In my part of Dublin 6, there are more SUVs than in the mountainy part of Spain I visit. In Dublin 6, the 4x4s are needed to deter roving bands of tax-gatherers and to go on safari from playground to supermarket and especially to park outside the French market at weekends.

You know you are in Dublin 6, because blonde pony tails, swishing under baseball caps , are a necessary accessory for the 4x4s.

Whereas in De Montana above De Costa, where the dirt tracks are made for SUVs, there are much fewer of these urban tanks. But they are increasing in number and it's all down to the new tar road, which facilitated the upward mobility from the coast of expat property buyers, mainly English and Irish.

When I knew it first, the old road was mainly traversed by mules and old Ford bangers and an asthmatic bus. The hills and valleys supported isolated farms, with families earning a meagre living from olives, tomatoes, courgettes and avocados. By their fifties, the men were as gnarled in shape as the olive trees they tended on the mountain side. You could hear them going home from this back-bending work, cajoling "malo, mala" to their long-legged mules, pack animals bringing home the produce.

Now that the EU-funded tar road has made the village more accessible, the smart 4x4s are on the smooth highway. They are usually driven by ex-pats in search of a place in the mountain they have seen on a website. Virtual reality takes on a new meaning as, feeling like conquistadors, they climb into the mountains to look at the building plot of their dreams.

"Suitable for reformation" as the brochures put it, and they don't mean the old Spanish owner. "Finca of 3,000 sq m with water and electricity and old ruin" - and they don't mean his mother (I jest, I jest). There are plenty of takers for these plots of building land, cheap by our costs, among them a fair few landlords from the auld sod.

As a result of the property boom in Ireland, life is changing in the Andalusian hills. Some of the "new money" is looking for a quality of life away from Port Banus and Marbella - and moving into the mountains. In the village I know, life is changing at a dramatic pace - or at least sufficient for me to notice on periodic visits. My original mind-scape of the terrain has to be constantly updated with houses, villas and haciendas of recent build.

Six years ago, in the local tavern, the older Spanish farmers played dominoes, stretched the evening with muttered chat and cigarette and a particular spicy drink which was about 40 per cent alcohol. They reminded me of an Ireland even before my time. They were wizened from sun and their eyes were as black as the olives they farmed. I was not surprised to hear they were descended from Moors who came across from north Africa. Christian Spain practically obliterated their ancestors centuries ago.

But some descendants survived on the sides of mountains, uphill from the fleshpots of De Costa. Until the last few years, when the new tar road brought in the new "white" buyers of property. The farmers could not refuse the prices offered for their stretches of mountainside, good only for olives or mules. With EU prices regulating olive production, with wads of money flapping in their faces, they sold out to the new landlords.

In many cases, their wives grabbed a chunk of the money and ran, usually to be with a daughter working in Fuengirola, who was making a new life for herself on the coast. The money old Jose got for the farm was enough to set them up in an apartment. Mammy moved down with daughter and no way were they coming back to bend their backs on the side of the mountain and live in the house with primitive plumbing.

So Jose joined his mates in the evening, drinking and playing dominoes, ignoring SKY which blazed overhead. They had money to spare and when a garage opened in Valez Malaga, selling second-hand SUVs, Jose bought one. Maybe he thought he deserved it. Last month, going home to his empty house, after a long evening in the bar, he went off the tar road and over the side.

The owner of the bar, a polite young local, says there should be more of those metal crash barriers on the turns of the road. He says it as he pours out another set of those potent small glasses of liquor for Jose's friends, who still gather by the same table, under the TV.

I am not a landlord in the mountains, I am on holiday.