Carpenters and windows

Torre del Mar has ten carpentry workshops, working in wood, aluminium and PVC: doors, fitted wardrobes and dressing rooms, windows and enclosures, glazing, parquet and furniture, spread along Avenida de Andalucía and the centre.

Windows here are aluminium or PVC, not wood

On this coast the standard is aluminium with a thermal break, or PVC, because of salt and sun rather than fashion. Wood is for interiors. If you are replacing windows, the two things that change the result are the thermal break and the glazing unit, and both are worth asking about by name.

The blinds are external, and that surprises people

Spanish flats have persianas, external roller shutters that come down over the window from a box above it. They are the reason a room here can be made completely dark at three in the afternoon, and when the strap or the mechanism goes, it is one of these workshops that fixes it, not a curtain shop.

Fly screens are fitted, not standard

Windows do not come with insect screens. A mosquitera is ordered and fitted separately, which anyone spending a summer here works out quickly.

One workshop is a trade in itself

Among the ten there is a carpintería de ribera, a boat carpenter. It is the traditional craft of building and repairing wooden boats, and in a town that was a fishing village before it was a resort, it is a survival worth noting.