Anybody live in Busot and know any practicalities of living there and dealing with the town hall?

Hi,

Hope you get some helpful answers to your questions soon.

We have a holiday home in a different area but if you have an international presence in Busot I think you will find that the town hall will be used to dealing with the different nationalities. We always find that having a smattering of Spanish to open the conversation and asking in Spanish if the speak English helps. We have found the town halls' in different areas around us to be very helpful.

As for granting permits, you can only ask and see what their criteria are. If everything is done legally through the town hall then there shouldn't be any problems later on. I suppose all areas may have slightly different rules. In our town there are old and new parts to the area and the regulations for building permits can vary depending on what part you are applying for, so one rule may not fit another.

As for post, luckily the official post and notifications for companies for utilities, Suma, Fiscal Tax dealings, community administrators (if you are on a community) etc will have the option these days, as they do in the UK, to be paperless and come through email and online virtual offices, so post will not be such an issue there. It's always best to confirm that they will use your email rather than send paper letters and depending on what companies they are, to sign up yourself on their websites for online billing.

For general/personal post it may be better to use a PO box and if you ask your neighbours or look around the town you may find a shop that hosts personal post boxes for a reasonable fee. Most communities have locked mail boxes in a set place but they will not usually be for parcels and can get crammed with junk mail. PO boxes will keep your mail/parcels safer.

Hope this helps,

Jan

Thanks for the reply,

True things should be OK but just wanted to get the low down first as it's likely we will need to sit down with a list of things we want to do and find out what is what. Our Spanish is OK(my wifes ore than me though) so  we can manage if they don't do any English.  I just wish they would post useful info on the town hall website, ame for permits, things would be much easier. We'll find out I guess. :)

I don't mind having communal boxes, infact I wish they would install them here but my biggest worry is finding somewhere to sign for amazon and online shipping deliveries. As you say it may be best to wait until we are there and ask around.

Hello again,

Our neighbours who live in Spain have said the same thing about parcels and online shipping deliveries and they found that having a local shop that hosts personal mail boxes is safer as they sign for them there and put them somewhere safe for you to collect when you go to get your normal post.

I have also found that the town hall websites are not very good at updating things - We still have 2011 Fiestas on our local Ayuntamiento website and I have emailed them ages ago to tell them but they don't seem to take any notice.

However many Spanish town halls are now becoming a bit more Internet savvy and are using Facebook, which seems to be more up to date and you can ask questions on there which are more likely to be answered (I generally write questions in simple Spanish and English- using Google translate to write questions and translate any answers) 

I notice Busot has a Facebook page that may help you : 

Ayuntamiento de Busot on Facebook 

which may be worth a try, if you haven't seen it already.

Good luck,

Jan

Thanks for that facebook link Jan, it's quite useful.

Was in the town hall to register on padron the other day which was mostly painless.

Amazon generally deliver direct to your door except for packages sent by post which can be collected from the Correos in Busot.