Former City of London trading floor manager and now freelance florist Liz was planning to visit her holiday home in Montserrat, Valencia at the end of October last year with a friend, but for various personal reasons, the trip did not go ahead.

“To my mind, it was just as well,” Liz says, as the DANA (a Spanish weather phenomenon also referred to as a “Cold Drop”) swept through her home, taking with it around 30 metres of two-metre-high reinforced concrete wall at the front and rear of the property.

Liz says she was alerted by a neighbour who sent her a photo, saying this is your wall across the road. “She hadn’t even seen the other wall, Liz says.” The DANA also swept away a pergola, a washing line and some internal walls, while severely damaging the landscaped gardens, hedges, swimming pool and terracotta tiles.

Remarkably, the house itself remained dry. “We were very fortunate compared to a lot of people out there, but we still had a property to secure,” Liz says. “With the walls gone, anybody could get in and we were just very, very worried.”

So, while her partner Chris, who visits the property every three or four weeks, managed to find a company to rebuild the walls, Liz was faced with the prospect of dealing with the insurance claim. At first, she thought “I just can’t deal with this.” “It’s one thing to deal with something like this in the UK where you know roughly what happens, you’ve got the language, you’ve got everything.”

Luckily, Liz and Chris, who also works in finance, had taken out a home insurance policy with Kyna Insurance from the day they bought their home back in June 2019 and Kyna Insurance Agent Kayleigh Hamilton dealt with the claim on their behalf.

“I can’t sing Kayleigh’s praises enough, I really can’t,” Liz says. “At the height of it, around Christmas / New Year, I must have been on the phone with Kayleigh two or three times a week,” Liz recalls. And Kayleigh not only dealt with the insurance company claim, but also with a unique Spanish public organisation that covers damage caused by natural disasters, the Insurance Compensation Consortium.

“The Consortium were not being user friendly at all… it was bloody hard work,” Liz remembers. “We were just trying to keep our house safe and wanted that money back as soon as possible.”

Liz and Chris ended up spending more than €12,000 to rebuild the front and rear walls of their property and thanks to Kayleigh “going to battle” for them with the Consortium, they got back every last penny.

“We are really pleased with that. Kayleigh was absolutely brilliant,” Liz says.