Hi there,
Thinking seriously about moving to Spain. Here is some background:
My wife (who is spanish) and I (english) currently live and work in england, but are sorely tempted to take over her Dad’s traditional village bar in Cuenca province. After travelling the world and seeing many good ideas being used we are hoping to make small changes to the bar during our time running it. Of course, change for village locals means a big thing and it could be that it won’t be approved of and they will go elsewhere.
Currently, the guy running it (renting it from my wife’s dad) is very poor at it. He doesn’t clean enough, the food is only available if he feels like providing it (and its poor quality and choice), and he’s lost the account with the provider of the Mahou beer due to non payment of bills. He also only opens the bar when he is well enough to bother, i.e. not hungover.
We want to freshen the place up, but add some continental twist to it. We are both more than capable cooks and have a work hard play hard ethic. My wife used to help run the bar when her parents were running it themselves before they retired. She knows how hard it is to run the place when it is popular. She wants to add some continental breakfast/lunch/dinner options to a blank menu and see if it will attract all the main road users and passing custom (its by a main road) to stop for something to eat, not just ‘al muerzo’ but maybe stop for their main lunch. We’re both capable at preparing bistro style meals. We would like to add some comfort like a couple of sofas, show digital quality tv on a widescreen, and a few other minor additions. The bar property has rooms which we could make self contained and let out or make like a ‘casa rural’.
The main change is that we want to make it non smoking. This is something which we are not sure will be appreciated, but we are willing to provide a sheltered outdoor area for smoking. We need this to be accepted as we have a 1 year old and our current living is clean and healthy so would like to maintain that.
Another reason for moving is that my Dad is willing to rent his property down in Andalucia to me for a token amount each month. This is something I feel has potential to let to holiday makers. We know a few people in that town who can help us with the business side of things.
However, all the above potential doesn’t take away the fact that Spain (and the rest of the world no doubt) is going to be in a very slow period of activity and venture over the next few years. For this reason we are grateful for our jobs but it is not fulfilling enough now. My wife has always wanted to return to Spain with a view to going into business. We’ve saved hard for the last 15 years and now want to reap on the efforts made where we will eventually build a casa rural type of property in spain somewhere before our government really ruin and undo all our hard work and savings.
The idea is to run her dad’s bar like a pilot scheme where we introduce new things and see how they go. We supplement our income by trying to rent out my dad’s property in Andalusia.
When things brighten up and we’ve found our dream location we snap up a property and do it up and start our casa rural hotel business. All this sounds like dreamland at the moment and its like I need to take a reality check, but its what my wife now wants to do.
Our instincts are telling us that its now or never. All this will take some investment, but is now not the time to be carrying out such ambitions?!
If you’ve got a comment to make or some advice then I’m all ears and ready to listen.
Oh, and sorry for the long post!
Oh, and by the way, we’re both 36 years old. Are we too young for this?!
Steve
