Bill Poster gets €155,000 fine

[Perikles]

Barcelona City Hall has slapped fines totalling €155,000 on an unemployed, widowed father-of-two for putting up 364 advertisements for his furniture-removals service.



This story is worth reading. The fines accumulated over 3 years because the Town Hall didn't send the fines out because they didn't know his address. They just let them increase. But they had his telephone number, which was on the advert.

It was only when he put up adverts outside Barcelona when there, the police phoned him up and told him to stop, which he did, that the fines hit him all at once.

How's that for an example of Ayuntamiento common sense?

[Nova]

I wonder whether that isn't just stupidity and bloody-mindedness on the part of the Ayuntamiento but actual corruption.  How stupid!  I hope the fine will be wiped completely, given the fact that the man actually desisted the first time he was asked and the stress caused to him by allowing the fines to accumulate without notification.  Bastards 

[Janet]

The fine will be wiped off. It seems his lawyers are focusing on the unconstitutional nature of the Ayto's behaviour, and I know from talks with José on the illegal letting issue that Spain's constitution absolutely demands the authorities to carry out exhaustive reasonable attempts  to contact someone before imposing a fine that someone doesn't know about. When they have a phone number and don't call it, lawyers won't take five minutes to argue that that is not "exhaustive reasonable attempts".

What I find almost more interesting is that there is no way these authorities, whether an Ayto in Barcelona or the illegal letting inspectors, don't know this constitution and its demands. But still they act as though it didn't exist, or didn't matter. It harks back to a time when it didn't (exist or matter), pre-constitution time ... Franco time ...

[Guanche]

I am sure they do know it. But when you think your above the law! We had something like this over a tax payment when we sold our last house. They fined us €5,000 but neglected to tell us for three months. The first we knew about it was when the papers dropped on the door step. We appealed and got €1,000 knocked off the fine. They stated they didn't know where we lived? This despite them eventually delivering the fine to the house, after the fine was issued:017:

I now think they fed us bull crap but since there is a five year restriction of appeals there is no chance. 

[Myrtle Hogan-Lance]

"Paying it off in €50 monthly instalments, it would take four generations to clear the debt."

Surely such a debt cannot be passed on to inheritors, some of whom are not even born?

[Janet]

 

[Myrtle Hogan-Lance]

How?  Sins of the father and all that?

[Janet]

I am not sure of my ground here, but if there are debts that are charged against the inheritance then they will have to be cleared before the inheritance can be transferred. That much I am sure of.

Where I am less sure is in inheritable debt not already charged against assets. I just know I read recently somewhere that Spain is looking into the possibility of chasing heirs for debts attached to, but not charged against, an inheritance. I think it would be blatantly in breach of the Spanish constitution - but lawyers might feel differently.

I'll have to try to track down whatever it was I read ...

[Perikles]

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that nobody is forced to accept an inheritance. So if an estate is zero or negative, the heirs can tell them to stuff it. I think this is the bottom line. The issue here is whether a debt can be counted against an inherited property. So if children inherit a property and the deceased parent had, say, a huge credit card debt, I think there might be moves afoot to be able to charge that debt against the property, but I'm not sure. This can't happen in the UK at present, I think. It would be a bummer if it turned out that the debts turned out to be worth more than the property, but then you could just walk away from it.

[El Profesor]

Poor Bill.