Flat-hunting in Málaga has become an extreme discipline, the kind that should have its own federation and annual championship. It requires reflexes, psychological stamina and the ability to feign enthusiasm at a storage cupboard with a window that is called, without blushing, “a charming studio.”
The listing appears at nine in the morning. At two minutes past nine you write. At three minutes past there is already a waiting list of forty people and the landlord asks you for a cover letter, three payslips and, practically, a reference from your grandmother. All for sixty square metres overlooking an air shaft, at a price that once bought the whole building.
You go to the viewing and there are the other thirty-nine, eyeing each other sideways, all smiling that “behave yourself, I got here first” smile. The owner shows the kitchen like someone revealing a state secret and you nod, amazed, before a two-ring hob, one of which works.
And still you want it. Of course you want it. Because after three months of searching, one no longer aspires to a home, one aspires to a roof, a postal address, to being able to say “I live in Málaga” without adding “for now, on a friend’s sofa.” Good luck, hunters. You won’t see many, but out there, they say, there are flats.
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