Spain leads EU’s SME Initiative for cheaper credit worth €3.2 billion

TweetSpain is the first EU country to sign up to the ‘SME initiative’ offering €3.2 billion worth of cheaper loans to Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs). Companies with less than 250 employees will be able to take advantage of this new loan in the coming few months – likely to be available by Summer […]

FacebookTwitterGoogle+LinkedInFlipboardPinterestShare

Spain passes new law to combat illegal fishing and rings in praise from NGOs

TweetNew Spanish law 33/2014 has marked tougher penalties for Spanish citizens involved in illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing anywhere in the world. As Europe’s largest fishing member state (followed by UK, France and Italy) Spain represents 20% of Europe’s fishing capacity and employs the most number of people in the fishing industry. This an important […]

Small businesses in Spain closing doors at end of Ley Boyer

TweetSmaller businesses are being forced to close as landlords raise commercial property rents resulting from the 20 year ‘Ley Boyer’ ending on January 1st 2015. The law introduced in 1994 protected businesses whose lease had begun before 1985, exempting them from rent increases for 20 years (inflation-linked). This gave many family businesses the opportunity to […]

Google News shutting down in Spain

TweetSpain’s protectionist attempt at taxing news aggregators such as Google, for linking to Spanish News sites has dramatically backfired leaving Spanish news publishers cut off from Google’s immense traffic of 10 billion clicks to publisher websites per month. Hoping to reap €80 million a year for the Association of Editors of Spanish Dailies (AEDE) effective from January,the […]

Uber forced to shut down operations today in Spain following Taxi Association opposition

Tweet Uber, the car ride sharing app, has been forced to shut down operations from today, Judges in Madrid have ordered. Following protests by Spanish taxi associations, and ‘cautionary measures’ supporting a future court case presented by the Madrid Tax Association against the Californian based startup, the judge passed the decision that Uber drivers “lack […]

World’s longest rail road: China to Madrid in 21 days on the Yixin’ou cargo train

TweetChina has just launched the complete new cargo transport route “Yixin’ou” connecting Yiwu, China’s eastern wholesale capital nicknamed China Commodity City, straight to Madrid via Central Asia. The first train trip arrived last Tuesday with the 82 container train travelling 13,000 km over 21 days. The longest China-European train line to date, this new cargo […]

Spain’s population set to decline from 2015

TweetAnnual population growth in Spain has been modest since 2009 and negative since 2012 – more people are dying and less babies are being born in Spain. This could be explained largely by the economic crisis, mixed with proportionally more women in the workplace, less women of child bearing age, and smaller family sizes. With this […]

Spain’s Google Tax aims to earn €80 million a year for the AEDE

TweetOnline aggregators beware, Spain has passed a new law obliging them to pay a tax to the original news source they are linking to in a bid to save the domestic newspaper industry. Named the ‘Google tax’ after the most prominent news aggregator, companies affected will be forced to pay a monthly fee or per […]

Modernisation of Spain’s VAT tax reporting system

TweetHacienda have announced a new administrative system the Suministro Inmediato de Información (SII) or “Immediate supply of information” for facilitating the reporting of tax information from invoices for certain taxpayers. Effective from 1st January 2017, the new system will enable taxpayers to supply VAT (IVA) information from issued or received invoices within a four day time […]

Crowdfunding in Spain officially under regulation

TweetSpain’s Minister of economy and competitiveness, Luis de Guindos, has introduced new legislation making Spain one of the first countries to regulate the crowdfunding sector, imposing restrictions on how much non-professional investors can invest. Crowdfunding in Spain Crowdfunding for new projects and startups has been incredibly popular in Spain as an alternative to bank credit, […]