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Getting registered at the Registro mercantile (setup company part 5)


At the end of July, we went to Spain for a 4-week holiday. We had plenty of time to get things done around Ardbol and hopefully purchase the village and land. The enjoyable part of the trip included meeting our friend Claire and her family, who were on a road trip in Spain. We showed them the village and they though it was a cool project. And agreed we should do this :)

During one of the first days, we had an appointment with the notary to settle the sale of Tibor's shares to Tibi B.V. and to increase the capital of Ardbol Globo S.L. Tibor already managed to get the NIF for tibi b.v. and we had the capital ready, so we were all good to go.
However, the notary pointed out, "Ardbol Globo S.L. doesn't exist yet." It turned out that the gestor hadn't registered Ardbol in the Registro Mercantil. We're not sure what went wrong there as the gestor had all the papers from the notary. 

The notary suggested accompanying us to the Gestor's office, which was conveniently located across the street. Unfortunately, the Gestor wasn't there. An office employee agreed to call him and the notary was nice to take the phone and asked what happened. This was high speed Spanish and we could only here one side of the story. So not sure what was wrong but we concluded the gestor did not do his work but he would do it now.

Because Ardbol Globo S.L. did not exist, we couldn't proceed with the sale of the shares, capital increase, opening of the bank account, and signing the purchase contract. What could we do? Registering Ardbol would take some time, and during the summer, many people were on holiday. The notary believed it would be completed by the end of August. However, she also planned to be on holiday at the end of August. So it seemed unlikely that we could complete the purchase during our holiday. Therefore, we scheduled an appointment for the first of September, hoping that we would at least be registered and able to open a bank account by then.

After not receiving any updates for ten days, we decided to email the Gestor frequently. The process dragged on until finally, on Friday, a week before our departure, we received a message from the Gestor confirming our registration. The Gestor had some additional tasks to complete in order to send us the required documents, and he promised to do so the following Monday. Ultimately, we received the documents on Tuesday.

Since we were in the Barcelona area, we couldn't sign the contract, but we were able to open a bank account (see the blog on opening a bank account) and obtain a digital certificate to handle things online, such as opening a bank account.

The Gestor scheduled an appointment for us at the Agencia Tributaria in Figueres, where we could pick up the digital certificate. All we needed was Ardbol's NIF and a code that the Gestor provided. So, on our last day in Spain, we went to the Agencia with high hopes. However, we should have seen it coming: we didn't receive the certificate. The lady at the desk informed us that we needed a specific document, which we were unaware of, and the Gestor didn't answer his phone. We will try again in October.

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