Finding the right place to open up the next edition of Bruja’s Bakery has proven to be a little more difficult than we anticipated, but not because it’s hard to find a space that can work. No- that is the easy part… there are plenty of locales that are available and new ones become available every day. The hard part is finding a place that has all of it’s ducks in a row, but figuring out that all the ducks are in a row before it gets taken, which is nearly impossible because finding out a place has all of it’s ducks in a row requires appointments, and these appointments can take days to weeks to get! It’s the most frustrating process, but we are learning a ton along the way and a lot of what we are learning just makes us shake our heads because of how ridiculous some of the requirements here are. Maybe it’s like this in the US or in other countries and I just don’t know, but for Spain being such a no pasa nada kind of place, they are very strict when it comes to the hospitality industry! The difficult part is figuring out just how strict they really are when push comes to shove because at each of these appointments, they tell us the hard rules and facts which leave us feeling deflated.
10 Ridiculous Things We’ve Learned
1 // If the facade on the building you are interested in renting has been changed in any way since the time it was built (like a new window has been put in), it is someone’s responsilibity to restore it to the original construction. Usually it would be the landlord’s, but if he refuses to do it, it is YOUR responsility. We went to ask about 3 different places this week and each of them, the guy at the office said “this facade is illegal. It will need to be changed.” WHY DON’T THE REQUIRE THAT THE OWNER OF THE BUILDING TAKE CARE OF THIS! If I rent a place with a structural problem, why should that be MY responsibility? The guy at this office said “you don’t know how many people sit where you are sitting and they are crying because they just signed a long term contract and have to pay to restore the facade”. WTF. Oh, but if you want to request a copy of what the building looked like when it was built, you can request a copy in the official archives, but that can take up to 3 months. Wonderful.
2 // If the construction on the inside of the local doesn’t match the floor plans from when the building was built (usually 100 years ago) and the construction was done without official permits, you need to restore it to the way it originally was. For example, we found a place that we really liked. It has a small kitchen, but has 2 other large areas that could potentially be used to expand the kitchen and be used for storage. NOPE. Since the original plans don’t indicate that those spaces were kitchen and storage, you cannot change it.
3 // The air conditioning unit cannot be on the front of the building, but it also cannot be in the interior of the building if the interior is not a certain size.
4 // If there is a tiny ‘lip’ under the door, you need to put a small ramp so that handicapped people can access the space.
5 // If you are going to change the license or request a new license, you need to put a bathroom for handicapped people, sometimes have double doors, and you can’t have seating in the basement.
6 // You must have a dishwasher if you get a new license.
7 // The pull-down grate must have little holes in it and if the current one does not, you need to replace it.
8 // If the place has stairs, even if these stairs are from 100 years ago, they need to meet certain requirements or you cannot use them. If they don’t meet requirements, that space needs to be permanently sealed off.
9 // You cannot create a small bar with a couple stools for people to eat what they purchased unless you get the correct license which is impossible to get.
10 // Depending on who you ask, boiling water is considered cooking, which means you are producing smoke (but vapor is not smoke….)
11 // Here’s a bonus – there are these agencies called ECLU’s that are basically private companies that do everything the ayuntamiento (town hall) does for licensing. They know the laws, they can approve plans and do inspections…but the fun part is that every ECLU gives you different information and once, I went to talk to one and a whole bunch of the people there were arguing over the answer to my questions. So anyway, if you get approval from an ECLU (and pay them for this…it is not free), but then there is another inspection by the town hall, if there is a problem, it’s YOUR PROBLEM!
As you can see, this process has been tons of fun!
