Hotel Catalonia Excelsior, Barcelonina, 5 (to the right in the picture)

We also met María Pedro for the first time, the landscape architect who Antonio put us in contact with some time ago. Up until now, our contact with her has only been via e-mail. She is a friend of his daughter and has just set up in business after studying in Spain and doing “industrial periods” in Scotland and Canada. We are very happy with the progress to date, and are hoping that Antonio will be able to submit the plans for approval before Spain shuts down for the summer holidays over the month of August.

We stayed at the hotel in the photo above, which turned out very well – it was completely quiet (no, we weren’t the only guests!), and there was no traffic noise either. At only 58 Euro for a double room (without breakfast, which we bought round the corner at a café for 5 Euro for the two of us, instead of 26 Euro in the hotel) it is very reasonably priced. We’ll probably try to stay there again next time we need to meet Antonio.

As we packed all our meetings into the Monday, we had the Tuesday free and did a little sightseeing, going to the Central Market, the Plaza Redonda and and the National Ceramic Museum. The nice thing about Valencia is that it is very compact, so we walked between the places we visited.

Central Market - Valencia

Central Market - Valencia

We still need confirmation that the plot is building land with no major restrictions on what we put on it, this has to come from the local authorities in Xàtiva, so we haven’t completed the initial enquiries yet.

There is a free mash-up which the Catastro Español (Spanish National Land Registry) provides, which allows you to see exactly where the plot is, superimposed on a satellite image of the area.

For 30 Euro (for 3 month’s access) you can also get much more information about the plot, but that is what the lawyer has already sent us, so we have decided not to pay for the privilege of duplicating his work.

Normally, the Spanish are not big internet users – we noticed that some quite large businesses don’t yet have a home page; a local builder we spoke to when we there a couple of weeks ago didn’t even have an e-mail address. But as far as I am aware, the Catastro Español is quite a way ahead of their German equivalent. Here you can get information on-line in Bayern (Bavaria) and Nordrhein-Westfalen (maybe in other regions, but I haven’t found them if that is the case), but it costs 8 Euro a time, you have to fill in a multi-page form to apply for access first (application fee: 50 Euro), and it does not include the possibility to make mash-ups combining the land registry plans with satellite images.