There are many ways in which a non native in Catalonia is at a disadvantage. Take, for example, trying to get a repeat prescription.
In Catalonia, or in our medical centre anyway, when you have a long term medication on prescription then you are given two months’ worth of prescriptions. In Britain this would be two scraps of paper to show for this. Not so in Spain.
In this country owing to their inordinate desire for pieces of paper for every transaction (and what would appear to be a deeply ingrained belief that everyone is on the make) there is a full A4 sheet of paper for each and every medication. Times two of course. It is only when you go to the pharmacist you see why the separate sheets are necessary. For every medicine you are given the bar code is cut off the box and then sellotaped onto the A4 sheet of the same medication!
Before you get to the stage of actually having pills in your hot little hand you do have to get the prescriptions.
As long as you have a medical card and a number all things are possible. It merely takes a swipe of the card and the medicine that you need comes up on the computer and the printer then starts churning out the paper work.
In our bright and modern medical centre the prescription person is in a room at the end of the consulting rooms in the section of the centre designated the ‘infirmary.’
There are groups of linked bent wood chairs linked in a sort of bench affair and set out in facing lines at right angles to the windows which run the length of the corridor. I am explaining all this so you can appreciate the problem that faces a non native when entering this area.
You walk down the corridor past sets of seats and take your place in the seats nearest the door for the prescriptions. Not unreasonable you might think considering the other doors were consulting rooms for patients to see their doctors.
Wrong!
I took a seat and waited for the next person to go into the room. The person who did was not from the people amongst whom I was sitting.
A woman who joined our happy crew asked who was the ‘ultimo’ and I realized that my assumption of proximity was completely wrong. I moved my place to be near the woman so that I at least had a guide to when I could enter. The next person to arrive merely stood near the door. His arrival caused suspicious glances and suppressed irritation.
Sure enough as the next person came out he attempted to go in. General indignation! High powered conversation with an edge of real animosity took place. At one point I was dragged into this discussion and my only contribution was to mutter something about ‘machines with numbers’ to my neighbour who later used this solution in a more general conversation later!
It turned out that everybody in the area was waiting for prescriptions, but the impetuous man completely changed the dynamic of the place and everyone became a little more paranoid. A few people from further down the corridor started queuing with a defiantly propriatorial air.
Eventually the situation reached the point of farce as each new person in waiting had to find his place in the order of being seen and a complex dumb show took place as each in a series of jerking hand movements to show the sequence.
I was eventually seen and given the multitudinous pieces of paper. This achieved I was ready to go on to my next queuing experience.
I have written previously about the horror which is the post office in Castelldefels. This particular circle of hell has a ticket machine which gives you a number. From previous experience I knew which of the five buttons to press – which was just as well as only two of the buttons had a description next to them, but it you didn’t get the right ticket to go with the right postal activity you had to start again with a new tickets. Firm but just!
There is a sort of coma which I can now induce at will to cope with the stasis which is the post office. So, although the wait was verging on the intolerable, it didn’t actually get there.
Then there was the wait at the pharmacists to get the medicine. The lady (I use the term with a degree of flexibility) before me was one of those people with a ‘little list’ and who had a discussion about each item on it with everyone in the store – except the tall man waiting behind her with the fixed smile on his lips.
This too passed.
And as I finally escaped to regain my home and sanity, I realised that I had left my medical card in the pharmacist.
If it doesn’t kill you it makes you stronger!
They say.
In Catalonia, or in our medical centre anyway, when you have a long term medication on prescription then you are given two months’ worth of prescriptions. In Britain this would be two scraps of paper to show for this. Not so in Spain.
In this country owing to their inordinate desire for pieces of paper for every transaction (and what would appear to be a deeply ingrained belief that everyone is on the make) there is a full A4 sheet of paper for each and every medication. Times two of course. It is only when you go to the pharmacist you see why the separate sheets are necessary. For every medicine you are given the bar code is cut off the box and then sellotaped onto the A4 sheet of the same medication!
Before you get to the stage of actually having pills in your hot little hand you do have to get the prescriptions.
As long as you have a medical card and a number all things are possible. It merely takes a swipe of the card and the medicine that you need comes up on the computer and the printer then starts churning out the paper work.
In our bright and modern medical centre the prescription person is in a room at the end of the consulting rooms in the section of the centre designated the ‘infirmary.’
There are groups of linked bent wood chairs linked in a sort of bench affair and set out in facing lines at right angles to the windows which run the length of the corridor. I am explaining all this so you can appreciate the problem that faces a non native when entering this area.
You walk down the corridor past sets of seats and take your place in the seats nearest the door for the prescriptions. Not unreasonable you might think considering the other doors were consulting rooms for patients to see their doctors.
Wrong!
I took a seat and waited for the next person to go into the room. The person who did was not from the people amongst whom I was sitting.
A woman who joined our happy crew asked who was the ‘ultimo’ and I realized that my assumption of proximity was completely wrong. I moved my place to be near the woman so that I at least had a guide to when I could enter. The next person to arrive merely stood near the door. His arrival caused suspicious glances and suppressed irritation.
Sure enough as the next person came out he attempted to go in. General indignation! High powered conversation with an edge of real animosity took place. At one point I was dragged into this discussion and my only contribution was to mutter something about ‘machines with numbers’ to my neighbour who later used this solution in a more general conversation later!
It turned out that everybody in the area was waiting for prescriptions, but the impetuous man completely changed the dynamic of the place and everyone became a little more paranoid. A few people from further down the corridor started queuing with a defiantly propriatorial air.
Eventually the situation reached the point of farce as each new person in waiting had to find his place in the order of being seen and a complex dumb show took place as each in a series of jerking hand movements to show the sequence.
I was eventually seen and given the multitudinous pieces of paper. This achieved I was ready to go on to my next queuing experience.
I have written previously about the horror which is the post office in Castelldefels. This particular circle of hell has a ticket machine which gives you a number. From previous experience I knew which of the five buttons to press – which was just as well as only two of the buttons had a description next to them, but it you didn’t get the right ticket to go with the right postal activity you had to start again with a new tickets. Firm but just!
There is a sort of coma which I can now induce at will to cope with the stasis which is the post office. So, although the wait was verging on the intolerable, it didn’t actually get there.
Then there was the wait at the pharmacists to get the medicine. The lady (I use the term with a degree of flexibility) before me was one of those people with a ‘little list’ and who had a discussion about each item on it with everyone in the store – except the tall man waiting behind her with the fixed smile on his lips.
This too passed.
And as I finally escaped to regain my home and sanity, I realised that I had left my medical card in the pharmacist.
If it doesn’t kill you it makes you stronger!
They say.
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