Roy Nash’s buccaneering life and times have induced him to acquire several homes in Andalusia over the past forty years. In 1966, at the age of 29, with an income of £10 a week from property, he decided to quit England and find a place ‘where the livin’ is easy’.
Southern Spain fitted the bill perfectly. Exploring the coastline, he eventually came to the horseshoe –shaped bay known from its conformation as La Herradura, due south from Granada. It proved to be love at first sight. The climate was perfect and the cost of liming suited his pocket. A glass of wine or beer cost one and a half pesetas and a three-course meal only thirty. He found it a struggle to spend half his income, and when the thousand-peseta note came into circulation, nobody local could offer change. Not much had altered in the forty years since Gerald Brenan had settled in the nearby village of Yegen.
Roy’s first house was built on a small hill for 300,000 pesetas, then worth £1,800. Some years later he bought two adjoining houses near the beach at a cost of 100,000 (£600). When development started nearby he sold these and moved to a property a short distance inland. He now lives in a small village house, his fifth home in Andalusia.
The characters he meets and introduces in this captivating environment include a handful of foreign resident, colourful groups of hippies, and a smattering of American draft-dodgers. He describes how they brought the ‘Swinging ‘Sixties’, with their pop music culture, drugs and ‘free love’, to a part of the world where people’s morals had hitherto been rigidly controlled by Franco’s church and state.
His story will fascinate anyone who has ever dreamed of living in Spain, and those who have already taken the plunge.