cave as a summer retreat. Now she has decided to sell the house and make the cave her permanent home. “I love the freedom of it, the openness of the views,” she says. “All around, I can see mountains.”

It is true: the hills stretch away into the distance as far as the eye can see. “Living inside the earth suits me,” Carole adds. “The vibrations in a cave are quite different; you sense another kind of energy. For example, I don’t hear anything from my neighbours, yet somehow the mountains transmit sounds from across the valley. You hear, or more accurately, feel them from the inside.”

I wondered if she had discovered any drawbacks , but apart from the obvious one of having to minimise her possessions â€�€� a salutary exercise, she feels â€�€� Carole cites only the presence of her less-salubrious neighbours, the drunks and drug addicts with dogs who live in some of the surrounding caves. Mostly they leave her alone, she says, and having recently had a telephone installed, she now feels much safer.

Five years ago, Carole paid a million pesetas (Â�£4,000) for three of the caves. Renovation of this one has cost her a further four million. Her next project is to develop one of the caves into a craft centre for local artisans. Her enthusiam is plain to see. “We deserve a place to sell our handicrafts where the police won´t hassle us. And it will bring more tourists into Sacromonte, make it less of a no-go area.” And her other caves? One already provides a home for her daughter; the rest she rents out.