HBG

Yesterday evening I shouted at my wife, and I'm full of regrets this morning and hope to make amends if I can.

A Spanish tradesman called to collect an envelope stuffed with quite a few 50 Euro notes for a job he and his workers are starting on on Monday in this crumbling Spanish house of ours. I had filled the envelope with half of what we had to pay, intending the rest to be paid when the job was done next Wednesday.

In the meantime my wife had filled the envelope with the total sum we had to pay, and when she told me I lost it.

I remember some of my words, angry ones. 'You can't pay a Spaniard up front, they'll be late starting, won't do the job properly, and finish early!'

I shouldn't have raised my voice, but my years in Spain have taught me the Spanish ways. It's just the way it is, nobody wants to pay tax, recibos sin IVA is the norm and always will be.

I'm hoping that she'll forgive me if I take her for a nice meal, and I want to be forgiven early so I'm going to suggest an English breakfast which we haven't had for a long time. I can smell it now, bacon, sausages, black pudding, fried hash, beans, the whole business.

The whole business was Paco's fault in the first place. He said he will be here at 8am on Monday. There is absolutely no chance of that.

missile

Last time I had a spaniard to do work, Miguel said "not neccessary pay me when work is complete".

jimenato

I obviously have no belief in silly things like fate - but when this sort of thing happens it often works out OK in the end. I hope so for the sake of your wife who almost certainly feels much worse about it that you.

Dick Dasterdly

Keep us posted regarding his time keeping.

I just hope all those readies haven't gone to his head.

Fredbargate

Well I've just had four workmen in my place for the last three weeks, they finished Thursday and I still haven't seen a bill or paid any money.

Not a Spaniard amongst them but three Spanish residents

jackytoo

Not difficult to see why Spain wants to stay in the "Club". This article says Andalucía is fearful of the Common Agricultural Policy reform. Lengthy piece but on the left are a few stats. These are the amounts that Andalucía and Spain get from Brussels

FEAGA: 1.663 millones de euros en 2011. España (7.000 millones).

http://www.diariosur.es/v/20120923/a...-20120923.html

Domino

We used to have countries across Europe who were subsidised by their Governments, now they are subsidised by Eu. The old CAP only lead to wine lakes, butter mountains etc etc.
In France if you had a 1000m2 plot, claimed for a cow, pig and 2 chickens then you got the most possible as you were at "subsistence" level. The Greeks also worked hard at that, claiming for non-existant olive groves that turned out to be under the sea.

Andalucia was so desperate to have proper employment instead of living off the olives that seem to cover most of it, that is why they started growing houses and blocks of flats. They wanted to make money like the Spaniards to the North.

However, the average salary in Andalucia is probably the lowest level in Spain, although that is also one of the lowest in Europe, especially for what many call an Industrial country.

cricketman

One of the lowest in Western Europe, but still the average salary in Andalucia is around 18,000 euros per year

If you compare to central and Eastern Europe then this is a fortune

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...y_average_wage

This is an interesting graph. It shows that the average salary in Spain is only 10% lower than in the UK!

HBG

Paco and one other worker turned up at 8.30am and worked hard until 9.30am when two others arrived with more materials and all four went for breakfast for an hour until 10.30am.

The original two worked hard until 1.45pm when they went for lunch until 3.15pm.

At that time all four returned and worked like fury until 7.15pm, when to my amazement the job, which had been scheduled to last three days, was completed. And it was of such good quality that I gave them an extra tip for them to have a beer on me, they deserved it.

Spanish tradesmen have gone up in my estimation since yesterday and I've already lined them up for more work a few months ahead.

Sin recibo, of course.

scampicat

Great post.

Domino

It looks like Europe needs some of our money to keep up their philantropic actions across the world.


http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/...o-rich-nations

Domino

and I thought at earlier we had agreed that statistics were just
"Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics"
no country ever fills the forms in using the same criteria, so how can you say it is accurate ?
and compare the salaries, working and living conditions of those here in the olive groves with the suited dummies prancing around Madrid and Barcelona. Forget the Marbella's and Malaga's - they are just blips.
here we havent even got the time to have a single protest letalone a riot every day. Not that it would do much good, all our police have been loaned to Madrid.

Lenox

The average salary in Andalucía might be 18,000 a year - which is probably skewed rather by politicians, funcionarios and those 'pringaos' which infest the region - but 35% of Andalucía's potential workforce is en paro: the highest proportion in Europe.
Our local PSOE man in the ayuntamiento wants to forward the extra payments that the funcionarios get by six months to make up for the one they won't get at Christmas. That's his main point in this Thursday's plenary meeting (pleno ordinario). Not how his party has bankrupted Andalucía, ripped it off sideways, brought a whole new meaning to the word 'corrupto' or, more prosaically, how he would help create new employment and, indeed, some income, for all his little doves which are completely out of work.