6th January 2011

My next job is to properly mark out the ground for the refugio* I’m so close to getting planning permission for. The architect finished the basic plans last year, and we can start preparing for the digger to come in. We’ve decided to start with the tourist building – refugio, and then afterwards build the house where the original stone building already exists.

* this is the new official name for the larger building, with bathrooms, 3 guest bedrooms and a multi-use sala that i am building on the second terrace. (there has been much name confusion which is now over)

7th June 2011

I think i finally recovered from my birthday at Boodaville, Primavera Sound in Barcelona and brilliant family time in the UK, and it’s lucky i did that before i got the call from the architect saying that due to a horrible twist in the Spanish bureaucratic jungle it appears that in the 13 months since we sent the plans off we have achieved the following: plans arrived in Teruel where someone said “no, we don’t approve them any more, we changed it and you need to send them to the Valderrobres office”.

20th September 2011

Here’s the story of my plans so far….

The architects worked very hard to prepare some excellent diagrams and plans and had them ready in May 2010. Civil servant 1 had to put 4 pieces of paper in with the plans and send them to the planning office in Teruel. One of these papers involved him typing something. Not only did he fail to put in the necessary papers but the whole project took three months to arrive at the Teruel office.

In Teruel another civil servant opened the project, saw the papers were missing and sent back a letter asking for more documents. Unfortunately he also was unable to request the correct documents, so after hassling civil servant 1 to do the correction and repeating the three month wait for him to send it to Teruel again the project application was still not complete.

A year into the process and we received a second letter from Teruel saying we still had not included the correct documents. This time an architect who works part-time for the council checked our project and helped us get the actual correct documents sent.

By some miracle we only had to wait two months for a reply this time (let’s assume that was because everything was correct so the civil servant passed the envelope on to his superior instead of doing something complicated like replying). So in June 2011 someone finally opened the dossier and looked at the plans. At which point they immediately found that there were several things which didn’t comply with a law passed in April 2011 and sent it back “unapproved”. It didn’t even get registered as an application for planning permission for 18 months because of these slow processes and since then the law has changed.

29th September 2011

So we found a common enemy. We will all blame Carla, the lady who worked at the main district office for a few months covering a maternity leave. She only approved one of the two buildings, and also classified it as the wrong type of tourist accommodation.

Who knows if it really is all her fault, but since my idea to have tourists and myself living on the same piece of land yet in different buildings doesn’t tick any of their boxes describing how country hotels should be, I am now going to live in a shed. No, hang on, I didn’t say that. I am not going to live in a shed, I am going to build one – to make sure I use all the square meters the current law allows me – then sleep in it occasionally and apply for a “change of use” in many years time to convert it to a home. This means the two buildings will be

1) a building for rural tourism/living in

2) an agricultural shed built on the ruins of the original building.

but get this… not only is it much quicker to apply for permission to build a shed, but the valderrobres planning office can give me the permission to build so I avoid any of these ridiculous three month waits. AND I can put a green roof on the shed. AND – get this – I have to become a farmer. That means I am allowed to build an agricultural building. i’m going to go and look at how to register with the local cooperative now

on the downside— we are literally back to the drawing board for two weeks

22nd December 2011

I went to españa profunda

Posted on Dec 22, 2011

Teruel does exist – I went there!

The yurt is so cozy! I mean who’d have thought the insulation and the shit porch would make such a difference? and the fleecy blanket someone left behind makes a perfect curtain, cheers whoever that was. The fire stayed lit until 4.30 when I chucked a bit more on. The only cold bit was when I got in the car at dawn on my journey to Teruel city, the county capital…

So, deepest Spain… It’s flat, but not desert. The hills in the distance were white on top, but not proper snow. There were trains on the old railway line, but not real ones. The main tourist attraction seems to be poor replicas of trains and mining paraphernalia. I was in Teruel city for approximately half an hour to pick up my project “visado” then had to rush back (6 hr round trip) to get back to my local council office to hand it in for the final step.

It was my most important day so far… one step away from permission to build the shed… and should have been exciting, but my local civil servants pretty much crushed all my excitement by appearing to be determined not to let the project go ahead.

The words that come out of their mouth are “we’ll have the permission in January” but under their breath they say things like “I wouldn’t have passed this project, but Juan did and he’s my boss” and then, instead of them giving me a list of papers I need to hand in… I have to tell them!

“No you don’t need anything else apart from the project”

“Don’t I need the paper showing I’m in the cooperative?”

”Oh yes, you need that”

Seriously.. if I was relying on just them, would this project ever get approved? It’s almost a social experiment I’d like to try.

12th January 2012

the ajuntamiento promised again that they will have my permission to build (the shed) next thursday, I found someone to come and chop a tree down for me next saturday, and I spoke to a man about digging.  I went for the traditional approach of asking around town where he lives, then ringing the bell and interrupting his pasta lunch. At which point he said “why don’t you call me?” but then kindly offered to come round and have a look. He knew exactly where my place was, which could be seen as either worrying or reassuring depending on your mood that day.

Additions Sept 2020:

I did pick up a paper on the following Thursday, and then started the slow process of building the legal “almacen” which we call the “New House” in February 2012. In 2019, when trying to sign off the finished buildings, it turned out that I hadn’t actually finished the full process of getting permission for the “almacen”, and this is being sorted out as part of the current application to host educational courses and activities.