The chit-chat area

I was looking at the Correos website. They do an international mail redirect service. It costs:

Personally I'll do without my electric and water bills but if you're interested click the English button at the bottom of their homepage, then other services.

Hi ken just read your web page and i have seen your picture of the booth can you put it on don juan site please irene

There is a little English bookshop (David's books) in Los Boliches that also has a mailservice. They don't send it through, but they keep it for you until you are around to collect it and if you want they phone you when some mail has arrived. I am not too sure about their prices, but I think we pay around 80 euro a year for this service. We've been using them as our mailadres for over two years now, and are very content with the service they provide. An added advantage is that their address is nice and short, so easy to communicate to people and companies without having to squeeze all the  "don juan, blocque X, planta X, piso X' into a too small space. And picking up the mail is always a good reason to stroll around Los Boliches a bit more.

As for the booth, it's just one of those little cabins from ONCE you see spreaded through the city, where handicapped people sell lottery tickets. I think it's quite cute once it got cleaned up and wouldn't it be fun if we all bought toghether a street of christmas lottery tickets and became millionairs together ;)

Our lottery booth,

but with a bit of paint it could easily look much better (sorry for the crude paint job).

More important is who sits in it and when. We are currently without security guard as we no longer have a contract with the company (they didn't agree to the three months term). I hope a new contract can be arranged on very short notice as more people don't feel safe at the moment. We have Tigo watching our garden as he likes our coffee, but the other blocks are no longer protected. We have long dark nights at the moment and burglars won't be noticed as they enter from the right side of the development. We told our insurance company that we have a night guard and our coverage is based on his/her presence.

Max

Hi all  peter said can he lease it and run it as a sweet shop irene

Hi All

I see sections of the new ring road around Malaga opened this week, with all construction due to finish in April 2009. Has this made any changes for the routes we take from the airport, or to Granada. Any information would be appreciated.

Westport

Hi All,

Dose any one know how long the washing machines are guaranteed for in Don Juan 1, as our one never worked right from day one and now will not work,

Hi everyone,

I am just querying if any one has had email from Lawyers regarding income and wealth tax. They confirm everyone who owned a property in Spain before Dec 2007 and were not Spanish residents have to register before 31/12/08. Can anyone enlighten me as to what this means.

Thanks Donna

Hi Donna,

Are you with Fuenlegal Abagodos who are based on the Paseo in Los Boliches by any chance?

Donna,

Gericom did a detailed post on this some time ago - I am not sure which thread it is in.

In addition to council taxes as non resident owners we also have to pay income tax and wealth tax. These are what your solicitor is talking about. 2007 taxes are due by 31st December 2008. Income tax is based on the assumption that if you own a property and are non resident you are renting it out and is a tax on your rental income regardless of whether you earned any or not. Wealth Tax is based on your net worth in Spain so value of property - less mortgage plus bank balance. You can either use your solicitor or a gestor (tax specialist),work it out yourself or not bother paying it. Many people do not pay. If they go to sell the property or the tax man catches up with them they will have to pay the taxes plus surcharges.

Everything you want to know and more is posted on the general forum under owning a property in Spain\Spanish taxes.

Hi donna click on the forums top of this page and on the  list click general spain forums then in the box put taxes in costa del sol and read taxes to be payed look at the one on 9 december as some one is helping to do the taxes for people at only 35euros ?bye irene

Thanx everyone, & all the best

Donna

Given all the bad financial and economic news hitting us daily here in Ireland I was thinking maybe now is the time for a punt on the big Spanish Lottery draw known as "EL GORDO". 

From what I have read, it takes place on 22nd December, and tickets are sold in "decimas" (tenths). I am not sure how much a decima costs - one advertisement I came across was showing the cost of a decima at €80 and a half-decima at €40,  ( perhaps Max can enlighten me on this point).

The prize fund is €2.3 billion and there are so many prizes (many of them very big) that the chances of winning are 1 in 6.3!   That has to be better than putting your money in a bank.........

Anyone for a punt?

If you buy shares they go down in value....if you buy property it goes down in value...if you put money in the 
bank the bank goes bust so If there's a Syndicate going count me in

Count me in, I'm up for a Xmas lottery gamble!  (Im OK for anything up to 25 euro) 

Merry Christmas to everyone at Don Juan!

Hi all

Be careful of some of the adverts regarding the Spanish lottery tickets. Some of them are scams. I believe one that you see advertised on aeroplane magazines based in Amsterdam is one of these. Your best bet is to go down to one of the lottery shops and buy them. I think there is a lottery shop on the same stretch of street as "Spainsburys", I may be wrong. The tickets themselves are divided into 10 decima's. So there are 10 tickets to each lottery number, so if you buy one ticket, and it comes up, you divide the prize money with 9 others. Last year I put € 120 on it. I missed one of the prizes by one batch number. Would have won a couple of thousand euros, as I had all 10 decimas. I would be up for putting in say € 20. Problem is, who would organise it, and do they mind waiting for payment etc.

Westport

I think it's a bit late to organise it because the draw is already tomorrow and today most of the lottery offices are closed. It is indeed a very big thing in Spain and marks the beginning of Christmas for most people, most of the Spanish buy their tickets already in august! If you have the chance to watch a bit of the broadcoast of the drawing it's really worthwhile. It takes all day so it gets a bit boring, but the whole ritual is very interesting. Traditionally the numbers are drawn by children who then SING the winning numbers and the amount won. Most of the shops have the radio-broadcast on during the whole day.

There is a second chance with the lottery in january though, called  "el Niño" (the little one). The christmas lottery has bigger prices (and therefore is called "el Gordo" which means "the fat one"), but the prices from the smaller one are also substential. A decimal (10th of a ticket) is 20 euro's, just like with the christmas lottery.

Thanks for all the info on El Gordo.  I now realise that one decima costs just €20 rather than €40 as shown on EL Gordo website and €80 as shown on the European Lottery Guild's website. This is the one that Westport refers to as being advertised in the inflight magazines such as Ryanair's for example. While it may not be a scam as such they are obviously taking a big profit on each decima.

Commiserations to you Westport on the failure of your investment of £120 last year - do you think the odds are as good as I thought, 1 in 6.37 or is this also a misleading piece of marketing by ELG?

Ah well, it looks like I'll have to wait until next year for the "big" flutter....at least there's more satisfaction and entertainment value out of schoolchildren singing out your winning number (or possibly not singing it at all) than there is out of my current so called solid sure-thing investment in Bank of Ireland shares (now worth zilch).....

A very merry Christmas to you all and especially to our hard working committee of last year in Don Juan and our current equally hard working committee.....as they say in all the wedding speeches "May all your (our) problems be little ones"!

 Our 'decima' was one of the few which got no prize at all :(

People in for a new attempt in 'El Nina' on January 6th? Maybe 2009 is a lucky year :)

Max

edit: almost forgot the Christmas greetings! I tried to upload some photos of the Christmas decorations in DJ, but the forum software didn't cooperate so far. The first boxer day party is announced so the spirits are high in Don Juan. For all those at home best wishes and don't be too jealous of the sun.