Spain has some serious drags on its economy. The lack of English is one; I can’t think of another country in Europe where the people speak less of the lingua franca of business. Then there are the fueros, or dispensations, given to certain towns and regions over half a millennium ago, before Columbus “discovered” America, and which still provide tax breaks to people who live in those regions.
Then there are the notaries.
A notary, in Spain, is not someone who sits in a bank and stamps a document for you for free. A notary, in Spain, occupies an economic role somewhere between a property lawyer and a machine that prints money. In a transaction to sell a home, for example, a notary, in exchange for his stamp and some title research, extracts a mind-boggling 7-10% of the sales amount for his commission.
Julio and I went into a notary’s office yesterday. Notaries here do most of their work for banks – apparently they have contrived to make themselves legally indispensable to everything a bank does. Julio spent his entire career working in banks, and said he’d never in his life been able to walk into a notary and be able to sit down in front of one without appointment or a wait. But because the economy in Spain is so bad – the highest unemployment of any developed country, 21%, and 45% or so among youth – we didn’t have to wait.
Julio explained to the woman, Eva, that I had a document that required a notary. He translated the woman’s response.
“They can’t notarize this for you because no one here speaks English.”
This was in theory. Julio said he’d often seen notaries stamp a document without reading it, just as they do in the U.S.
I patiently explained that for the purposes of the title company that wanted me to have the document notarized, they would accept the stamp of a monkey, so long as the monkey could do two things: (1) check my ID, to ensure that it was really me signing (authentication) and (2) check my head, to ensure that there was no one pointing a gun at it (no duress). Also, (3) I was a lawyer. I hoped this might have the desired effect.
Julio duly translated this. The woman now said that they were only authorized to notarize documents in their jurisdiction, Spain. Their notarization would not be valid outside of Spain.
“Can you ask her,” I said, “if she is willing to give me the stamp, I will pay her and assume the risk that someone in the U.S. challenges it?”
She was already nodding her head. She left to consult with her colleagues about my document, which I had emailed to her and she had printed out. When she returned, she said that I could return at 9a.m. the next day to sign the document in front of a notary.
“They can’t do it now?”
The woman walked away to retrieve a file and presented it to me. It was a little booklet of bound papers, including a notarized document. Julio explained that my document, which I had planned to photograph in lieu of a scan and to then email to the title company, would need to be prettied up in such a binder before they could notarize it. This was what they did for the big bucks.
We left and I bought Julio beer and jamon for his trouble. We sat in the main plaza and enjoyed a good chat about Julio’s irreverent career as a banker, and his early retirement.