My First Condo Association Meeting and Chinese Tea Ceremony

When I first moved to my flat in June, the building had their condo association meeting in that same month.  But I did not attend it because I was too wrapped up in setting my place up and getting the renovations finished.  But I definitely was determined to attend the next meeting, which occurred this week.  We had a lot to cover.  The three month work on the facade was close to finishing, a new front door to the building needed to be chosen, and the architect/constructor had some other news to give us about our building.  There weren't many of us at the meeting, about 8 property owners, the administrator, his assistant, and the manager of the construction company that is doing the current work on the facade.  Normally, it seems that they conduct their meetings in Catalan, but because they knew that I only spoke Spanish, they attempted to have the discussion in Spanish.  However, habits are hard to break.  They would start in Spanish but in mid-stream, change to Catalan.  They would then realize that they had done so, apologize to me, and go back speaking Spanish.  I very much appreciated their effort in keeping the discussion in Spanish and was able to understand most of what was discussed.

My Building

This building is over 100 years old.  For many years it had just one owner and the units were rented out.  My understanding is the owner did not invest much in maintaining the building.  As the city got more involved in inspecting and demanding changes in the residential buildings throughout the city, this owner changed the units to condos, sold them and divested himself entirely.  Today there are a number of maintenance projects that need to be done.  The city also inspects all residential buildings every three years and may require the association to make additional changes.  The facade was the most important project because it was deteriorating to the point of some of the pieces of the facade were falling and threatened to injure pedestrians below.  The new facade has turned out very well, although I am not able to take any pictures until the scaffolding is removed.

There are other issues with water on the roof and the terraces on the ground level in the back of the building.  Also, the balconies and facade in the back, which I have never seen since I only have a front-facing unit, also need work.  Additionally, on the roof there is a small masonry shed where water used to be collected and used to supply water to the units.  This, of course, is not used any more.  But at some point this shed needs to be removed.

Right now, my community fee is 40 euros a month, which I find to be extremely inexpensive, especially when compared to condo fees in the U.S.  I expect this to rise as a result of the issues that have been raised at the meeting.  Luckily not all these issues have to be addressed all at once.  They talked about phasing the work and raising the fee a little in order to have enough of a reserve in the long-term.  Unfortunately, given that there is still an economic crisis for many people in Barcelona and in Spain, any increase in the community fee may be difficult for some of the property owners.

Chinese Tea Ceremony

On Saturday, many of my friends from the hiking group got together one last time before the Christmas Holidays at a tea shop, called Té Amo (it's a play on words - te amo means I love you, but té amo -with the accent mark on the e- means I love tea).. We had a demonstration of a typical Chinese tea ceremony.  We then all chose the tea we wanted to try and spent a couple of hours together there before going to a restaurant in the same neighborhood to have dinner together.  Below are some pictures from our time together, taken by different friends in the group.