
Source: Emprendedores
Starting the business and getting the wine to market took Ramón Iglesias three years of paperwork and over €10,000 in licenses. “And I’m a long-distance runner... I’ve started many businesses,” he says. “It’s getting more and more complex. There are regulations, rules... It’s a mess.”
Because of these rules and regulations, a lot of time passed between the start of the adventure and the first bottle being sold. The first step was the development project. The land where he planned to build the winery was inherited from his parents. “In Andalusia, before building anything for a business on non-urban land, you must submit a development project: Article 42 of the Urban Planning Law has very vague requirements (for example, the project must include ‘any other elements’ that allow proper evaluation), which are interpreted by whichever official is in charge.”
“The problem is that the lawmakers write the law, but when it reaches the official, they don’t know how to interpret it.” Iglesias was asked for a plan to prove land ownership, a cadastral map, cartography... In total, more than a year.
The next step was the construction project and the building permit for the winery. “For any business activity, you must get unified environmental authorization, and that’s where things get complicated. For the environmental department to approve the activity, they request information from other departments. The simple solution would have been for someone in the department to inspect the building and certify it was okay...” he explains.
But that didn’t happen. “Since I wanted to carry out an activity in a building that had already been constructed, I had to request a certificate of exemption from archaeological survey to prove there was no need for an archaeological study.”
Later, he had to submit a noise impact study to measure the decibel levels. With the nearest inhabited area 2.5 km away, the acoustic impact was not a concern. “I finished in March 2012, three years later. We now sell wine and oil.” Can he finally work in peace? “The other day they came to take an oil sample, and the technician immobilized 19 two-liter containers. That’s 38 liters for a simple sample! The madness continues.”
https://www.emprendedores.es/crear-una-empresa/bodegas-sancha-perez/