{"id":937,"date":"2011-05-18T14:00:28","date_gmt":"2011-05-18T14:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saints-hosting.org.uk\/sadfish\/visitgalicia\/?p=937"},"modified":"2011-05-18T14:04:39","modified_gmt":"2011-05-18T14:04:39","slug":"light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.visitgalicia.co.uk\/?p=937","title":{"rendered":"Light at the end of the tunnel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There may be some light at the end of one of our\u00a0project tunnels.\u00a0Last friday\u00a0evening\u00a0Amanda drew to my attention a newspaper article in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.elmundo.es\/elmundo\/2011\/05\/12\/galicia\/1305216002.html\">&#8216;El Mundo&#8217;<\/a>\u00a0(other Spanish newspapers are available) about some changes which the Galician Xunta voted through on\u00a0Thursday the 12th May 2011 specifically aimed at giving a helping hand to rural tourism.<\/p>\n<p>Tourism, it seems, is the only growth sector in the struggling Galician economy and it grew last year, bucking a negative trend in all other industries. The target is to develop the industry to a level where it generates 10% of Galicias&#8217; GDP, and employs 10% of the citizens.<\/p>\n<p>The detail is, of course, in Spanish but what I can glean from my &#8216;Janet &amp; John&#8217; Castillian, coupled with the invaluable services of Babel Fish, enables me (hopefully not mistakenly) to conclude the following;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The Xunta have approved a draft new &#8216;Law on Tourism&#8217; which will enable the creation of &#8216;geodestinos&#8217;, interesting places which are\u00a0outside city limits, in old or interesting properties,\u00a0which can benefit from less constrained planning and licensing laws.<\/li>\n<li>Apartments and holiday homes will no longer be regulated by the &#8216;Tenancies Act&#8217;.<\/li>\n<li>Rural hotels (up to forty beds) will be replaced by &#8216;Inns&#8217; with less rigorous legislation.<\/li>\n<li>Prior permission to begin operating as a rural tourism business is no longer required, just a declaration which the Xunta will check within three months of starting operation.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So setting up the business looks as though it\u00a0could be more straight-forward, and less tied up in red tape, but unfortunately no explicit mention of; speeding up the planning process, relaxing planning requirements and constraints, or making grants available to rural tourism businesses. We need to get our architect\/gestoria on the case and understand their interpretation.<\/p>\n<p>So there is light at the end of one of our journeys tunnels, lets just hope it&#8217;s not the lights of an oncoming train!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There may be some light at the end of one of our\u00a0project tunnels.\u00a0Last friday\u00a0evening\u00a0Amanda drew to my attention a newspaper article in &#8216;El Mundo&#8217;\u00a0(other Spanish newspapers are available) about some changes which the Galician Xunta voted through on\u00a0Thursday the 12th &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.visitgalicia.co.uk\/?p=937\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[45],"tags":[21,60,59],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.visitgalicia.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.visitgalicia.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.visitgalicia.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.visitgalicia.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.visitgalicia.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=937"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.visitgalicia.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":946,"href":"http:\/\/www.visitgalicia.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937\/revisions\/946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.visitgalicia.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.visitgalicia.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.visitgalicia.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}