BUSINESS IDEAS TO START YOUR NEW LIFE IN THE SUN

On the subject of what to do workwise when you relocate to Spain, I strongly suggest that you create your own business so you don't have to relay in finding a job in a very difficult market, mainly if you don't speak the local lingo.

If you are in any of the expats Facebook groups, you will see that every now and again there is always someone asking what is missing in your area. Apart from some funny suggestions (like a sex shop), there are some business ideas/niches on the market that would be actually achievable.

So If you are looking for a new business oportunity at the time than moving to Spain, here you have some ideas:

- A buy in bulk food shop "compra a granel". This is a very popular idea, as nowadays everybody is gaining conscience about out environment.

- It seems there is a large demand for healthy vegetarian, vegan and bio food/products, shops/restaurants/bars. Although we Spanish don't really believe in not eating meat (sorry!), there is more and more people wanting to at least have the option to eat out regularly without having to face us meateaters. And even Spaniards will go there, same as we go every now and then to all types of different restaurants. I really think this is a great option.

- Home delivery service similar to "deliveroo" but for local restaurants that might not be on the big apps like "just eat" etc. There are plenty of lovely tapas bars/restaurants that might prepare your preferred sandwich/tapa/racion but they don't deliver. If you offer to do that for the small places you might be able to make it a go.

- Online working: English online teaching for Chinesse children. Easy to do (albeit hard work), and you can even start while you are still in your country. Or Virtual Assistant, which is also a very popular option.

Even in a saturated market (such as estate agents or hospitality) every business will always depend on your personal mark and attitude, so you might flourish where others failed.

These are just some suggestions, but I am sure there are plenty more business opportunities waiting for you. Just take the plunge!

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN NIE AND RESIDENCIA

I have been helping people to sort out their paperwork in Spain for a while now, and often the same questions keep coming up. I have noticed there is a lot of confusion between what a NIE is, what is it for, what residencia is, which one do you need and when do you need to do each one.

First of all, Facebook and other social media sites can be a great way to find information, but at the same time this information is not always accurate, or it is not explained properly, or simple the same process is done in different ways in different areas of Spain. I know that sounds crazy, and if you are applying for the same thing the paperwork required should be the same everywhere in Spain. The reality is that I use 3 different national police stations to sort out paperwork for my clients and in each of them the officers ask for different documents to prove the same things.

So my first piece of advice is that you find someone that does the service within your area and ask them directly. If you prefer to deal with paperwork yourself, then go directly to your closest national police station and ask them what they want you to bring. This is the only way to avoid having to come back 3-4 times to do just one application.

For NIE and residencia, often people think that if they have a NIE they also have residencia, or they have residencia but think they only have a NIE.

NIE stands for Número de Identificación de Extranjero, which means foreign ID number. When you are in Spain and you need to deal with bureacracy, you need a number to identifiy yourself within the Spanish system. That is your NIE.

In order to be able to get one you need a real reason for it, for example: you have been offered a job, you are becoming self employed, you are buying a car, you are applying for a loan/mortgage ... Simply saying "I am moving to Spain" it is not enough of a reason, there are some police stations that will ask for confirmation in writing of your need for NIE, such as letter from the bank, car sale agreement, job offer, etc.

The NIE comes in a white A4 paper, and it doesn't expire, the number is forever. The actual piece of paper where the number is written (the NIE certificate) used to have an expiry date of 3 months from the date of issue, but this is not the case anymore. Your NIE does not expire.

Having NIE doesn't mean that you are resident in Spain, it means that you have a number that identifies you within the Spanish system. Nothing more. So if you have been living in Spain for 5 years, you have your NIE, and a job and you pay taxes, none of the above means that you are a resident here. It means that you live here, nothing more.

In order to be legally registered as resident in Spain you must apply for your residencia card. For non EU countries this is a must, and it has to be done within certain time period after your arrival to Spain. 

However, for EU citizens, even though it is also a requirement to register as a resident, the system is a bit more lenient, and many people has never registered officially as residents in Spain. 

Now Brexit has shown us the importance of being registered as resident. Our government has already agreed to grant residencia to all UK citizens that are residents here. But this means the ones that are registered as residents officially, not the ones living here but are not registered. 

When you move to Spain you might need a NIE straight away, or perhaps you can apply directly for residencia if you comply with the requirements. If you have not received a NIE by the time you apply for residencia, you will be allocated one there and then. So if you are in a position to wait until you can apply for residencia, then you will be saving yourself time and money by applying only for residencia instead of a NIE and residencia.

This is quite a complex subject, and I could be speaking about it for hours, but I hope that I have managed to clarify some of your doubts.

OBTAINING RESIDENCIA - ABOUT BANK STATEMENTS

I have been helping people to obtain their Spanish residencia card as EU citizens for a few years now, and something strange has happened in the last couple of weeks.

For the first time 2 clients in a row have tried to gain residencia showing UK bank statements that were overdrawn due to the overdraft facility that they have approved in UK.

Having an overdraft facility with your bank in UK is pretty common, and you don't even need to apply for it. For the majority of customers, after a while of being with your bank and being a good customer, the bank just sends you a letter confirming that you are now entitled to an overdraft facility to make your life easier, and if you keep being a good customer the limit keeps being increased.

Whilst this is perfectly normal in UK, in Spain this is an alien concept. Our banking system is totally different, and in here if you are right now thinking in going to the bank they have already charge you 5€. 

Our banks do not offer overdraft facilities to us regular mere customers, maybe big companies will have it, or if you need one you would really need to beg for it, give the bank huge guarantees, and it will be really expensive to keep.

Even if you are just 1€ in red in your account you will be receiving phone calls from your bank, and if you don't put the account back in black within a fashionable period of time, you will get charged quite a steep fee by the bank.

For residencia purposes it doesn't matter if you have an income of 5000€ a month, if you are receiving that income in a bank account with an overdraft facility of 7000€, because in our mind you are 2000€ in debt. If you are 2000€ in debt you are not able to support yourself or your family.

I totally understand that might not be the case, and that in your country it is normal, but you are not going to be applying for residencia in your country, you are doing it in Spain. Therefore you CANNOT use as proof of enough economical means bank statements from a bank account that is overdrawn, even if you earn thousands of € a month. 

Each country is different and different rules apply. You can't take for granted something just because it is normal where you are coming from. If you have doubts about anything your best bet is to ask someone that deals with Spanish paperwork: your solicitors, your gestor, your friends, directly asking the police ...

Nothing worst that having all paperwork in place and being sent back for a simple misunderstanding!

HOW TO ADJUST TO YOUR NEW LIFE IN SPAIN

One of the things that you might notice when you move to Spain is that at first everything is amazing, lovely, good, and you are ever so happy to spend so much quality real time with your family ...

And then a few weeks later you might come to the conclusion that you are fed up of being on each other's pockets.

Because you might still not know many people, you end up doing everything together, which at first is a novelty and you like it, but then you start needing your own space back!

Picture from http://trucosdemamas.com/cronicas-una-madre-estresada/

If you are working and have work colleagues it will be an easier transition, but if you are retired or looking for a job can be definitely challenging.

And this is why it is so important to find new things to do: join a club, start practising sports, learn new skills. And do it alone. Let your partner/offspring to find their own hobbies. If you don't know where to start looking, join your local Facebook group, and ask other expats, or go to your local town hall as they normally have loads of activities for people all ages. And if you are registered in the padrón, the majority of them will cost you next nothing or they will be free.

I am Spanish, and I came back from UK nearly 3 years ago. Even being from here we found ourselves feeling lonely as we were missing our friends. We had to start from scratch having to find new ones and our space again. But now we are back on track, and we don't have enough time in the day to work and to enjoy all the activities we have joined!

Just be patient, don't give up if it takes you a little while to find your feet. There is a lot of people on your situation that would love to meet you! In my case, I joined Manilva Netball Club, the drama club and started learning flamenco dance. Thanks to this now I have my own friends' group and I am enjoying my life a lot more.

               

BEWARE OF THE CULTURAL SHOCK - WHEN IS LUNCHTIME?

There are many things that are going to be different between your birth country and your new home country. Some of them are very noticeable, others you won't even think about them until you get involve in different situations.

For example, lunchtime. Imagine we have a couple of friends, one British and one Spanish, that have just met and decide to go for lunch together. They agree to meet at restaurant XXX the following Monday for lunch. These two friends, unfortunately, are never going to have lunch together. Why? Because they haven't specify what time is "lunchtime". 

The following Monday the British friend gets to the restaurant at 12 pm, lunchtime, and waits for a while and leaves quite unhappy with his/her new found friend for not coming to the date and for not calling either. 

On the same Monday the Spanish friend gets to the restaurant at 2 pm, lunchtime, and waits for a while and leaves also very unhappy with his/her new found friend for not coming to the date and for not calling either.

Therefore you should bear in mind the following:

- Breakfast is the food that we Spaniards eat at home around 7.30 am.

- Breakfast is also the break that we have at work around 10.30-11 am, very annoying when you go to the bank/city hall/police station etc and there is only one person to help the queue as the other colleague is having breakfast.

- Lunch is the food that we have in the middle of the day. The middle of the day for Spanish is from 2 pm to 4-5 pm. All that period of time is called "medio día". Even if at 1 pm we would say "la una de la tarde", we do not consider that to be the afternoon because we haven't have lunch, therefore is still morning.

- Merienda is the food we have between lunch time and dinner time. Around 6 pm.

- Dinner is the food that we have at night time, anything from 8 to 11 pm.

Also bear in mind the following:

- We have been taught at school the words "breakfast", "lunch" and "dinner" as the times when you have food during the day. We have not been taught about "tea time". If you invite us for "tea" at your place we will expect you to serve a hot beverage, not food. If we invite you for "tea", do not expect food either.

- If you are telling us at 12 pm that you are having dinner, we will think that you are not having more food the rest of the day, because dinner is what you eat at night time, not at lunch time. To have dinner at 12 pm and tea at 5 pm means that you are starving yourself, as you are only having food once a day and then drinking the hot beverage tea ...

- We don't have afternoon and evening. We have "tarde" that goes from 5 pm until we have dinner at night and/or it gets dark. We were taught at school that "afternoon" was "tarde" and "evening" was "noche" (night time). Therefore, if we are asking you to meet in the afternoon, we dont mean at 4 pm, we mean 6-7 pm. 

Me and my non British friends have encounter some funny situations. For example, one of my Czech friends was coming back to her country from UK. She was living with a family and they told her they were going to have some tea to say goodbay. My friend met with us for a goodbye dinner before she was meeting the family, as she only was going to have tea with them afterwards. When she got home the family was waiting for her with a 4 course special meal. She had to eat it all, as she couldn't tell them she had already eaten, as it would have been very impolite after the effort the family made for her.

The other day I decided to invite some English friends to a bbq in my new home in Spain. So I told them we could either do a Spanish lunchtime bbq (by that I meant around 3 pm) or an British dinner time or very early Spanish dinner (by that I meant around 6 pm). As I used the word "dinner" my friends understood that I was saying "3 pm as in Spanish lunch time which is 3 pm British dinner time on weekends". 3 pm it is then!

Another day I agreed to meet the same friends in the afternoon in a coffee shop and for a play date. My friend called me at 3.30 pm to say they were already there, and I responded we were still in the middle of lunch, and that my intention was to meet around 6 pm.

Bearing in mind that I have lived 8 years in UK and that my English is pretty good, and that she has lived nearly 2 years in Spain and speaks Spanish, you would have thought we should know better! 

A lot of things get lost in translation, so when you decide to meet with someone from another country make sure you agree in the actual time that you are meeting!

CHRISTMAS IN YOUR NEW COUNTRY: THE 3 WISE MEN - LOS REYES MAGOS

One thing that we find funny we lived in UK was that the Christmas tree was up in some places in August, and you were bombarded with Christmas stuff for months and months. However, come 26th December Christmas is suddenly over, without prior warning: no decoration, no lights, no more Christmas spirit. 

As explained before, Christmas in Spain ends on 6th of January, the 12th day of Christmas.

You need to remember that Christmas is supposed to be the celebration of Jesus, the son of God in the Christian religion, and as such we also celebrate the day when the 3 wise men visited Jesus on his crib and brought him presents: gold, incense and myrth.

These guys came from far, far away, and arrived at Bethlehem to see Jesus by following a bright start in the sky.

We call them Los Reyes Magos de Oriente (the Magic Kings of Orient), and their names are Melchor, which has a white beard, Gaspar, which has a brown beard, and Baltasar, which is the black one, and can have (or not) a beard.

Same as with Santa in UK, there are grottos where children can speak with the 3 Kings and give them their letters. Spanish favourite King is Baltasar. I base this statement in years and years of going to grottos and seeing than the queue for Baltasar is double as Melchor and triple's Gaspar. So I have made my mission that my children's favourite one is Gaspar, as it means less time waiting in the cold!

Every 5th January evening the Kings go on a parade in your town. Because they are magical, they can be in your town, your cousin's town, your friends' town and also in Madrid on TV at the same time (kids are soooo gullible!).

In this said parade there are plenty of floats with different cartoon characters as well as 3 big floats for the 3 wise men. Each one of the floats and the people walking within the parade give away sweets, so all children bring a big bag which will end up full to the brim with sweets.

But when I say they give away sweets I should specify that they throw them away. With force. Aiming at your head. It is a good idea to bring a helmet ...

At night time kids have to go early to bed, same as with Santa, and they need to prepare some food for the Reyes and also for the camels. 

But the most important thing that cant forget to do, is to leave a very clean shoe in the living room, as the 3 Kings will know where to leave the presents for each member of the family depending on the shoe. NO SHOE MEANS NO PRESENTS!

And they have been known to leave charcoal on naughty children's shoes, so it is imperative that you behave your best! (dont worry, it is edible)

Have fun and enjoy the day!