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Speed limit Spain or life in the slow lane!
Mar 2nd
AC COBRA - DREAM DRIVING IN SPAIN!
Well, this has come as a bit of a shock! The Spanish government is reducing the maximum speed limit in Spain from its current 120 kms an hour to 110 kms per hour 68 mph). This will be imposed from the 7th March this year – so beware!
The Spanish government is reducing the speed limit in Spain to save the country money, given the current high price of oil. Evidently, every increase of 10 Euros for a barrel of oil results in Spain paying another 6 billion Euros annually for its energy costs.
Needless to say, this reducing of the maximum speed limit is contentious, despite the government lowering some rail costs by 5% to encourage people to use public transport rather than their cars.
Certainly, I am a little dubious about the benefits of reducing the speed limit in Spain and I do wonder whether this is not from the abc school of non-lateral thinking? After all, has anyone computed the costs of labour lost by people driving 10 kms per hour slower – and what about the lost tax revenue?
But perhaps I am being too cynical and too attached to my car (both of which I am) and the notion of being able to drive relative speed. For sure, as someone who loves driving, I resent any incursion on my freedom of the road. The latter has certainly suffered over the years as we have moved firmly into the digital age.
A good example is speed cameras, which I loath, along with many mandatory speed limits – which impose speed utterly irrespective of the conditions and time of day. 40 kms an hour in some areas is ridiculously fast in poor conditions as children leave school, whilst early on a perfect summer’s morning it can be absurdly slow. And yet the speed linit remains the same and the sanctions unaltered.
Meanwhile, the average motorist is, all too often, left to feel like little more than the butt of easy state fund raising – with astronomical state taxes on fuel and non-negotiable driving fines imposed even upon drivers even when they are being far from reckless.
Of course, the conundrum of public transport continues in Spain just as it does everywhere else. Invariably, it is cheaper to travel by train when you are alone. However, once you travel as a family the cheaper option is almost always by car when there are three or four of you. Until that is resolved by a ‘non-abc’ thinker about public transport – then people (particularly families) will still find it more practical and cost effective to go by car.
Maybe I am being too crusty over all of this?
The trouble is that I have a feeling that Fernando Alonso (Spain’s Formula 1 championship driver) is not too far off the mark with regard to the new speed limit in Spain. He disagrees with it and says that at 110 kms an hour it will be difficult to stay awake as a driver!
Of course, Fernando Alonso must mean on the motorways and main roads of Spain – which are normally superb and often disappear in almost straight lines into the far distance. Indeed, one of the joys of Spain is the ability to drive with almost no meaningful traffic for kms on end, at a relatively decent speed. To have to do so more slowly from now on, will, I fear, be a monumental test of one’s ability to remain alert…
Spanish property, safe to buy?
Feb 11th
SPANISH PROPERTY FOR SALE
So, Beatriz Corredor – the Spanish housing minister is appealing for British buyers to return to Spain!
Gosh!
And there are going to be changes to the planning laws to make buying property in Spain clearer for us poor, stupid foreigners.
Gosh, gosh – I am impressed!
Indeed, Beatriz is urging us Britons (according to the UK Telegraph) to: “Come here calmly, and trust in the system that we have and the transparency we provide.”
Oh dear…and it was all going so well, up until that point.
Of course, it is the ‘transparency’ bit that will make some of us ‘old hands’ laugh – and despair. Transparency is one thing that is rare in Spain and is the cause of a good deal of the trouble with buying property in Spain safely. Well – that and incompetent lawyers combined with endemic corruption.
Still, on one level, it is encouraging to see that the national government has finally recognised that the great British Spanish property buying public are important. Indeed, it even looks as though the Spanish government believe that these same good people need protecting.
Wow! The dots are clearly being joined up, at last – which is extraordinary news.
After all the Spanish have treated the foreign Spanish property buying public with utter contempt for years. If you doubt the latter, just check out somewhere like Marbella (see Meltdown in Marbella) or any one of the multitude of property scandals that have been swamping the international media for years and years. None of this seems to have percolated up to national government or, if it has, then it has been ignored in the belief that you can treat all foreign buyers like fools – all of the time.
Meanwhile, amazingly (as far as I can find out) there is not even a national government department dedicated to promoting Spain as somewhere in which to buy property – let alone one making sure that the ‘geese with the golden eggs” coming to Spain are protected!
Can you believe this – given the vital importance to the Spanish economy of the Spanish construction industry and income from foreigners?
Needless to say, there is the tourist department (obviously) but when I spoke to their London office last year they said they had nothing to do with promoting the sale of property in Spain and there was no department responsible for doing so. Almost unbelievable…
Of course, I welcome any changes to the planning laws that make buying Spanish property safer. After all, I have written a book on the subject (How to Move Safely to Spain) and even I weary of banging on about how Spain can be safe to buy in – but only if you approach the buying process with the opposite mentality (i.e. prima facie it is not!).
So, will the new planning laws make any difference?
I do not know the detail – so, I will have to get back to you once I know more (dreading the thought that it may only be ‘window-dressing’).
However, one thing is for sure and that is unless the national government actually makes sure any law passed is enforced - then any Spanish government reassurance will be worthless. This point is well made by the well known campaigner Charles Svoboda who, in the same Telegraph article, trenchantly states that: “The government in Madrid can give all the assurances it wants, but without it enforcing the laws nothing will ever change.”
Absolutely – just check out the Ley de Costas for a law that has not been enforced or has been enforced so erratically that no-one knows whether they are really safe, or not, buying property in Spain close to the sea.
What needs to be done?
Well, quite a lot – to put it mildly.
Certainly, amongst many other matters, I would recommend:
1. A general amnesty to all but the most dreadful/dangerous existing illegal properties.
2. Instant demolition of any property erected that was illegal after the amnesty.
3. Compulsory use of a conveyancing lawyer by any non-Spanish national buying property in Spain.
4. An extremely stringent duty of care imposed upon conveyancing lawyers with a fast, effective and cheap recourse for any negligence or conflicts of interest – backed by stingingly brutal sanctions.
5. A duty of care imposed upon Notarios to ensure, in writing, that a foreign buyer understood exactly what he was buying and any legal implications and liabilities thereon – and a refusal to allow the signing of the deeds without the foreign buyer being represented by an independent lawyer.
I am curious as to what you think?
RELEVANT INFO:
Spanish housing minister appeals to British buyers to return.
10 key factors to buying Spanish property safely
Spanish property – another nail in the coffin
Spanish property – Rural a vitally important term
Urbanizado – a vital classification of land that you must know
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Spanish property crash and the Spanish banks
Jan 26th
APARTMENTS IN SPAIN
I found a recent article by El Pais interesting. This relates to the Spanish savings banks called ‘Cajas’. These are usually quite small, local institutions with only a few branches, a bit like the UK’s old building societies. That said, not all Cajas comprise only a branch or two. la Caixa (the biggest Caja) is enormous and has about 4,700 branches throughout Spain and some 20,000+ employees.
The problem is that the Cajas are in trouble, so much so that ‘a flurry of forced mergers’ has seen their numbers drop from 45 to 17. This has been largely due to their exposure to the Spanish property crash and their part in the lunatic lending that was conducted during the Spanish property boom.
Without doubt, the Cajas have been ‘notorious’ for their localism and ‘political’ nature and their troubled situation now has come as no surprise to anyone. Indeed, I am surprised that they have lasted so long, before the truth behind their debt exposure was revealed.
Certainly, last year’s banking stress test was laughable to anyone with any knowledge of the effect that the Spanish property crash was going to have on the banks. It revealed that only a handful of Spanish banks were endangered – when the reality to anyone here, with just a few brain cells working, was so obviously very different.
Of course, the toxic bit for the banks is the amount of new development that they funded. Some of this is set to go well beyond any sane description of ‘toxic’ and relates to the funding of purchases of rustico (arable) land on the basis that it would be urbanised (redesignated as building land). Needless to say, this land (sometimes bought at ‘building land’ prices) has sometimes not been redesignated or, if it has, will not be built upon, possibly, for generations. In effect, therefore, it is virtually worthless…
In the meantime, Spanish property has dropped in value since 2007 by somewhere between 25% – 40% depending upon the segment, the area and the type of property. This is a huge loss for anyone to sustain and gives some idea of the exposure that the Spanish banks face on any building project that they have funded.
Sadly, the downward vortex with regard to the overall Spanish property market is set to continue, not least because of the (understandable) reluctance of the Spanish banks to lend. Mortgages are hard to obtain and, until this is reversed, it is difficult to envisage any major reduction in the excessive numbers of properties that were built during the boom – let alone a revitalisation of the market.
Incidentally, I write this not to put you off buying in Spain. Far from it. Buy carefully and there is no reason why any purchase should not be sound financially. However, I very much doubt that you will see much growth in value on any property that you buy – but there are enough bargain priced Spanish property around to make sure that you can easily absorb any further downturn in the Spanish property market.
In this regard, I still see a further drop in overall values this year but nothing like that posited in the El Pais article when it quotes: ‘the hypothetical downturn…’. The figures there are, I am sure, still based around the Spanish government’s ludicrous claim that Spanish property prices have only dropped, since the boom, by about 12%! This is an asinine fallacy and one that the Spanish government needs to clear up as soon as possible. The biggest drops in Spanish property values have long since occurred, the Spanish government needs to acknowledge this fact openly and allow the international community to then base their analysis and future predictions on this data – rather than the ridiculously defensive 12%.
RELEVANT INFO: The prospects for the Spanish economy look grim and mortgages in Spain, Spanish banks and the Spanish property crash and buy carefully and bargain Spanish property and bank fund lures investors with caja reform plan.
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