Day 81 - "Law and Food Order"

Spanish Practices

Thursday and the bloomin wind is driving us potty, along with administration, WhatsApp spats about a community pool and we have a guide to consumer law here in Spain.

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Day 81

Thursday and a bit of a low day, hard to put your finger on it, but the weather is not helping, once again the wind is blowing, the high pressure that makes summer calm and hot has gone north and giving the UK a really great few months.

A fitful night’s sleep as once again we are awash with paperwork that has to be done for our Spanish administrators, paying tax is a pain, but dealing with it in two countries along with running two businesses takes a lot of time away from actually running the businesses, add that to that the process of slowly putting our retirement into place, some days gets you a bit down.

Onward and forward, oh last night there was a WhatsApp spat with the neighbours over opening our Estate Pool, some want to open it within the Alarma, which means a complicated process and the hiring of staff.

We try not to get involved but I couldn’t help myself, saying that if we had liability insurance if something went wrong with following the complicated instructions to operate a community pool under lockdown, we could end up being sued.

Of course, forgetting that such a thing doesn’t occur in Spain, so I confused my neighbours, who wrote things like “How absurd that you might be able to sue somebody.”

I sometimes find the Spanish a bit insular, they have never thought that there might be other ways of doing things, like the plumber still using the same technique from 100 years ago.

They are not adventurous with their food, sticking to Spanish staples, which are delicious, but there is more to food than paella and grilled fish.

I think the British were the same, slowly as people from different countries came to the UK we adopted some of their food as our own. Curry is one example. Food shows in the UK are not afraid to take dishes from all over the world.

It is happening slowly here and “Master Chef” is on La una and if you got into a high-end Spanish restaurant you will eat some of the finest food in the world.

And special mention must be made of Dani Garcia who has elevated Andalusian cuisine to a whole new level and is one of the few chefs in the whole world to have been awarded three Michelin stars.

Thursday and the wind is still howling around the house and blowing the contents of the mountain onto the terraces.

Back to how the Spanish deal with civil matters like noise, problem neighbours well they go to the police. Sounds an odd thing to do but the police play a pivotal role in sorting out disputes. The process is called denouncing. So, you make a statement to the police and denounce your neighbour for making too much noise, or building a wall on your property etc.

There is something akin to a small claims court here for claims under six thousand Euros, a verbal procedure that is called a juicio verbal (hoo-eesee oh verbal )

And there is also the complaints book, when you are very annoyed with the half arse service you got in a shop you can fill in their official complaints book, the local consumer office will look at your complaint, you send of your copy of the complaint along with supporting evidence, photos and the like, so it is a bit like saying “I will report you to trading standards.” But a more formal process.

In fact just threatening to fill in the book can bring you a refund on that broken kettle you bought. Speaking of kettles our friends Dave and Colin returned a broken one back to the shop. There was a whole ceremony involving the security guard who wrapped the thing in shrink wrap and then a new kettle was brought to the table and the old one placed into the box of the new one and then that was presented minus box to Dave, who later thought it must have something to do with not trusting the staff at the shop with refunds.

Saying all that, consumer law generally falls below what you might expect at home, I have already mentioned our famous tin of tuna where the key broke off, our money refunded but the offending tin was put back on the shelf only for Chris to pick it up again and nearly put it in our basket, thus repeating the whole process.

We usually buy from Amazon and mostly we have had no problem and indeed I have returned things via the Spanish Postal Service and we have got our money back.

Some furniture that we bought that was minus instructions, nuts and bolts, from a large store via mail order, we thought would be a pain to return, it was, but thanks to our friend Carmen the furniture was collected and we got a refund to our UK credit card the next day. In that time the British pound had fallen off a cliff, again and we were actually £30 up on the deal, you can see why hedge funds are so popular now in Britain.

A windy Thursday has come to an end, three good legs cat is propping himself up against some furniture, he is a very good boy really considering he suffers pain in his bad leg. Hopefully we will be able to get an operation sorted out for him when the vet can do routine work again.

Finally back to our friends Dave and Colin who have been in Palm Springs, during lockdown, yesterday they got flights home, via a very torturous route back to the UK, hopefully by now they are back in Blighty, they will be back here in a few weeks’ time, but first they will have to quarantine, yet another horse bolted, stable door, idea from the British Government.