Spain

Checking a retailer established in Spain

Spain is where the survey excluded the most retailers, for a reason touching on data protection rather than the trader's reliability: many independent traders publish their personal tax identifier, which is personal data and should not be republished by a third party.

139 retailer profiles in this country

The label CIF does not guarantee a company identifier

In one survey, twenty-four retailers were excluded for a personal identifier, nine of which displayed it explicitly under the label CIF. A check based on the label would have accepted all of them. Only a format check catches it: a company identifier starts with a letter followed by eight digits, a personal one is eight digits followed by a letter. One case even combined the misleading label with a claim of entry in the Registro Mercantil.

Only four retailers in ten publish register details

Article 10 of law 34/2002 requires publication of the Registro Mercantil details alongside the tax identifier. Among the retailers surveyed only forty per cent do so, most limiting themselves to the number and the address. That is not a shortcoming of the survey but the state of the market, and it can be checked retailer by retailer.

A tension this directory accepts

Spanish independent traders have no publishable company identifier, since theirs is personal. Yet small businesses are precisely what this directory sets out to document. Verifiability and a preference for independent traders therefore pull against each other here, and the choice made is not to publish rather than to publish personal data.

Each profile cites the aviso legal as published on the date of collection. No identifier belonging to a natural person appears in this directory.

Ready-to-wear

Leather goods

Kalimba

Footwear

Jewellery and watches

Luxury multibrand

Sport

Other countries

France United Kingdom Germany Italy Switzerland Full directory