Coin Slot Location

Location-Eight
stifle the numbers practically operable as did the
very limited top award. In face of the video boom
coming in at the time, therefore, A WPs struggled
to make any real impression.
Of particular annoyance to the trade was the
necessity to have a skill feature on the category B
machines. Eddie Morales is particularly bitter
about it and even scathing when he says: "A lot of
'mickey mouse' systems were brought out to
overcome this stupid piece of Government
legislation".
Crest of the wave
Despite this, the number of manufacturers in
Spain was steadily increasing and so was the
number of operators, principally riding on the
crest of the video wave. But the association was
not prepared to accept the inadequate laws as
they stood and worked hard to promote the
successful systems currently working in Britain
and West Germany.
Eddie Morales pinpointed the real difficulties in
this as not to such persuading politicians and civil
servants of the validity of their arguments, but
battling through the echelons of bureaucracy that
bedevils everything in Spain. "You must
understand that in this country bureaucracy is
almost a way of life. Every move the Government
makes is smothered in administration controls
and snowed under in paperwork. Even to obtain a
licence to operate a machine takes up to three
months and it's not because of any investigations
into the principals behind the siting of the
machine or the people owning it-but sheer
paperwork.
"At that time there wasn't even a tax on machines
and, trying to get things on to a proper footing as
well as perhaps helping to by-pass some of the
bureaucracy which must follow, we suggested a
machine tax. The payment of that tax would be
the licence to site it.
"There were problems, of course . To install a
machine in a bar you had to take along the papers
identifying the two category A machines you had
installed there in order to get permission to put a
category B machine in there which was very
complicated. At the same time there was a system
in which the Government had to approve every
model that was manufactured before it could be
sold. That meant the manufacturer had to apply
for approval two months or so before the
prototype was built and sometimes he then waited
six months for that approval.
"But the 1979 law was not too bad. You must
remember . that it was the first time for 45 years
that the country had seen gaming machines in its
bars. Everyone was naive, the Government, the
manufacturers, the operators and the public. We
all had to feel our way. The 1979 law worked
reasonably well and at least it gave the
Government some kind of information on the
industry".
Naturally, however, the association wanted the
improvements they felt could be made in the laws
as they watched the growth and comparative
prosperity of the British .and German trades
under sensible Government controls. They
looked at those foreign laws and envisaged their
transplant into their own society with its 200,000
potential sites in bars, cafeterias, restaurants,
arcades and bingo halls.
"The potential was enormous. If we could push
through a law permitting, say three machines in
each site, then the top figure would be 600,000
machines . Realistically, we felt, we should deduct
25 per cent of the sites as bars which are too fancy
to keep machines or a hotel which just doesn't
want them, leaving us with a market capable of
absorbing 450,000 machines.
"Up to 1979 we estimated that there were 250,000
of them, only just over half of the potential
realised and only half of that figure was actually
A WP machines-the rest were video games".
Operating arm
The fall off in the popularity of video games on
the international market was no different in Spain
than in any other country and the effects began to
be felt there in 1980. By that time the operating
arm of the industry had grown from 1,500
companies in 1977 to 6,000 in 1980 while the
manufacturers had increased from a dozen or so
up to 40.
In its quest for realising the true potential of
Spain for coin machines, FACOMARE kept
plugging away at the Government and serious
negotiations began in February 1981, based on
working documents carefully prepared by the
association taking into account all the best
features of the British and German laws.
They tried to increase the stake and then the