How many Spaniards does it take to...

It's been quite some time since I've written.  My more successful excuse is family, and not in a bad way.  We've had nearly two months of people visiting us with little time in between to do much of anything.  Not a complaint.  We had a good time and traveled a bunch.  We crossed off quite a few cities that were on our list.  But we had to set aside many of our day-to-day stuffs.

We recently hit our 6-month anniversary in Spain.  Many of my main goals (sabbatical, start a business, learn to adapt to another culture, improve my Spanish, travel) have been met.  It's hasn't been hard to be honest.  I do feel a kinship with Spaniards and I guess that's to be expected.  I came in with near-fluent language dominance.  I have family here already.  Thinking about it out loud, it's no surprise that I haven't really felt any culture shock.

Not everything has been rose petals and morning dew (think about that one for a while).  Annie quickly determined that Spain would be a great place to bring an American idea and an American mindset to start a business here.  She's a foodie and therefore some form of eatery was a natural fit for her.

How does a foreigner (or two for that matter) turn an idea like this into reality in Spain?  We've already done quite a bit of work on the idea (logo, menu, area of town, business model), we're still a ways away from posting an open sign.  It's a slow process in any country, but especially here.  I've found it's quite difficult to avoid frustration.  The best advice is to concede to the Spanish ways.  Know that this system is not nearly as well established and thought-through (from a business perspective) as the US.  Even though Spain is a much older country, in the small business world, they are a newborn in comparison, a fetus maybe :).  Franco, their last dictator and a much maligned world leader through much of his life, died in 1975 and took with him a system that didn't really support entrepreneurship (some people that know claim that the Franco era put Spain back almost half a century).

We still don't fully understand the system or why it was designed the way it was.  Earlier this week, Annie and I were talking (after a meeting with the license office), and she made an observation that I think really captures the essence of the Spanish system.  She said "the Spanish government is in the business of employing people".  That may seem like a innocuous comment, but it really is telling.  Said a better way, their goal is in making sure people are employed.  In Spain, this takes the form of extreme inefficiency.  The Tenets of the Spanish Government: (1) Give employees a narrow job description, (2) ensure there is minimal overlap in their tasks, and (3) require appointments to meet with them.  I think it really is that simple.  Oh, and write into law that all small businesses require a long laundry list of licenses, certifications, and inspections.  Imagine for a second how many people would be required to run a system like that.

Our latest struggle.  We found a location that we really like.  It's on a busy street, is within our budget, within walking distance of our house, and laid out in a way that we can envision our dream.  First step, find out if the license papers are in order.  Like in the US, you need a specific license to sell food and drink.  It's called a "Cafe / Bar" license.  The current owner is willing to sell us his license (apparently getting one from scratch is quite near impossible).  Logically, we want to make sure the license is real, current, and will allow us to do what we want.

Mind you, this information is not available online or by calling some number.  The only way we would get this is to talk to someone face-to-face.  After making the appointment, waiting a week, we show up for our appointment.  We spent a few minutes explaining what we were looking for.  First problem hits us.  She can't find the license.  We had the full physical address, the owners full name, and the name of the bar.  What we were missing was the exact name that was on the license, which could be anything.  It was a little surprising that she could not do a search using the other information we had, especially when this is the service they supposedly offer, namely to give information about existing licenses.  "We'll give you all the information you want about any license, but we can't promise we can find them."  So we agreed to get that name and come back, after we make another appointment of course.  Another week or two delay.

We also want some form of written proof that the licenses are in place, current, and updated.  For that, we were told, we needed to go to another office, with a ridiculously long name, across town, to request it in writing, and wait at least a week to get the paper.  Guess what, another appointment with delays.

Our third request was if we needed another type of license to deliver food.  One of Annie's ideas is to do a form of take-out where we deliver lunches to offices in the area.  It would seem logical that the license office could answer that.  Yep...you guessed it.  We needed to call and make an appointment with some technician or technical person (at least that's what I understood).  Am I nuts or is this really basic stuff that one office should be able to get for us?

The final request was to see if there were or are any fines tied to the license.  I won't bore you.  We got another number to call to make the appointment.  There's more and it's much more comical (ok, I lied, I will bore you).  The room was empty except for two ladies in a medium-sized room with no more than 9 open desks.  There was no one waiting in line (it was 9 am, which is extremely early for Spaniards...only the crazies try to get stuff done this early).  We were talking to one of the two while the other lady seemingly was without work.  Our lady turns to her right, towards this other woman, and confirms that we need an appointment to get our question (the one about the fines) answered.  The part that barely kept me from falling completely out of my chair was that this other lady is the person that we needed to meet with and I cannot imagine it would take more than a few minutes to look it up.  Just be glad I'm avoiding cynicism.  She gave us a number to call to get an appointment.

True to form, after calling that day for an appointment, returning a week later, we sit down at a desk in the exact same room as before, and talk the attending lady.  We came prepared this time though.  We had gone by the bar and I wrote down every last detail of the license.  Before sitting down, I told Annie, "if she tells us we need to go see someone else, I'm going to punch her in the face."  After telling her the address, she told us there were no fines (after being seated for less than 60 seconds).  I slowly explained to her that the last time, you guys couldn't find the license, even with the address.  She confidently told me that she didn't need anymore information from me and that there was nothing attached to the license.  Then she hit me with the kidney punch.  That office only has this information up to the middle of 2010.  The work was transferred to another office.

No Spanish government workers were harmed during the making of this story.