Don’t Let It Get You Down

What my ceiling collapse taught me about life in Barcelona.

by

When I get to the entrance of my apartment building in Eixample Dreta, I tend not to turn on the overhead lobby lights. The street light is enough to brighten my way to our three-doored, scary-looking but reliable elevator, a historic artifact that works unless someone forgets to close one of the doors.

One night, however, I turned it on because in the darkness, I noticed that the corridor, especially the part closest to where I collected my mail, looked a bit wet. I thought maybe a neighbor had spilled water or some other liquid and I didn’t make much of it.

Few days passed and I was too busy to pay attention to the floor, until one afternoon, when I couldn’t ignore a small blue bucket. It was placed right underneath a part of an otherwise snow-white ceiling that now looked, silvery, swelled and bubbly.

The ceiling eventually cracked and collapsed and it wasn’t repaired until approximately two months later, which might seem unreasonable to many expats, myself included. However, during this time period I learned a lot about how locals worked (albeit counterintuitively at times) and would like to share the experience from my perspective.

1. Nobody enjoys being pesada, but something's gotta give.

At first, I tried not to make too much of the ceiling falling apart, adopting the optimistic and laid-back attitude I had been practicing to fit in as soon as I moved to Spain in September 2017. Truth be told, I didn’t understand who was really in charge of fixing the ceiling. All I knew was that our building had a presidenta (who actually lived somewhere else) and a property management company that handled the logistics of our rental contract and insurance papers.

One night after work, I bumped into a neighbor on my way to the elevator and he told me that he was frustrated that nothing got fixed around here, referring to “Spain, Catalunya or whatever,” he said. I learned that his mom was presidenta’s sister and she told him that the building insurance company had already inspected the ceiling twice post-collapse but had yet to take constructive action.

My neighbor explained that, apparently, the material used to build the ceiling in the first place has long been prohibited because it's dangerous to human health. The issue was further complicated because it concerned the pipes of all the apartments one floor up. But curiously enough, as the bubble became a crack that turned into an increasingly bigger hole, my neighbors’ resignation became more apparent. Another neighbor, who had bought his apartment recently and moved in with his wife and two little children, seemed similarly indifferent about the situation.

Although I wanted to be tranquil as anyone else in the building, I decided to risk being pesada (annoying). I understood that the ceiling was not going to fix itself and whatever mechanisms were put in place were not working fast enough to prevent something irreparable from happening. Had I not written and called the presidenta and the property managers regularly and made it clear that I wasn’t going to let go until the ceiling got fixed, I might still have a hole in my ceiling.

2. No matter your level of Spanish or Catalan, a native speaker on your side helps. 

On top of being concerned about the ceiling, I often felt insecure about how I was communicating about it. Did I forget an accent mark? Did I use the subjunctive incorrectly? Is it because I’m not using Spanish perfectly that I’m not taken seriously? Is the presidenta even making fun of me?

Her replies were rather elusive and she made use of verbs I considered less committed, such as trying, considering, attempting rather than doing, acting or performing. For example, while I always texted her in the present tense, she replied in the future. It’s not necessarily a language barrier because reading these words in my native Turkish or English would have had the same effect on me.

Inevitably, I worked in tandem with my partner, a native Spanish and Valencian speaker from Alicante. Together we communicated with the presidenta and the property managers so that I no longer worried about sounding rude, ignorant or downright wrong.

3. Find the source of the "leak.”

The presidenta repeatedly told me that she was waiting to hear from the industrial (worker) who was attempting to get in touch with the residents who lived above the leak. The worker took a while to reach them, complaining of a rain delay, and the property management company said that they were waiting for the presidenta to sign papers to authorize the ceiling reconstruction. Yet the presidenta told me that she was waiting for the property managers to prepare the final presupuesto (budget).

My partner and I confronted both sides, which didn’t make either of them happy. The property management representative said there was no reason for us to make a big deal about the ceiling’s collapse, asking sarcastically why we wanted it fixed before Christmas. The presidenta was even more expressive with her feelings. She hung up on us twice and called us listillos (smarty-pants).

4. Learn your legal rights.

Expats are in an exceptionally vulnerable position because we are unfamiliar with Spanish laws, systems and expectations. I spoke with a legal expert from Klev & Vera Law Firm in Barcelona, Aïda Ibrahim, who specified that, in cases like ours, there are two distinct property management companies at play here: the first are intermediaries between renters and landlords; and the second are the administradores de fincas, who are contracted and governed by the building's junta (board) of propietarios (owners) — who also elect a president/presidenta — to provide services such as handling the cleaning of the common areas of the building and collecting the gastos de la comunidad (community expenses).

In other words, if you are renting a flat, you can’t join the meetings of the junta, participate in their decision-making process, present yourself as the president nor vote to choose one. While not obligatory, most juntas drafts estatutos which, among other things, lists the roles and responsibilities of a president, who can live elsewhere as long as she fulfills said building responsibilities.

From my discussion with Aïda, I understood that even if as renters we weren't satisfied with our presidenta’s performance, filing a lawsuit against her would have been tricky because, in my case, the president could have demonstrated that she acted diligently to fix a problem and followed the correct steps. Aïda recommends that renters request to view the estatuto if their junta drafted one, and see how responsibilities are divided before making any moves. She highlights that it is better to discuss, negotiate and ask any information that we need to clarify before as well as after we rent a flat.

Even in cases where renters have property managers who take charge of managing our relationship with our landlord, Aïda points that it’s useful to have a direct contact with the owner of the flat anyway because this is the person paying a quota for the junta and therefore, needs to know if something is not working well in the building.

5. Try to relax, even if it seems like nothing is getting done.

Day in, day out, I got home from work and saw the hole on the ceiling. Sometimes there was a bucket underneath to “catch” the fallen pieces. Other times, the fallen concrete was spread all over the place, and I had to cover my head with a backpack just to be safe when passing under the hole.

At one point, we had a week-long trip to Rioja with my partner, and when we were back, we saw that the ceiling still in shambles. We were frustrated that the high price we paid for our rent, the meticulous paperwork that we completed and our regular follow-ups with involved parties didn’t seem to have made much of a difference.

Yes, our anger was justified, but we tried to be relaxed and patient. Yes, we didn’t have a proper ceiling for a while, but worrying about it only made it worse. So we decided to get on with our lives, take more trips to here and there, until finally the ceiling was fixed. Looking back, I am glad that we did.

Meltem Naz Kaso Corral Sánchez blogs at BecomingSpanish.com. She has also been published in the newsletters of the University of Chicago and the University of Edinburgh, the Armenian newspaper Hetq, Spanish feminist magazine Pikara, Turkish travel magazine Fly Pegasus and a Dutch NGO for international education named Nuffic. She is also the author of a fictional short story named “Candied Chestnuts.” Twitter: @MeltemBarcelona