The Coffee Shop I Haven’t Given Up On

It was Sunday, and I found myself sinking into that familiar frustration. One of my long-term dreams has always been to become a business owner, but in Spain it feels practically impossible unless you are born into money or someone hands it to you. And no, you cannot just go to the bank and fix it. Banks do not lend money to normal workers here. When the average yearly salary is around 15k before taxes, the bank looks at you like you are asking for a private island. They simply do not give loans to people who are basically surviving.

And one of the dreams that refuses to die inside me is having my own coffee shop. I do not see pictures or mental images, but I get strong concepts that arrive fully formed. They come in waves, like reminders that this dream is still waiting for its moment.

And why do I want a coffee shop in the first place?

Because I want to build a space that feels like home, but also a little bit magical. A place people step into and instantly feel calmer. A place that feels different from anything they have experienced before. I want exceptional coffee and homemade pastries, but also a deeper feeling. I want to create a space that honors living female artists, with walls filled with their work in beautiful frames. I want shelves with notebooks and elegant pens, because writing has always been my comfort, and I know there are others who feel inspired by those small details. I want a place where people feel safe, welcome, and understood. Basically, I want to create the kind of place I myself would never want to leave.

And why do I believe I can build a place like that?

Because I have done it before, in a different form. I created interiors for Airbnb apartments, and people genuinely fell in love with the spaces. I still receive messages from old clients asking if they can stay in those same apartments again. The laws changed, and those Airbnbs became long-term rentals, so that chapter ended. It makes me happy and sad at the same time. Happy, because I created something that made people feel so good they wanted to return. Sad, because those spaces no longer exist. But maybe I can build something even better. Maybe the next version of that feeling will be my dream coffee shop.

So I started talking about it with ChatGPT, and it offered a few possible routes forward. One idea was to create a concept and try to find struggling coffee shops that might be open to letting me help them succeed. It actually sounded doable. Time-consuming, yes, but not impossible.

And I do not know why I did it, but I went to Idealista just to see what kind of places were out there. And of course, one of the restaurants I have walked past countless times was up for rent. Not for sale, just rent. That alone is unusual, because usually when someone sells their business here they slap a trespaso, basically key money or a leasehold transfer fee, on top of the rent. It is a big lump sum you pay for the right to take over the premises and start paying rent on a failing business. There are countless cafés listed with ridiculous trespaso prices that have nothing to do with reality.

But this one had no trespaso. No key money, no takeover fee. Just a simple monthly rent. A quiet little miracle sitting there.

My first instinct was to message the people I know: “Hey, there is this place, do you have 40k.”
The answer was no. And that lack of interest cracked something small in me again.

Because this is what I have learned about investors: if you do not already have the exact type of investor your idea requires, you will not get anything from anyone. It is like shouting into a void. It gets tiring trying to convince people to believe in something they cannot understand, especially when the concept is crystal clear in your mind.

So then I started wondering how to find the right kind of investor, someone who actually understands the idea itself.

And that led me to my newest approach: sending cold messages to coffee shop owners in Finland, the UK, the Netherlands, anywhere really. And what can I offer them?

Local knowledge.

I speak Spanish. I understand the market here. I know how to make a business flourish instead of fail, because I know what Spanish people expect. You cannot survive on tourists alone, absolutely not. You need locals. You need regulars. You need a community.

So here I am, hoping that somewhere out there is a café owner who already has a business, already understands the industry, and might be open to expanding into Spain with someone like me, someone who already has both the idea and the ground-level understanding.

Maybe I will lose this location too. Maybe someone else will grab it before I ever get a chance.

But maybe the dream will shift again and open in a different way. Maybe the right partner is somewhere in the distance.

And until I find them, the dream stays alive.