What the listing offered. An industrial business in the south of Spain: premises, land, equipment and vehicles, presented as an operating concern. The advertisement stated an annual turnover of roughly a million euros. The asking price was a small fraction of that figure — low tens of thousands.
That gap between price and stated turnover is the first thing worth sitting with. A business genuinely producing a million euros a year is not normally sold for the price of a used van. There are honest explanations — a distressed owner, debts coming with it, assets that are not what the words suggest. There are also dishonest ones. Either way the gap is a question, and questions are cheapest to ask before a deposit.
The check I ran. One. I put the trading name and the address into a public map service and read the status line on the business card. It took under a minute, cost nothing, and needed no contact with the seller or the broker.
What the source returned. The card carried a permanent-closure marker — the map's own label for a business that has shut for good. That is what the source displayed at the end of July 2026, and that is the whole of the finding. I am not telling you the company is dissolved, that the assets are gone or that anyone lied. I am telling you that one public source describes the place as closed while the advertisement describes it as trading, and both cannot be a fair picture of today.
Why this is not a trick you can run on every listing. Here is the uncomfortable half. I took twenty business-for-sale listings in the order they appeared, without picking favourites, and tried to pin each one to a real place. The business could be identified to exactly one candidate in three of the twenty. Six gave a shortlist, which is not an identification. Nine gave nothing to work with at all — no name, no address, no distinguishing feature.
Of the three I could actually identify, two produced a finding that contradicted the advertisement. So the check is not weak. The check is blocked. What stands between a buyer and a free answer is not the difficulty of looking — it is that most listings are written so that there is nothing to look up. Anonymity in a listing is usually presented as discretion for the seller. It also happens to switch off every free check you could otherwise run. The checks that survive an anonymous listing — the ones you can run on the advertisement itself, before anyone tells you the name — are set out in the twenty-minute self-check.
What I would do as the buyer here. Not walk away on a map marker. Send one written message: is the business operating today, and if it has stopped, when did it stop and why? The answer, or the absence of one, is worth more than the marker. A seller with an ordinary explanation gives it in a sentence.
What to demand before any money moves
- The identity of the seller — the legal name and tax number of the party that will sign. Without it, no register, court file or licence record can be searched, and every check below stays theoretical. Your step: ask for it in writing before you discuss price again.
- A written answer on trading status — operating today, or stopped, with the date and the reason. Your step: ask by message, not by phone, so the answer exists in a form you can keep.
- The lease and its assignment clause — how much term is left, and whether the landlord's consent is required. The lease names the tenant, who is not always the party selling you the business. Your step: read the clause yourself before any deposit.
- The licence or authorisation, and the municipality's written position on the route for a change of operator. A licence records what was authorised on a stated date; it does not describe what is being done today. Your step: ask the municipality directly — the procedure is local, not national.
- The documents behind the turnover figure — filed accounts, tax returns, bank receipts, reconciled against each other. Any single source can support a number; none of them settles it alone. Your step: require all three, not the one the seller prefers.
What this teardown does not show. A map card is a public description of a place, not a record of a company. It can be out of date, and it can be wrong. Nothing here establishes what the assets are worth, whether debts follow the business, or whether the sale would complete. Those questions need the seller's documents and, past a point, your own lawyer and accountant. What the check does is tell you which questions to ask first, on the day you find the listing, for nothing.
This is the first layer of a Deal Screen. Public records, court and insolvency databases, licence and lease trail — read against the seller's story, before you fly, sign or wire anything. Two pages, 48 hours, signed by me.
Check my deal →Basis: an anonymised real listing from a public business-for-sale marketplace, checked against a public map service at the end of July 2026. The business, the seller, the broker, the marketplace and the town are not named, and figures are given as ranges — no real party is identifiable from this text. Facts are limited to what the sources displayed on the date stated; the interpretation is my commercial opinion. General information, not legal, tax or financial advice, and not a statement about any current listing. If you believe you recognise a real party here, use the form and I will take the page down first and review afterwards.