Give me strength, O Lord!

All brushes with officialdom in Spain should be looked on as preparation for the Camino de Santiago.
The endless walking; the suffering; the moments of doubt; the testing of faith; the illusory glimpse of salvation; the aching feet; eventual surrender, all of these can be the gift to the modern pilgrim trying to, in Pinter’s memorable phrase, ‘get my papers.’

The experiences today, trying to get the bank to give me a number to signify that the guarantee for the rent of the flat was secure, rapidly descended into the realms of disordered hallucination. The sleep of reason produces nightmares: how appropriate the best illustration of that is Goya’s etching!

To secure the Aval Bancario (Bank guarantee) for a flat, you need to have a NIE (Numero de Identidad de Extranjero) which is a document which says that you live in Spain. To get a NIE you need to be living in Spain in a house or flat. But to get a flat you need a NIE. Catch-22 is alive and well and living in Spain.

We have short circuited the system and I am now officially living in Terrassa – for days - before I move to Castelldefels!

I had to register with the police to get my NIE which cost 6€, but this money had to be paid into a bank not the police station! Off we traipsed with time running out to get things done before the dead time of the afternoon threatened. Having got to the bank we rushed back to the police station to – wait. And wait. And wait. Then, when the precious NIE was finally issued back we went to the bank. An institution that we had visited three times already that morning. Then back to the Notario, whom we had visited only once that morning.

This particular species deserves a few paragraphs to itself. What exactly is a Notario? What specific function does it serve? If any?

We had to go to an adjacent building to find this creature, using a rickety lift which wheezed its way up to the fourth floor where a Dickensian collection of people waited on a selection of chairs and benches while a self important group of people rushed around looking as though they might be doing something.

In Spain if something doesn’t move for longer than three or four seconds someone photocopies it and puts it in a nice little file which soon grows into a big important file as everything within reach is photocopied and placed inside. The Notarios’ lair was characterised by obsessive non entities walking significantly past vitiated, demoralised people waiting dejectedly for the prancing puppets to state the obvious and stamp or sign a piece of paper.

I am sure (or it ought to be true) that the original reason for existence for Notaries was to copy out legal documents. The photocopier has made their existence null and void but, like The Socialist Workers’ Party, they refuse to lie down and die.

We had to suffer the humiliation of listening to some non entity mouth inanities then some other some other pompous windbag say exactly the same things and then put a big important stamp on a piece of paper. And that was it. These busy, bustling people look at standard contracts and say they are OK. What is the bloody point of that? Hordes of innocent people have an extra layer of pointless legal meddling forced on them to what purpose? One thinks of the Court of Circumlocution or of Daumier’s incomparably accurate depictions of members of the legal profession. Dress them up in jeans and modern clothing and you have what I saw in Terrassa today. God rot them!

We feel, perhaps dangerously that we are over a substantial hurdle and that the rest of our brushes with government are going to be oh-so-much-easier. There is nothing like self delusion to give you extra energy for the struggles ahead!

Bring ‘em on!