THE PRACTICAL SIDE OF THINGS

Whenever you move house there are always practical things to be attended to such as gas, electricity, telephones, local taxes, insurance and everything else which is an everyday part of modern life. To smooth your way through all this in Spain it can be helpful if you have a local contact who speaks fluent Spanish since not all the service providers speak fluent English (and, of course, why should they?).

GAS

Should you buy a property with gas as part of the services it really is very easy to get organised. There is no mains gas in the south of Spain so you will be dependent on bottled gas. If you buy a resale property it is likely that you will inherit a couple of gas cylinders on which the legal deposit has already been made. If this is the case you either need to keep your eyes open for the gas delivery service which will exchange an empty cylinder for a newly filled one at very minimal cost or you need to find out where the nearest depot is and take the cylinder along yourself to exchange it. In our case we are lucky since there is a local delivery service, although at first we thought it was an ice cream seller because of the bells he was ringing. If there is no regular local delivery a simple phone call to the nearest gas depot will result in a cylinder being delivered straight to your door and if you are going to be out you can leave the empty cylinder outside the door with the payment underneath. I have to say that gas is by far the cheapest way to cook and heat water.

If you have moved to a new property which has gas water heating or cooking you will need to go along to your local gas supplier and sign a contract for the gas bottles. Once the contract has been signed you will then be entitled to exchange gas bottles in perpetuity. I wouldn’t encourage anyone to break the law but you can get the same result if you go to the local market and buy a couple of empty gas bottles. You can then exchange them for filled bottles at any gas depot. The depot actually encourages people to do this since it saves the bureaucracy of opening a new account.

ELECTRICITY

Electricity was a bit more of a problem since the people at the electricity company were not bilingual and in order to have the electricity service transferred to our name we needed to have a new meter fitted. This was where our Spanish-speaking estate agent was very useful and it was accomplished very easily and with no delays.

One minor chore you will encounter when you move to Spain is to change the plugs on all the English electrical equipment you have brought to Spain for the Spanish variety. It is easier to do this rather than having to use adapters for your English plugs. Another minor inconvenience is that Spanish light fittings have screw-in bulbs and you need to ensure that you have a constant supply of bayonet fit bulbs for any English lamps you have transported to Spain. These are one of the things we often ask visitors to bring when they come to stay.

Power cuts are a fact of life in many parts of Spain. They can last for a few minutes or several hours. Happily the latter scenario is not that common. They can be a bit inconvenient because in many properties water may be delivered to your home by electric pump so a power cut also means no water supply.

You can also be caught out if you do not understand Spanish electrical systems fully. Most new buildings have circuit breakers which can trip if there is a power surge. The first time this happened we thought we were suffering from a power cut. We only discovered it was the trip switch after 20 minutes when we suddenly realised that all our neighbours appeared to have power. Now the first thing we check when we have no electricity is the trip switch.

TELEPHONES

Telephones are not a problem since the telecommunications industry is multinational and you will always find someone at the end of the phone who speaks English. In fact in Spain when you ring the telephone company you are invited to press the appropriate button for an English-speaking customer service assistant. If you buy a resale property with a phone already installed it is not difficult to have the account transferred. On both occasions when we asked for this to be done we were told it might take up to a week. On both occasions it was done within a day. We have, however, heard of people who have had quite long delays in having a new telephone line installed. There are also a number of companies in Spain who offer reduced rate calls both locally and internationally by registering and dialing a special code before the number you want to call. These companies have saved us a fortune, particularly as many of our calls are international back to friends in the UK.

If you need to have a new line installed, it could be a good idea to have the back up of a mobile telephone until the land line is in place. Mobiles in Spain are much less of a problem than they are in Britain. If you move to Spain with a functioning UK mobile it is possible to change the chip at minimal cost and switch to a prepay service for which you can purchase more airtime at the local supermarket, garage or even the ATM machine. You don’t have to purchase a new telephone. In addition, when we bought a new chip for our phone it automatically brought up the instructions in English. Should you decide to split your time between the UK and Spain you could buy a Spanish phone chip for the times you are in Spain and use the same handset in both countries.

One problem is that UK land telephones do not work in Spain. Quite apart from the fact that you need an adapter for the plug since the Spanish telephone system uses plugs similar to those in the USA there appears to be a problem with the frequency and a UK phone does not ring in Spain. You can use an adapter and make calls but you do not know when an incoming call arrives because the phone does not ring. If only I had enjoyed a phone like this in the days when I had two telephones on my office desk!

Should you have a UK fax there is no problem in using it so long as you have the correct plug adapter since a fax machine does not ring.

INSURANCE

House insurance is not difficult to organise and there are many English-speaking brokers who advertise in the English language newspapers which are available throughout the coastal area. Alternatively your Spanish-speaking friend will be able to organise insurance through a Spanish company. The good news is that if you have relocated from a metropolitan part of northern Europe you will be pleasantly surprised at the low cost of insurance in southern Spain.

LOCAL AUTHORITY TAXES

Local taxes can be a bit more of a problem since the local town hall may not be on the coast and when you go along to sign a standing order to pay the Spanish equivalent of council tax, you might find that communication can be a problem. This is where your local Spanish-speaking friend can once more be a great help. There is also the crazy system in Spain that cheques are not routinely accepted – the Spanish do not trust cheques!

When we first had to pay our community charges we had the invoice. We knew how much we had to pay and we knew which banks had been nominated by the local council, the junta, to accept these taxes. As a good, law-abiding citizen who wanted to pay the tax, I went to one of these banks armed with my cheque book from another bank only to find out after a half-hour queuing that I could not pay by cheque. The wait was half an hour because it was the day after a public holiday and the taxes had to be paid within the next two days. I was told that I could go to the nearest branch of my bank and cash a cheque and return to the first bank with cash. When I went to my bank there was a line of about 20 people. No way was I going to wait there so I decided to go to the town hall and pay there. That was not possible. You must pay at the bank. By this time the country was heading towards siesta so I had to do the whole thing over again the next day. It was frustrating but at least I had learned a lesson for the future. Have your local taxes paid by direct debit and you will save yourself this hassle.

The other reason for wishing to pay the tax by the appropriate date is the fact that in Spain, if you do not pay your tax by the due date, you are fined and interest is added for every day that the bill is not paid.

COMMUNITY CHARGES

If your property is on an urbanisation you will also have to pay community charges for the maintenance of the buildings, the communal gardens and any swimming pools. This is generally much easier to organise by standing order since the managing offices for urbanisations usually have multilingual staff to deal with the large number of non-Spanish residents who buy here. It is important that urbanisation charges are paid since a change in the law a few years ago has resulted in the possibility that if you do not pay, your property can be auctioned in your absence in order to pay the community what you owe.

We know of many people who have been very surprised that they have to pay such a charge, but what did they expect? If you have wonderful communal areas, a nice swimming pool and good maintenance of the buildings, someone has to pay. In Spain, it is certainly not the local authority.

OPENING A SPANISH BANK ACCOUNT

The first step which must be taken if you have financial affairs in Spain is to obtain a fiscal number. Non-resident foreigners should go to the nearest police station with a foreigner’s department to apply for their Numero de Identificacion de Extranjero, NIE number. This number will be asked for in many of the financial dealings which you will need to carry out. It is needed when you pay your property taxes, when you arrange health insurance, when you buy a car and arrange car insurance and when you arrange household insurance. Bank transactions will also require your NIE number to be quoted – it is an offence for any bank to carry out transactions without reporting the NIE number of the client.

Apparently, Spanish banks have improved out of all recognition in the last few years. True, they can be frustratingly slow when you actually call into the branch, often with long slow-moving queues. They also tend to close for the day at 2 pm, particularly in small communities. As far as electronic banking is concerned, however, they are very advanced indeed. We were amazed the first time we put our cash cards into the ATM and the instructions appeared in English. Opening an account is very easy and certainly on the Costa del Sol there are always staff who speak English. That is fine but it is a bit frustrating to receive your statement in Spanish and to have to use a dictionary to translate what has been happening with your money.

It is possible to open a bank account in Spain while you are still resident in another country but it is much easier to apply in person at the bank and branch of your choice. You will need to produce proof of identity, your passport and your NIE number. If you open an account by correspondence you may be asked for a reference from your current bank.

When it comes to ensuring that you have enough money in your Spanish bank account, it is better, if possible, to transfer relatively large sums of money from the UK less frequently. If you are transferring several thousand pounds into euros you will get closer to the commercial exchange rate rather than the tourist rate.

CREDIT CARDS

Credit and debit cards are widely used in Spain although not as much as in some European countries. Spain remains a country where many transactions continue to be in cash and my comments earlier about trying to pay local rates by cheque apply also to paying for other services by cheque. Cheques are not trusted in Spain. Also your bank card is a debit card not a cheque guarantee card as it is in the UK.

The widely used UK credit cards can also be used in Spain but you will be asked for photographic proof of identity when you present the card. This can be your passport, but it is inconvenient to carry your passport with you everywhere, so a better solution is the new style UK photocard driving license. As a result of the requirement to produce photo-identity, credit card fraud is almost non-existent in Spain.

TAXES

The tax situation in Spain is quite complex and I do not propose, nor am I qualified, to go into it in detail here. Should you buy more than one property in Spain you must, by law, appoint a fiscal representative who will provide you with tax and financial services. If you so wish, your fiscal representative will take care of the organisation of payment of all your taxes in Spain. If you do not have residencia in Spain the tax authorities assume that you are letting your property to holidaymakers and a notional tax is therefore levied on the official value Valor Catastral of your property. You will also be liable for wealth tax on your Spanish assets but your fiscal representative can take care of all these taxes.

You should discuss with your financial advisors whether it would be better to be taxed in Spain or in the UK since all EU states have dual taxation agreements. As a result you only need to pay tax in one state, although this only really applies to income tax. The other tax you must pay attention to in Spain is inheritance tax, which can be very high and is not the subject of a dual taxation agreement between the UK and Spain. If you are not careful and the unforeseen happens you could end up paying inheritance tax in both countries.

THE POSTAL SERVICE

The final community service which I will mention here is the postal service. We all need it but in Spain it is very slow. Post offices in small towns and villages generally only open between 9 am and 2 pm (some even close at midday). There are nearly always long queues, particularly during the lead up to Christmas, and going to the post office to post or collect something can be a very frustrating experience. Luckily most tobacconists sell stamps so you can avoid the trip to the post office so long as you know which stamps to buy.

Mail deliveries can also be very haphazard. In our urbanisation all mail is delivered to one point at the entrance where someone, we do not know who, sorts it out into alphabetical pigeon holes. We have to trust that it has been correctly distributed or else we have to sift through every single pigeon hole.

The other frustration can be the time it takes for a letter to be delivered. Even letters to addresses in the same town can take a week to arrive. It is better to use the telephone or, if you have it, email.

TELEVISION

The wonders of modern technology mean that there are several satellites positioned above Europe which are capable of transmitting television in your language to your new home. To enjoy the marvels of this new technology you will need to have a set top box installed together with the appropriate satellite receiving dish. If you have retained an address back in England you can then request the coded smart card which will activate the decoding box. You will then have access to hundreds of channels of television and radio with more being added all the time. Many of the television companies who supply the smart cards such as Sky and BBC Digital cannot legally send the cards direct to an address abroad since they have copyright only for a UK audience. However, there are a number of satellite dish installation companies in Spain who can supply the cards and they advertise in the expatriate press. If you retain a UK address you can ask for the card to be sent to that address and bring it with you to Spain.

Should you buy in an urbanisation you should check what arrangements for television reception are in place. Some have a communal satellite dish which may not provide you with all the channels you would like to view and there may be a ban on private dishes being installed. You might find yourself with a surfeit of foreign language channels and very few English channels.

It is worth pointing out that a UK specification TV or video will not work properly in Spain and needs modification, except if you are going to watch British digital television. Very often it can be cheaper to buy a new set in Spain rather than have the modifications carried out since televisions are relatively cheap in Spain. Surprisingly, a Spanish purchased set will accept a UK digital signal with no problems. The only time it could be worthwhile modifying your set is if you have a very expensive TV you do not want to part with.

COMPUTERS

If you cannot live without your computer my advice to you would be to take your UK computer with you when you move. Of course it is possible to buy a new computer in Spain, although there is not the same number of large computer superstores that are found in Britain. The problem is that a computer bought in Spain will probably come loaded with Spanish software and unless you speak Spanish this might prove a problem. There are also slight changes on the Spanish keyboard as the keys have to deal with a language which has accents over some of the letters. If you use the Internet or email you will be faced with browsers in Spanish.

Having said this, I have to admit that new hardware in Spain is much cheaper than in the UK, particularly when it comes to items such as printers or scanners.

The best solution is probably to take your existing computer and have an Internet service provider installed locally by an expatriate computer specialist. When you have Internet service installed do make sure that the interface is in English and not Spanish. An example of such a programme is FastnetSpain, which I have now been using for more than a year with no problems whatsoever. Spantel is an alternative.

One accessory worth installing in Spain for your computer and television equipment is a surge protector plug. Spain does experience occasional surges in the electricity power supply and this could seriously damage sensitive equipment.