Spain: Paradise Lost, Wednesday 9pm, ITV1
When Wally Tynan retired to his spanking new Spanish villa a few years back, it’s fair to say a life spent sweeping up used tampons and stray faecal matter wasn’t exactly what he had in mind. But since upping sticks from the UK, he lives a life which is something of a cross between that of Sisyphus and Bob the Builder as he plasters, paints and does the plumbing on his Basra-esque apartment complex – because the builders went bust.
Of course, the desire to spend your twilight years in sunny Spain has long been the dream of many a British pensioner, wowed by the thoughts of endless days eating full English breakfasts washed down with pints of warm John Smith’s while the temperature barely dips below the 70s. Whether some of the horror stories on show last night will put paid to that remains to be seen.
The Spanish coast has seen a glut of development over the last decade, a building boom fuelled partially by us Brits. Before the property crash, when anyone “with a pulse and a passport” could get a mortgage, it looked like a sure-fire winner. But global capitalism’s a fickle thing, as people like David Busby and Wally have found out to their cost. David was promised a 50% increase in value on his Spanish pad to supplement his meagre pension, but now he couldn’t shift it for a straw donkey and a pound of chorizo.
But for every loser there’s invariably a winner. While Wally’s busy getting himself barred from the town hall, Bradford-born Mandy is eagerly shopping for a bargain. "I've seen [an apartment] for under €100,000 and by God I'm going to get one," she growls to camera, before putting in an offer of around a fiver for a six-bed apartment. In the end, she ends up renting in Marbella just in case prices plummet even further.
Of course, all this is just the tip of the recession-riddled iceberg, and there are countless unlucky souls here in the UK facing the prospect of having their first homes repossessed, let alone their second ones. The moral of the story? Don’t put your money in bricks and mortar. Particularly if it’s Spanish.
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