When starting a business in Spain I would recommend doing what the natives do; it's their country, their laws, their customs and their enforcement authorities. If you don't agree with them, don't go into business, because you won't survive.

And go down to the newsagents and get some brown envelopes, you will need them.

Hence a lot of big companies wont invest in Spain and now Spain is paying the price , if you give in to corruption you too are a crook along with the rest of them.

This subject is going way off the original question, bay as everyone is doing it; I will like to point out a .es cannot be registered unless you have a company based in Spain with a Spanish fiscal number. The .es is controlled by the Spanish government and takes forever to be issued. No surprises there then!

Godaddy.com (and about 1000 others)

.es domain in minutes, without any CIF NIE, or any other nonsense except a credit card.

But don't take my word for it. Try it yourself.

If you are in a discussion forum and put people who don't agree with you on Ignore, then you are the ignorant one. You cannot have a discussion without disagreement.

Cman speaks up for Spain, you run it down, that's what leads to a discussion where people post their views, either on one side, or the other, or most commonly the ones with a bit of common sense in between.

Lifted straight from Chairman Mao's little red book.

Knowing what i know about godaddy I would not touch them with a barge poll. My advice is read the contracts before you handover your CC details.

OK, whatever you feel most comfortable with, there are plenty of others where you can get a .es domain in minutes. 1and1, for example.

...although godaddy is among the largest ISP's on the planet.

Sorry, HBG, You're right. I oft forget that we live in complete utopia, and everywhere else in the world is impoverished and catastrophically third-world.

I'll take him off ignore so I can be entertained by his dream world of make-believe.

Thanks, Ami. Now what were we discussing about Spanish business matters, a difficult subject both in Utopia and out of it?

Business practices vary from one country to another, based on many reasons, mainly historical. The UK and Germany, for example, are far more transparent than Southern European nations, the latter are more secretive and family often mean more than State.

Trying to condense such an argument is difficult. Spain has a unique system of Gestors, semi lawyers who are there to assist the people in their 'war' with the State and its bureaucracy, the UK doesn't need such people, our laws are easier to understand and the nearest we've got to Gestors is the Citizen's Advice Bureau.

I've jumped through hoops to establish businesses in Spain, before learning the lessons (many of them) from a Spanish partner, just to pay the right people to facilitate matters, usually a Gestor. To fast-track any licence or other application costs more, a simple fact of life.

I hit on an idea some years ago to import second-hand Mercedes 350SLs from Germany to the UK and Spain, they cost twice as much in the latter countries. The UK was relatively easy, through the DVLA office based in Bexley at that time, the import tax was modest.

My lawyer based on the CDS made it even easier to import them into Spain, at that time, some years ago now. The formalities cost very little, and I couldn't source enough of them in Germany for the demand in Marbella.

Warsteiner and Becks beer followed the Mercs down to a warehouse at Malaga airport, right by San Miguel's brewery, and did they get the hump.

I'm long out of the loop now and sleep at nights.

That's not true. We have a .es adress, just needed a 20 euro payment to a domain supplier

Some how I thought you would come along and disagree.
Here is the website where domains for Spain are registered.

Website


Here is the page that explains the criteria for getting a .es information


The phase “vínculos con España” the website goes on to explain what that means here.

You have to be either established or have products aimed at the Spanish market. For that you normally have to have a fiscal number. Whilst I have to agree that maybe you do not have to have a physical presence in Spain it is nigh on impossible to have trade aiming at the Spanish market without a fiscal number.

I own a .es domain name for my business, I got it when I thought I might be moving back to Spain.

This is just another example of the not-well-thought-through hurdles which Spain is famous for.

Here we are, 24% unemployment and rising, very sick economy, and yet, few are thinking in terms of facilitating economic development by encouraging business to prosper (and hire). Implementing regulation which makes it more expensive and complicated isn't a winning strategy. It's a competitive world; business is going to go where they have the path of least resistance and the best chance to compete. That's just how it is. Our leaders should take a look around, and perhaps try to understand the reasons why some economies far outperfom others.

On the other hand, OK, they have taken a few encouraging steps: they cut back on the ridiculous labour restrictions, which over time should help to encourage hiring, but it's hardly enough.

Naturally, that's been met with a lot of resistance from the unions, who aspire to regulate natural market forces in favour of guaranteed employment, low work hours, high wages, huge benefits, etc. All things the economy simply cannot afford. They'd willingly destroy their livelihoods to ensure they get a 35 hour work week, €20 per hour minimum wage, 14-month pay year, and inability for employers to terminate any employee for any reason.

Then there's the lefties, who naively and idealistically aspire to tax, spend, and regulate everything for "the good of the people", yet at the end of the day, serve only to increase bureacracy, cost of living, decrease standard of living, encourage corruption and the black economy, whilst completely ignoring (denying) the real economic consequences and the destruction of public prosperity. Their solution: more of the same. Brilliant.

Then you have the EU, which seeks to impose conditions which are favourable for economies that are not struggling (as badly), whilst creating disastrous consequences for those that need to fundamentally re-build from the ground up. The medicine is killing the patient.

Many people would like to naively believe that business is the devil (it's a popular notion at the moment). But that's nonsense. Good business is good business - anywhere. Bad business is bad business - anywhere.

The politics of Spain and the EU are unwittingly more greedy and nearsighted than any business. In the current regulatory environment, private business has no choice but to seek alternatives (e.g., starting business elsewhere or increasingly engaging the "dark" side of the economy) and that is a big part of the problem.

Funny, lots of Spanish-language websites exist with .es domains. Lots of them are based in South and Central America.

..and again, if what you say is true ( it isn't) then why is it that you can freely buy and register .es domains from any domain provider who sells them, without any proof of anything you say?

By the way, the last .es domain I bought was only €9 per year, and required nothing more than being able to pay for it.