We Bought an Abandoned Land in Spain

Reading time: 12 minutes

In June 2022 we put an offer on a piece of abandoned land in Spain that has a 300-year-old stone house to be restored.

After negotiations, the offer was accepted, the payment was made, the documentation was prepared and in September 2022 the deed was ready.

The abandoned land in Spain is finally ours 🙂

A month later we traveled from the UK to Spain, got the deed from the notary and went to visit the Finca for the first time.

The process of searching and buying a piece of abandoned land in Spain seems to be fast, but trust me, it is very slow.

It took more than 3 years of research with hundreds of articles readed and hundreds of videos watched before we bought the Finca.

I had to make sure I knew what I was getting into.

Buying our abandoned farm in Spain was just the first necessary step before we`ll be able to live off the grid in a self-sustainable way.

Abandoned Land in Spain

The the farm lands are very peculiar. The uneven terrain with the slopes and mountains make it ratter beautiful.

The total surface of the Land is just over 11,000m2 or almost 3 acres. It is divided into two slopes with stone wall terraces.

There are two mountains and each slope is the side of one of them. One mountain is to the south and the other mountain is to the north.

The Stone Terraces

The stone walls of the terraces are like steps on a gigantic staircase that starts at the top and goes down the mountains.

As each terrace sits at a different level and position, the views of the mountains differ depending on where you are. The views are spectacular.

On the terraces there are several species of trees. In the land ministry there are a total of 103 trees registered on the Finca, of which 63 are olive trees.

The lower terrace is where the two mountains meet. There is an ancient stone well there.

There is no running water on the Finca. In the future I will restore the stone well and the rainwater collection cistern.

I also intend to build a rainwater collection system.

A Forgotten Past

The locals told me that the stone well may have been built in Roman period. But I believe it is much older, going back to the time when the Phoenicians lived in Spain.

Not far from the Finca, there is a Phoenician archaeological site Poblat de la Roca Roja, which dates back to Neolithic period around 700 BCE. It is about 2600 years old.

I’m going to investigate this and other archaeological sites and see if it’s connected in any way to the period the stone well was built.

When we went to see the Finca in June 2022 the estate agency lady said that the previous owner bought the Finca around 60 years ago and since then it has been abandoned.

From the size of the bushes it was clear that the Finca had been abandoned for a long time, but how long it had been abandoned, we were not sure.

A Hidden History

When we got the deed, the guy from the notary office showed a note at the bottom of the deed.

This note says that:

In 1887 the farm was donated to the son of the family who lived there. This son inherited the farm from his mother shortly after his father’s death.

The date of this event was recorded on 12/12/1887 in the local notary.

This was the fourth and last owner to live on the Finca.

Who was the first owner to live on the Finca?
Why has no one else lived there since then?
When did the first owner buy the finca?
Who built the stone house and the well?
When were the house and the well built?

There are many other questions need answers. In the future I will go to the Land Registry in Tarragona to investigate and ask for a copy of all the Finca’s records.

For now the most important thing is that we bought and legalize the Finca`s documentation.

Before going off grid and become independent and self-sustainable, there is a lot to be done. In order for we dont get overwhelmed, I created a project called “Project Eridu Life”.

Eridu Life Project

Before putting the offer on our abandoned land in Spain, I spent a lot of time researching and watching YouTube videos about living off the grid in a self sustainable way.

After collecting a lot of information and taking a lot of notes, I started to realize a common mistake among those I followed.

Everyone works hard on their projects, but inefficiently and disorganized.

They are doing the work without planning or prioritizing what needs to be done. They end up having to go back and redo projects that were done poorly, etc.

In order not to make the same mistakes, I made the decision to do things differently.

First, I created the project overview, where I gathered everything we had on the Finca at the time we bought it.

Second, I created the plans for the future, where I outlined what we intend to do with the Eridu Life project.

This way, I can have a clear vision of what we have at the Finca and what we intend to do 🙂

Planning

In another life I worked with human development, precisely with goal planning. The first thing I did when placed the offer on the Finca was create the “Eridu Life Project”.

I am old school. I like to write on paper, so I took a sheet of paper and wrote:

What do we need to live off the grid in a self-sustainable way in the Finca?

Land;
Documentation;
Shelter;
Water;
Electricity;
Sewer;
Toilet;
Food;

I thought about the basics of life and I wrote the above list of the things needed for us to be able to live off the grid in a confortable and self sustainable way.

Before I continue…

See for yourself the amount of work that need to be done on the Finca before we`ll be able to move in and live off grid in Spain.

Watch the video:

We know to little about the past and the history of the Finca. All we know is that the Finca has been abandoned for over 100 years:

Bushes have taken over all the terraces;
The stone house is in ruins and collapsing;
The rainwater cistern has cracks and leaks;
Access to the property by car is restricted;
The water well is dry and its is collapsing;

Priorities

I merged the list of things needed for us to be able to live off the grid with the list of the things that need to be done on the Finca.

I transformed these lists into pillars or steps if you will, and organized them in order of priority.

The planning took a few months, but once it was done it become clear to me that we need to start from the restoration of the stone house.

[Edit: It’s been 2 years since we bought our abandoned land in Spain and restoring the stone house still our main priority.]

Stone House Restoration

I always liked stone houses. Restoring houses like the one we have is complicated, and it requires specialized labor.

Ancient stone house are usually built on the ruins of an older dwelling. This is the case of our house. There are 3 different layers with different stone cuts.

In the collapsed part, the stone cuts is similar to the stones on the stone well. At the lower part, the stone cuts is similar to the terrace walls. At the higher part, the stone cuts are modern with some sort of clay plaster.

Who Build the House?

Everything says that the house was rebuilt in 3 different eras.

There are several Phoenician archaeological sites in the region, some of which date back to the Iberian Neolithic period. That is, around 2,600 years ago.

All the remaining stone structures from that era have stone cuts very similar to the part of the house that collapsed.

A stone house is built with natural materials.

The stones, clay and wood used in this type of construction are generally materials extracted from the Finca itself.

Restore vs Demolish

Since the house is in ruins, why not demolish everything and build a new brick house?

Well, Catalonia legislation does not allow new dwellings to be built.

At least not in our Baix Ebre region.

Catalonia legislation only allows you to restore a house that is standing with walls and roof, as is the case with our house.

Since January 2024 there are some changes in the Catalonian legislation. With some of these changes we are now applying to restore the part of the stone house that are in ruins.

With the part that is still standing with walls and roof and the part that collapsed, we have the possibility of restoring 98m2. This is amazing, isn`t?

The restoration work must be done by a professional architect and by a professional stone mason.

Thanks to the wonderful neighbors we have David and Jane, I was able to get the contact of the architect and stone mason who restored their stone house in early 2022.

As I am writing this article is December 2022. I had couple meetings with the architect and the stone mason.

The architect has already drawn the plans for the restoration of the stone house. I still haven’t closed a deal with the architect or the stone mason.

It is now April 2024 and we`ve made some changes to the original project. If all goes well to planning, the stone house restoration works will start in December 2024.

Living Off Grid in Spain

Living off the grid in Spain and in a self-sustainable way is the desire of many people. For us, this idea only came about 3 years ago, right at the end of 2019.

When I first started researching off-grid living, the idea was to buy a piece of land in the UK and build a shipping container house. And live off the land applying permaculture.

The idea was great…

But after a few months of research it became clear that it would be very difficult if not impossible to get a license to build an off grid house in the UK.

The UK system does not want us to live off grid and self-sustainable.

Choosing Another Country

We had to include into the research some European Union countries that could be visited by car because we have our beloved dog Kala.

We included into the research: Portugal, France, Italy and Spain.

This made the search so difficult, as each of these countries has its own legislation when it comes to building or restoring an off-grid home.

Things are just getting complicated.

Due to the excess of misinformation on the internet, we had to change the approach. We started following people who were already living off the grid on a self-sustainable way.

Brexit

As Brexit would take effect in February 2020, we didn’t have much time to organize the documentation for the Brexit agreement, so we had to eliminate France, Portugal and Italy.

We choosed Spain for the following reasons:

We have been going to Spain for 10 years;
I already speak the Spanish language;
We already have property near Valencia;
We have perfect astrocartography lines there;

The astrocartography lines are part of the study on how astrology plays into the energies of specific locations on the planet that are good for you.

For us, the astrocartography lines in Spain are perfect!

Also, 70% of Spain is uninhabited, making the decision to go live off the grid even easier. Not to mention that the climate is fantastic and the lifestyle is incredible.

What was missing now was the documentation of the Brexit agreement.

From that moment on, applying for the “Permisso de Residencia” with the Brexit agreement between the UK and Spain became a priority for me.

I traveled to Spain and filed in the documentation in November 2019.

It was a very bureaucratic and slow process. Only in November 2022 my “Permisso de Residencia” became ready. Now I can live off grid in Spain without problems!

Conclusion

The process of buying an abandoned land in Spain and restoring a 300-year-old stone house seems to be fast, but trust me, it is very slow.

In future I will talk more about each of the pillars. This way you will have a clear view of what is needed before we can move to the Finca.

That’s it for this article. Did you like it?

Leave your comment or suggestion below. I love responding to all comments and I always do it personally.

Talk to you soon 🙂

P.S. If you would like to help us build our dream home, you can do it here. Or if you would like to help us continue recording videos, you can do it here. Either way, your support is very much appreciated.