Sotogrande´s March Sun Felt as a Summer For The Northern Europeans.
Living and working already for so many years in the best place in southern Spain, one easily forgets how on sunny “winter” days with a temperature of twenty or more degrees, guests and friends from northern Europe enjoy it as a real summer.
Thanks to this fantastic weather I got recently various visits from clients-guests and friends from northern Europe and they made me once more aware of what it means to have this generous climate.
Of course we do have rain, and sometimes even quite a lot, but in general this part of Spain offers a very pleasant and sunny climate.
I will never forget that, I believe it was even in my first year of permanent residence in Sotogrande, we had from the first of January till almost the end of February every day a blue sky with sun and temperatures of more than twenty degrees.
I indeed thought that I had won a place in paradise.
Not that I now do not enjoy this nice weather as much as before. I love to live in the sun, but let us say that I am more aware of this privilege when I am surrounded by people who, like this March, enjoy their stay here as they are having a real summer holiday.
This time of the year during our mornings and late afternoons and evenings the temperature can drop to as “low” as six-seven degrees, but mid morning and during the day it warms quite often up to seventeen-twenty degrees or more. This, most of the days combined with sunshine, converts of course our place and area in a very desirable destination.
Talking as such about our climate and weather I do not have to forget to thank Trond Ola Tilseth, a young Norwegian journalist for his nice article about Sotogrande and me in the Norwegian magazine called “Bolig”. When you can read Norwegian and do have the chance to get a December copy of this magazine you will find on the pages 76-79 an interesting article from Trond’s hand, called “Sotogrande, De Rikes Skjulested”.
Trond contacted me after my public comments in El Mundo and other publications about the growing confusion on the real Sotogrande.
My comments had mainly to do with the fact that “Mens Marbella er et sted for a se og blisett, er Sotogrande det helt motsatte. Her soker millionaerene diskresjon og privatliv mens de koser seg med golf og polo”.
In simpler words, yes in Sotogrande we do prefer our privacy and peace and we certainly do not want to be exposed in a jetset scenery as some photographers and journalists would like you to believe.
And what did I do more than enjoying with my clients and friends the sunny Sotogrande February days? Well, meanwhile I have also been a few weeks in northern California. In some of the articles in this blog you can read that my daughter Anna lives at the north of Sacramento, in an area that reminds a lot of our surroundings here.
Anna grew up in Sotogrande, however graduated in the States and married Andy Ventura, American and mortgage broker at Paramount Equity in Roseville.
So I am pretty well backed overthere, as the rest of Andy’s family is also active for many years in real estate and property finance.
Although Anna is also licensed as real estate and loan officer in California, some years ago she decided to become a teacher of mentally handicapped children and she is now working at the Sierra School in Sacramento. Have a look if you wish at Mrs. “V” as her students call her and please do not forget the (finanancial) support this effort in education deserves.
I invite all of you to support schools and institutions like this one; they do such an incredible job and cannot receive enough (financial) support.
Of course, I always do, I used my time also to ”inspect and compare”, as you are never too old to learn as one says. I like California, I like the American style of developing resorts, and driving and walking around I can see where Sotogrande’s infrastructural qualities come from. (That is probably why as well my daughter as I feel at home on these both parts of the world.)
And now we are talking about development, once again I have seen that the way they built houses in the States is not only much faster, but in many aspects still much better than the way we built here in Spain.
Yes, there is a lot to learn in the world and once again I realize(d) that I/we still have a mission regarding the improvement of building here in Spain.
(In one of my next articles I will come back on this issue.)
This time I promised not to mention only my daughter as family member, but to talk also about my nephew Ewout van Loon, who some years ago, after studying in the States, decided to change Fort Lauderdale for Madrid, just at the moment that my daughter Anna decided to move from the Saint Louis University in Madrid to the university of Reno in Nevada.
As they both have the same age, with only a week difference, and as babies have been born next door to each other, for me it almost felt as changing a daughter for a son there in Madrid.
To complete his studies in business and information technology I managed to get Ewout into IBM, thanks to my good friend Marco Perotti, IBM project executive and president of ”Veïns de L’Alfás”, an organization based in the area of Alicante founded to defend people against urban planning abuses.
Apart from this family feeling towards Ewout I was hoping that I could convince him to become my future ”Van Loon” real estate partner in Madrid.
However and after proofing his talents inside IBM Ewout decided not to stay in Madrid but to try his luck in the ”new” world, called China.
Here he started in 2007 successfully a software company in Hong Kong and Chengdu with now 30 employees building web applications mainly for the European market.
A unique Sotogrande villa waiting for your next March summer.
I think this is for now enough about me and my world wide based family and friends, as you might forget that I would very much like to help you finding the right property in Sotogrande and that we have got in a couple of new and very interesting villas, although not all listed in our Web, since some owners do not wish to see their homes publicly exposed. That is why I always say to people that our Web only reflects an impression of the properties we can offer, and that is why I would like to repeat that the best way of guiding you to the right property in Sotogrande is contacting us directly
