posted 4 years ago
Hi Sarah,
me and my partner are on a similar situation, we started seriosly looking for a finca in january, so I can tell you what we've learned so far:
1) I don't know especifically about putting dams, but count on needing permits for everything xD
2) Any building better to do it legally xD (just to avoid having to take it down later, aines and so on) which means with permits again. It is possible to do some building but they are more strict now than they used to be, so it may be better to find an already existing building or something to restore (keep in mind that restoring something will come with its needs for permits again)
3) Another problem we have encountered is that you are going to have difficulties registering in a finca, there may be some municipallities that make exceptions, but generally you cannot register in a finca (rural land) unless it has a masia which is in a catalog (in which living, turism and a bunch of other uses are allowed). Those masies are a lot more expensive to buy. An alternative to this is to stay registered in your country of origin, or to ask someone you meet in spain to register in their place, and then live in the finca.
4)For manure, do not worry, that can be gotten cheap and even for free probably everywhere, there are plenty of stables and people with horses around (I think). For bark-chip/woodchips at least for now I haven't found any good resource, they sell them in places to be used in fireplaces or something like that, but it isn't super cheap if I recall correctly.
Personally, we have now decided to check if we can get more people involved in our project to be able to buy a masia and go from there because we want to do things properly and legally.
Hope that helped, we can chat more if you want
Regards,
Aina