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What you should know before hiring a gardener in Spain

If you're lucky enough to have a garden in Spain, but need some help managing it in a hotter climate, you might consider hiring a gardener, but there are several things to be aware of before you do.

Published: 27 June 2024 15:37 CEST
What you should know before hiring a gardener in Spain
What you need to know about hiring a gardener in Spain. Photo: Anna Shvets / Pexels

Around 65 percent of the population of Spain live in apartments, so don’t often have their own gardens, but if you’re one of the lucky 35 percent who live in a house and do have your own green patch, you may be wondering how to manage it.

If you’re not green-fingered or you don’t have the time for the upkeep of your garden, you could consider hiring a gardener to manage it. Or perhaps you’re new to Spain and you’re not used to the types of plants that grow well here or don’t understand why you can’t get a lush green lawn, then you might need some help. 

READ ALSO: How to get involved with urban gardens in Spain

Gardeners can provide many different services in Spain, from designing gardens and cutting hedges to fertilising plants, cutting down dead trees and even controlling pests.

But before you hire one, there are several things you need to keep in mind and consider.

Check your home insurance

Gardeners are exposed to different dangers during their work. Therefore, it is important that you have adequate insurance in case of any unforeseen event on your property. In this way, both parties will be covered in case of accidents and misfortunes.

This will usually be listed on your original home insurance policy, but if in doubt you should contact your provider to find out what you’re covered for and what you’re not. You should also find out what type of work and health insurance your gardener has too. 

Ask for references

Before hiring a professional gardener, the first thing you should do is ask for references. It’s important that you can trust the person working in your home – even if they’re only in the garden. You also want to find someone reliable, who isn’t going to take advantage of you and keep going around the corner to the local bar for a cerveza (beer), and not able to finish the work on time. It’s not uncommon to find cowboy gardeners who don’t really know what they’re doing or who simply leave a job halfway through because they get a better offer. 

If you can’t get personal recommendations from friends, you can ask around on local online forums or ask gardeners for images of their previous jobs to learn how they work and what they can do. 

READ ALSO: Do I need a permit to put a shed or wooden hut in my garden in Spain?

Check credentials and licences

It’s important to check the credentials and licences of anyone you hire. The credentials will serve as a reference to ensure that they are a qualified professional. For example, do they have their driver’s licence? While this is not essential it may be important if they need to reach you without public transport and bring their own tools. Do you they have their own registered business or are they signed up to the autónomo system because they’re self-employed? While some of these factors may not affect you, others will and you could potentially be paying someone under the table, without them declaring their taxes. 

Define the tasks that need to be carried out

You need to be sure of what you want doing in the garden. It’s no good just telling someone to simply take care of it, you need to lay out the tasks you want carried out. What changes do you want? Will they be in charge of removing pests as well, or just taking care of the watering and planting? How often do you need them and what tools, pesticides or fertilisers will they be using? This will ensure both of you know what’s expected. 

Sign a contract

Most importantly, you need to make a contract for your gardener to sign. This document provides legal support for everything you have agreed upon. From the budget to deadlines, schedules and possible modifications, it should all be set out in writing. Signing a detailed contract is the best way to avoid misunderstandings and arguments. 

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PROPERTY

REVEALED: Spain’s plan to also clamp down on monthly accommodation

Several Spanish cities have recently declared war on tourist apartments advertised on Airbnb. However, the government now aims to also crack down on temporary rentals, a move set to affect digital nomads and new arrivals.

Published: 2 July 2024 16:29 CEST
REVEALED: Spain's plan to also clamp down on monthly accommodation

In recent months, many places in Spain have tried to curb the number of tourist apartments as a means of lessening their impact on prices in Spain’s long-term rental market for locals and residents. 

Some cities have rolled out a moratorium on issuing new licences, others are making it more difficult to get them and, in Barcelona’s case, there’ve even a new plan to get rid of all Airbnb flats in the next five years.

READ ALSO: Barcelona to get rid of all tourist rental flats ‘by 2028’

Nevertheless, Spanish authorities aren’t stopping there, as the nationals government is also looking at how it can clamp down on monthly or temporary rentals too.

These are essentially rentals that are longer than one month, but under one year. 

Recently, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced the government will approve measures “to tackle one of the main problems of our society”, referring to the rise in housing prices.

The crackdown on tourist apartments is part of this, but now the Ministries of Housing and Social Affairs are going to try to prevent what was previously an Airbnb rental from now being camouflaged as monthly or mid-term housing. 

It has also previously been reported that landlords have opted to rent out their properties on a temporary basis to circumvent rent caps introduced by the government on long-term leases.

READ MORE: The loophole landlords in Spain are using to bypass the 3% rent cap

In essence, the middle ground in which temporary accommodation finds itself, the high remuneration it provides landlords and the lack of regulation it is subject to have led the government to deem its role in Spain’s current housing crisis as crucial enough to act upon.

According to national radio station Cadena SER, the government’s plan is to put a stop to temporary rentals, which are also managed through platforms such as Airbnb to try and get around some of the restrictions imposed on them.

READ ALSO: Spain considers banning tourist lets in residential buildings

This means that anyone who wants to temporarily rent their apartment will have to explain why.

For example, if you’re renting to a student or researcher, the government now wants the tenants to have to show the research contract or course booking to show they only last a few months.

There is also a plan in place to get people to register their property on a Ministry of Housing platform so that only those homes that meet licence requirements and justifications can operate in the market.

Currently, many of these homes do not comply with municipal regulations.

READ ALSO: Valencia police pile pressure on tourist flats with more stiff fines 

In the same thread, but as a slightly different plan, junior coalition partners Sumar, as well as other left-wing parties including Esquerra Republicana (ERC), EH Bildu, Podemos and BNG have registered a new bill in parliament to limit seasonal and room rentals to six months and no more.

The primary reason given for the bill is that in the last year there has been a 56 percent increase in seasonal contracts, to the detriment of rental contracts for primary residences. For this reason, they urge Isabel Rodríguez’s Ministry of Housing to understand “housing as a right and not as a market good”.

According to the political parties behind the proposal, this will require a reform of the Urban Leases Law in order to prevent prices from being raised continuously.

Like above, the draft establishes that there must be a justified cause for renting out accommodation temporarily and proof of planned duration.

If this is not justified, “it will be presumed that said contract is for habitual residence,” the draft bill says, stating that it will be the landlord who has to verify whether these circumstances are true and request proof from the tenant.

READ ALSO – UPDATE: Which cities in Spain have new restrictions on tourist rentals?

If more than six months have passed or more than two consecutive contracts have been issued, it will be understood to be a rental contract for a habitual residence and for the long-term. 

It also states that with these temporary contracts, the lessee may withdraw from the lease contract, once at least one month has passed giving 10 days’ notice before leaving.

These two plans are sure to affect a lot of people including digital nomads, those who have newly moved to Spain and want to try out different cities and people who want to rent out their apartments because they want to temporarily spend time back in their home country or go travelling, for example.

And they don’t only affect foreigners, in fact, every summer Spaniards rent or rent out temporary accommodation for the month of August as people escape the cities for the coast or the mountains.

To appease those who are worried about the temporary accommodation clampdown, Rodríguez said: “It is important to guarantee that those who need temporary accommodation can have it, but that it is not used to limit the supply of housing for habitual residence. Let’s try to combat fraud by all means”.

Whether these new draft proposals will pass or ever come into force is a different matter, as there currently seems to be numerous kinks that must be ironed out before any law is enforced on a local or national level.

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