To say that reality surpasses fiction in the case that I am going to tell you, in a somewhat fictionalized way, is an understatement. It is a story that I found beautiful, moving, surprising and with a happy ending. These lines are written with the consent of the person affected, although I will obviously omit names, but to make it easier to read, I will say that the characters in this story, a man and a woman, are called José and María.
José, a resident of a town in the Aragonese Pyrenees, in the fifties, after finishing his law degree, went to Madrid to study and prepare for the exams, which were previously called for Notaries. He did not complete them, not due to a lack of enthusiasm or ability, but because he received a call from his family, asking him to take charge of the family farms. Don José returned; he must have been a lonely man and perhaps with the ability to attract people who do not fit the traditional pattern. It was in these circumstances that he met Doña María, both when they were young, and they struck up a friendship, which did not go beyond that, because María distrusted José's character, and was not sure that he was a good choice as a husband.
Life's circumstances forced Maria to move to the Barcelona area for work reasons, where she got married, had a daughter, and lived without hearing from Jose, who for his part never forgot Maria.
José never married or had children and his life was spent between various business activities, and after some ups and downs, in recent years he had a reward, derived from the real estate bubble, because the land of the business he ran was very attractive to a real estate agent, who paid him a considerable amount of money to acquire it, which made José swim in abundance until the time of his death.
José's only family were some nephews who, upon learning of their uncle's death, obtained the certificate of his last will and testament and found out that their uncle had a will that he had made more than sixty years ago. They went to the Notary who kept it and were informed that no rights were derived from that will in their favour and that the only heir was a lady called Maria, whom the nephews did not know who she was.
Without any legal obligation, the Notary decided to look for this person, to show her that she was José's heir, and the truth is that he found her without much difficulty, and he invited her to his office one day to give her the news: Do you know José?
On the one hand, a sea of memories opened up for Maria, because this was a person who had completely disappeared from her thoughts, but on the other hand, she was tormented by the fact that she had to give her family explanations about an event from the past that she had never mentioned.
The Notary went on to tell her that José had designated her as sole heir in his will.
Maria asked the Notary what was in the inheritance, because if it cost her a lot of money, she didn't have it. The investigations began, and it turned up money, apartments, rural properties, vehicles, shares, and even life insurance, where the beneficiary was the heiress.
Since there were no problems in assuming the payment of inheritance taxes, he accepted it, awarded himself the assets and began with his family to take possession of all of them, and with this to remember José, as he had lived, but the question that was on his mind was whether his designation was the result of an oversight, or on the contrary was José's true will.
Through various conversations with people who knew him, they learned that José had often considered making a new will, but for whatever reason, he could not find a person to whom he could leave his property, and, given his doubts, he decided to keep the first will he had made more than sixty years ago. They also found out that José never told anyone about María's existence.
Once she was the owner, Maria found more surprises: the house where José lived was completely surrounded by books, but in a very similar condition to those who suffer from the so-called Diogenes syndrome; a high-end car covered in a thick layer of dust, which had hardly been used, and which they had no problem returning to the house; exorbitant expenses in the last years of his life for a person who almost lived in poverty...
Maria and her family now enjoy that heritage, and after meeting her, I can say that the choice of Jose, in my opinion, as we Notaries say, was not a mistake.
Enjoy it, Maria.
