Joan Fernando Valls Fusté hat seit 1999 ein Übersetzungsbüro in Barcelona. Er schuldet Übersetzern und Dolmetschern Geld, leugnet aber ein Arbeitsverhältnis.
Translators and interpreters have been on a pot-banging demonstration (see pictures) in Barcelona. Joan Fernando Valls Fusté denies any employment relationship.
Details in Catalan from Tina Valles here (scroll down for first announcement), and here.
bq. El propietari de lempresa, Joan Fernando Valls Fusté, nega que hagi existit una relació laboral amb alguns dels afectats. I en la resta de casos, evita els afectats i fins i tot fingeix que és dues persones diferents: Joan Valls i Fernando Fusté; i amb aquesta actuació ha fet que s’activessin una sèrie de demandes legals. En una delles, celebrada fa ben poc i de la qual sespera que el jutge dicti sentència, el fiscal demana al senyor Valls Fusté dos anys de presó per publicar un llibre sense pagar ni reconèixer lautoria de la traducció.
More in Trevor’s entry. (Does this count as a contribution to Language Week?)
Who would or could trust a man called Joan (no doubt Juan in Castilian)?
What surprises me is that he hasn’t absconded or put his business into a ‘suspension of payments’ to avoid his creditors inc. ex-employees. I know one Spanish lawyer who was so sick of such suspensions being used as an instrument of fraud that he quit the law and diversified into retail fashionwear – no, not a Flamenco music and dance school.
There are some cos. – like lang. schools in that other nominally Catholic Iberian country, Portugal – that fire all employees/ teachers one week before their employment and pension protection period kicks in, regardless of performance.
Joan Miró?
Do they bang pots in Portugal too?
@AMM: Give me the man. Have you never seen Joan Rivers?
Indeed I have, Trevor, and feel Joan Rivers could do with another expensive face-lift. The other Joan in Barcelona also needs a different facial arrangement. His pot-banging victims are acting in a relatively civilised fashion.
A tour rep I know in Southern Spain witnessed an armed robbery of a hotel reception by ‘persons unknown’ after the hotel workers were thrown out unpaid. Can’t post anything else online, I’m afraid.