Why Americans chase the dream to Europe

The satisfying allure of old world renovations

Greetings from Cornudella de Montsant,

Progress here is frustratingly slow.

The old wood beams are layered with decades of misbegotten intentions. White paint peeling over black grime, concrete seeped into the cracks, moisture contracting and expanding, widening the fissures with each new year.

The first sander didn’t accomplish all that much, nor the second, larger one, its high grit paper struggling to remove much beyond some accumulated lint and spiderweb. So I turned to the angle grinder, stuck with one of those highly abrasive purple discs that threaten to take your skin off with an errant swipe.

Ear plugs in, mask and safety goggles on, the ladder perched on uneven concrete below, I press the whirling disc into the wood. Clouds of white dust instantly billow into the empty space. I watch with each pass along the beam as white paint is flung into the air, the black grime fades, and the warm, brown tones of wood underneath slowly reveal themselves.

Whatever other thousand problems I have to solve before this project can be finished, whatever other frustrations, at least today I have this small victory—the turning of ugly and worn into something old and beautiful.

Wait—am I part of the “cottage industry” that was spoken about in my last post—the one that “sells the dream of moving to Europe as a cure for all the ills of modern American life”?

Perhaps. But there must be some allure. Something I’m getting out of all this. Of huddling in the makeshift kitchen against the small space heater. Of enduring the trickle of hot water from the little shower each night. Of watching plaster crack and fall each day around me.

Certainly, I’m not in it for the money. Hundreds of euros, soon to be thousands, drain from my accounts, funded by consulting work from clients in the U.S. I wonder if there is some more sustainable way to do this kind of work day in and day out. But the rents don’t seem to justify the investments needed to bring old buildings like this back from the dead.

Maybe that’s why they sit empty, and small rural towns throughout Southern Europe wait for the foreigners with their resources and romantic notions. Or, they actively market €1 homes in need of renovations in the tens of thousands.

That, of course, is the actual cottage industry.

So I press the grinder against the beams. Wondering just what it is that leads us here to Europe, and why it is renovations in particular that draw our attention. Is it something in the old wood beams? Something about returning to an older world that my ancestors left behind?What is it, exactly?

Because it can’t be the cloud of white paint and dust kicked up by the angle grinder.

Sanded beams in the back. Still to be sanded in the front.

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I. How I chose Spain

Someone asked me how I chose this country above the others.

The truth is I didn’t choose a country—I chose a community. I’d come to Spain before. Once to Galicia. Another time to Andalucia. I even connected with a real estate agent and looked at property in Tarifa, perched at the southern tip of the peninsula with a view of Africa, a long, lonesome, windy kitesurfing beach sprawled out to its West.

I’d also been to Greece, Croatia, and Portugal—and several times to Italy. There was one excursion where I had especially high hopes for Arco, a climbing town overlooking a lake at the foothills of the Italian Alps. The view over the lake is exquisite, but the whole area was also expensive, and something about the ubiquitous Germans in spandex told me it just wasn’t my place.

For years, I came to Europe in the summertime, not just for vacation, but to visit specific climbing and kitesurfing towns and see if the vibe felt right. There is no amount of house-hunting on Idealista, no amount of walking a town on Google Street view, that compares with actually being there in the flesh.

So by the time I came to Cornudella de Montsant two years ago, next to the climbing mecca of Siurana, I had already been searching for years for a place in Europe that might feel right. I had no particularly special expectations for Cornudella—it was just another climbing trip, organized by my super-psyched Catalan friend with a group of equally psyched climbers from around the U.S.

I wrote about that trip at the time:

For eight days, I lived in the now. Paid attention only to what was in front of me. To climbing and the sun and wind and cold, and to the people I was with, friends both old and new. To good meals with good company, to wine and fresh olive oil, made from grapes and olives grown in the hills all around us. I paid attention to the properties I went to see in Cornudella, to the differences between Spanish and Catalan. To the views from the top of the cliffs at Montsant and to the steep mountain roads that took us from cliff to cliff. To the sharp incut pockets in the rock and to the feel of the rubber on my climbing shoes grasping to the tiniest of footholds. I listened for my climbing partners calling to take or be lowered. I paid attention: to my breathing, the air around me, and to my feelings about it all.

It was a special trip (not to mention the best Friendsgiving of all time). And as I’ve heard many a local and visiting climber say since, Siurana is a special place. It’s the sheer beauty that sets it apart—nothing really compares.

But there was also the community. The climber bar at the edge of town where I’m writing this piece. The rows of vans parked in the lot on the way up to the cliffs. The cafe at the center of the town, literally named for the Catalan Renaissance movement of the 19th century.

And, there was the dry, almost desert mountain landscape. It reminded me of my home and birthplace in New Mexico, with unbelievably gorgeous sunsets against the orange-streaked cliffs to match.

Finally, there was the €40,000 fixer-upper in the middle of town.

So, a lot of things came together. And when so much comes together, you stop the dreaming and you go for it. Reality time.

II. The warm hammock

The truth is I’m at the climber bar because it’s cold at my house. Cold and dark.

I was climbing topless today while the sun beat down on the cliffs, but the moment the sun goes down the temperature plummets, as it does in the high desert. And by 6 pm it’s dark. Too long to sit and be cold at home.

I’m concerned the space heater I have really won’t cut it a few weeks from now, and I’ve started looking at the makeshift kitchen as a series of holes through which the heat escapes elsewhere. The old, single-pane window out to the back terrace is the least of the issues. There are also the cracks in the concrete above the camp stove where I cook, and the hole with the old pipe sticking through to the old fireplace, which I demolished two days ago. Where before there was a leaning tower of thin brick heading up toward the roof, now a large, black swathe of charcoal glued to stone runs the height of the property.

Charcoal glued to stone after the chimney demolition.

The best thing to do in such an environment is to put on my sweatpants and fleece, hang the hammock, and place the heater directly underneath. Then it warms my whole backside in a very comforting embrace from which I never want to leave.

But I have to leave if I want to make progress.

III. Poco a poco

Tomorrow, I’ll continue with the angle grinder and the abrasive purple discs. I’m burning through them at a rate of one for every two beams. Which means I have just enough to finish this level. After that, I’ll go back to the regular sanders, then treat and stain the beams.

A local told me recently that replacing just one of these beams costs around €500. So it’s good I’m putting in the work to restore the ones I have.

I imagine they’ll look quite beautiful when I’m finally through.

One day there will be a home here. Out of the 3.8 million empty houses in a country that claims to have a housing crisis, I will have restored one of them. Grains of sand on a windswept beach. The economics of it don’t make sense. If they did it’d be much simpler.

But I suppose that’s why I’m writing. The answer to these questions—why here, why this, out of all the ways to spend a life?—requires a constant examination.