Buying a Small Business
Buying a Small Business in Spain
Know what you are buying before you pay for it
The short version
In Spain the sale of a going concern is a traspaso de negocio: you take over the premises, the licence and the staff, and with them the seller’s debts. This page is about what to check before you sign one.
Somebody in Spain has been preparing to sell his business for months. You will meet him with an evening’s reading behind you.
This book closes that gap with five documents. The lease. The list of registered staff. An inventory of what is actually transferring. The tax certificate. Two years of monthly takings. Almost all of them are free, the seller already holds most of them, and asking for them takes an evening.
Every legal text is quoted word for word, with the date of the version we read. Four of the six case chapters print the court, the case number and the date, so you can look the judgment up yourself.
What’s inside
- 1What a Spanish small business actually is
- 2What a small business really turns over
- 3The same business, a different province
- 4How many are still open five years later
- 5What you are actually buying when you sign a traspaso
- 6The lease: the document that decides
- 7The licence does not travel with the business
- 8The people come with the debts
- 9Taxes, and who you actually need
- 10The tax debt that reached the third owner in a row
- 11The same business under a new sign
- 12The case where the liability was sent back
- 13Same premises, same licence, same employee — and no succession
- 14The terrace: what you buy on a pavement you do not own
- 15Taking a listing apart, when a listing is all you have
- 16What cannot be checked in Spain
- Appendices
- A1Questions for the seller, in order
- A2Anatomy of a letter of intent
- A3Registry and administrative requests in Spain
- A4Inventory of what transfers
- A5Screening sheet: when not to go and look
- A6The questions from this book, on one sheet
- A9A short list of what cannot be checked
- A10The source behind every number in this book
- A11The words in this book (glossary)
- A12If the business has no premises
From the book
What a rent increase written into Spanish law adds to the purchase price, in the worked example in chapter 5.
Of a bar’s median asking price: what one employee nobody counted can cost, if a dismissal is later held unfair (worked example, chapter 8).
How far above a realistic seasonal split one strong month, multiplied by twelve, put a projected year.
Every market figure carries the sample it rests on and the day it was counted. Appendix A10 gives the source of every number.
Editions
- EnglishBuying a Small Business in Spain
Know what you are buying before you pay for it - EspañolTraspaso: comprar un negocio pequeño en España
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On Amazon
Every edition of this book is available now as a Kindle edition.
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EnglishBuying a Small Business in Spain
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EspañolTraspaso: comprar un negocio pequeño en España
Chapter 1, “What a Spanish small business actually is”, is free to read before you decide.
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When something changes that touches this book — a court decision, a law, a figure — it goes into the letter for the countries you follow, at most once a month. Each item comes with its source and date.
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