Setting up a company in Spain, part1

In the first meeting with the notary we also talked about setting up a new company, from which we want to buy the houses and land. Maria told us what steps we had to take to set up the company (a Sociedad limitada (S.L.) in Spain).

The first step was to go to a gestor with a list of 5 possible names for our company, that had to be checked in the Registro Mercantil Central, if the name already existed or in pronunciation is close to an existing name. They would reserve the first name for us, that was original enough.

Our list was:

    Ardbol Tierr
    Ardbol suelo
    Ardbol Globo
    Ardbol grond
    Ardbol bodem

We expected to get our first name, because we didn’t expect anybody to have ardbol in their company's name. And we already had ardbol.es, so it must be unique.

So we went to a gestor in Burgos, since we were sleeping there. Maaike googled for gestor and found about 20! We had no clue which one to take so we one that looked modern. With our little once we walked to the office. We had to go into a big shared office building and after some time we found the door. But on the door there was a paper which said that an appointment was necessary. So we went to another one in the neighborhood.

This one had an open door with a frontdesk. We came in and said what we wanted to setup a SL. They said we had to talk to Carlos who is in the back of the office.So walked in and asked if there was any one named Carlos. We ended at a desk full with papers.

Carlos started to ask some questions, and reacted all the time with 'genial', especially when we said we had a NIE. (we use 'genial' now all the time too, with his accent as it is just genial). He explained what he was going to do which was reserving the company name. We had to pay him 30 euros in cash to do this, without a receipt or anything the money disappeared in his desk drawer and we hooped for the best.

After about a week we got an email with a ‘certificado negative’ for Ardbol Globo S.L. We did not expect to get the third name option. It was later we discovered that also ‘it should not sound like’ was a condition. But we were happy that another quest was done. The next will be creating a bank account. And as you can see in the certificado we had to finish all in six months.

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The first week of work

After the transaction we had time to think about what we could do in the village, as now we are the owners. The next option for us to go to Spain was in the autumn holidays. Earlier on we tried to combine it with Spanish classes for the kids, but we couldn’t arrange extra free time from school, so we had to stick to the one week of school vacation. We thought about starting at one of the houses which is in the relative good condition, like getting a door, so we could close it and store stuff there. But we had no electricity or tools as we had no space to keep stuff safe. So we were kind of stuck in a chicken and egg problem. To get out of this we set up a plan to get a container which we could lock. But that would not be there for this vacation. Then Maaike’s parents asked: “Would it be of any use if we were there with some tools to clear away the burrs, bushes and so on?” Of course that would be great! We were happy that they were enthusiastic and by itself there was a plan to do

El Vicino

In May we went to 'our' village to show it to the parents of Maaike. So we drove there and after a half our drive with a lot of corners we were a bit drowsy getting out of the car. And there stood a friendly man in blue overalls. He seemed Spanish we asked Maaike to talk to him. But she did not know what to say. So we looked at each other for a couple of minutes. Then he started to tell that the village is empty which we agreed upon off course. He also told that the village was being bought by some people. Maaike asked if she should reply and we said yes please do. After telling the we are the mysterious people we are buying the village he started to tell a lot of stories. His name is Gerardo. He was born in the village and now lives in Burgos and in the summer in Abajas. He knew about the buy because he owns a parcel of land and did not want to sell. He want to keep it for income and only wants to rent it out. So we talked about that for a bit and as we were interested in k

Finding the right pieces of land

When we first visited Bárcena de Bureba we where guided by the current owner Marcelino. As we where interested, we told him about our project Ardbol. We explained him that we needed about 5 to 10 hectares of land. He replied that it was no problem, he knew many farmers in the area. Soon we got an image of the land area (See image below) from Marcelino without any explanation but it looked promising. We assumed the black crosses where the pieces of land we could buy. When I checked it on the Spanish cadastral website some pieces where quite clear but some existed out of many small parts. After the price negotiation we where anxiously waiting on which pieces of land we could buy. In august we got a large zipfile with new information. As Yasmin could not open it and we where on mobiles we needed to wait until we where behind a computer, which of course added on to the tension. Finally we could open it. In it where 64 files. 60 of each house and 4 for the land. See the next image in whic

ardbol

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