Official Patience

 

Usually, when dealing with Spanish bureaucracy, the real pain starts when you are dealing with a person on the other side of the desk who asks you for a form, paper or document that you did not know that you had to have.  It turns out that this document (that you did not know that you had to have) is essential.  Is obviously essential.  Patently.  At least to the person sitting opposite you.  And their weary disbelief at your lack of appreciation for the missing piece of paper is palpable.  And nothing can or will be done until the paper is produced.

     Sometimes you have the document that is necessary, but you failed to bring a copy of that document and then things fall apart and the centre cannot hold and you have to depart and come back another day.  This actually happened to me.

     I hadn’t be asked to provide a copy of anything, so the demand for one came out of the blue somewhat.  And I reasoned that, if a copy was required then surely it would be simpler all round if the official opposite me made a copy on the photocopier that I could see in another part of the office. 

     So, I gently suggested, “Would it be possible for you to make a copy here?”

     “We are not a photocopy shop!”  I was told in disgust.

     I had to search around for a place to make a copy before I could return.

     Today, to be fair the major problem was not what happened in the office but how I got an appointment in the first place.

     To renew my residency document, I needed to make an appointment in the section of the police department specifically dealing with documentation for foreigners.  The appointments are made online and they are virtually impossible to get.  No matter how and when you try, you fail.  At first, you put the failure down to bad luck, but then after a couple of weeks of trying you begin to get just a little bit panicky because the expiry date on your card is getting closer.  But you’ve left plenty of time and so you try again, expanding the location of the offices that you can use.  And you fail.

     And your card expires and you are no further forward in getting an appointment.  Then your bank informs you that your residency card is no longer in date and that will effect your ability to have a working bank account!

     A desperate visit to the bank later and fears are partially assuaged by the dismissal by the teller of immanent rejection, assuring me that as long as I am making an effort to get it renewed there will be nothing to worry about.

     But I did worry and so decided to go to a lawyer or notary and pay if necessary.  The lawyers I spoke to were not encouraging, but one of them “had a friend” who might be able to help.  A phone call later and I was informed that an appointment could be provided at a cost of 100 euros.  For a supposedly free appointment.

     This “selling” of appointments is a recognized scandal, it was even featured on a television documentary a few days ago, and nothing is done.

     My 100-euro appointment was for the very precise time of 12.09 pm, a time I was to discover was more conceptual rather than related to temporal reality.  I arrived early, queued firstly in the wrong queue and was then redirected to another queue and had to pass through a metal detector, which I failed but was waved through by the young police officer and made my way down to the office that was going to deal with my application.

     My name was ticked off a list and I was given a numbered ticket which was some 30 numbers ahead of the number being dealt with.

     Despair gave way to the Kindle on my phone, and I was content. Apart from the fact that the person dealing with my case also seemed to be the fountain of documental wisdom and was consulted by all and sundry, my application was speedy.  And in spite of the traffic-filled roads on the way back, there were no real hold ups and as I may not have a new card yet, I do have a receipt that explains that one is on its way. 

     A result.  And we went for a menu del dia to celebrate!

 

Cutting the tape

    

 

 

Next month will see me going to Barcelona for an allegedly ‘free’ appointment that I had to pay 100€ to get, as all normal attempts to get one on line are next to impossible. 

     The appointment is to renew my NIA my Número de Identificación de Extranjero is a very important card with my unique identification number.  I show this card when I leave the country and, most importantly, when I return, as that means that my passport is not stamped, as I have a permanent right to reside in Spain.  The number, if not the actual physical card, is often asked for, for example when packages arrive.  And I haveofficaldome, padrón, tea,  used it so often in Spanish, that I consciously have to translate the numbers into English when I need to use them myself on forms.

     Spanish bureaucracy is notoriously photocopy-heavy: officials like you to have copies of everything and anything to give them, and they reciprocate by giving you a wodge of photocopies in return, usually on odd coloured recycled paper, which gives the impression that they are always thinking of the environment.  You never, of course, look at these photocopies ever again, and they have no function but to exist.

     So, as I was doing my morning write, after my well-deserved post-swim cup of tea, I mused to myself about what I should take to the appointment.  You are obviously told what to bring, documents like the old card and your passport, but they do not tell you that they might require lasting proof that they had seen them – you’ve guessed it, a photocopy of the documents.

     One time, with one official department I was dealing with, I was told that I needed to supply photocopies of the documents that I had bought, and I told them that I didn’t have photocopies, perhaps they could make them if they needed them.  “We are not a photocopy shop!”  I was told.  I had to leave the office and my appointment, for which I had queued for over half an hour.  Find a photocopy shop.  Get the photocopies done, return and queue again to continue the appointment.  The second wait was not as long as the first, but the seething rage that I barely controlled made it seem like an eternity.

     So, this time, you consider not only what they have asked for, but also what they might ask for.  There was a television sketch show here in Spain where one skit showed someone waiting in a queue to get some official business done:  He eventually reached the window and the official asked for identity card, passport, then asked for blood group, followed by favourite film – all of which needed documentation and, in the case of the film a VHS Cassette of it, and so it went one, with ever more bizarre demands, with the guy showing that he had anticipated all of these outré requests.  At the point where he appeared to have satisfied all demands, the official informed him that he was in the wrong queue and the window that he needed had closed.  I may have made up the ending to the skit, but the guy did not get what he wanted!

     To most Spaniards the skit is not comedy but documentary as everyone will have stories of bureaucracy gone mad – or normality as it is more generally known.

     I have decided to pay a visit to the local city hall and get an updated copy of my padrón, which is a certificate that shows my address is registered with the local authority.  It is not necessary, but it is official and officials like adding it to the bundle of papers that make their lives worth living.  And it costs nothing.

     The key concept is Be Prepared – or at least as prepared as you possibly can be.  And that two word phrase made me think of the organization with which is it most usually associated, The Scouts.

     I am a failed Scout.  I was a Wolf Cub and even carried the flag in our official processions through our local streets when we went to attend Church once a month, but in the move from Cathays to Rumney to a new area, I did not continue my participation in the Cubs, and therefore never became a Boy Scout.

     “Be prepared” was the motto of the scout organization, but we had an oath that we recited at the start of each of our meetings.  “I promise to do my best, to do my duty to God and the Queen, to keep the Law of the Wolf Cub Pack, and to do a good turn for somebody every day.”  My mind then wondered if that oath had changed over the years.  So, I looked it up.  The ‘Oath’ is now called ‘The Cub Promise’: “I promise that I will do my best, to do my duty to God and to The King, to help other people and to keep the Cub Scout Law.”  There are versions for Cubs who are Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Humanist, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh and for Atheist or of no faith background.

     Rather like the Anglican Creed, that I found myself not saying parts of as I grew older, feeling that the truth of what it contained needed to be rather more nuanced to accommodate my changing beliefs, so with the Oath or Promise. 

     When I was a Cub I was a Christian, so the ‘duty to God’ would not have been a problem, but as a life-long, and I mean for as long as I can remember, I have been a republican, so ‘my duty to the Queen’ would have been problematical even for the child that I was.  There again, both God and The Queen seemed to be somewhat above my paygrade, and as we had never been personally introduced, I knew about them only via intermediaries,  The immediacy was so slight that the actual ‘duty’ could be taken as read, if one kept to the rest of the oath.

     Then my drifting mind turned to the National Anthem.  Obviously, we in Wales have our own anthem, and we tend to regard God Save the King (how odd it feels to be typing that as someone who has grown up with the Queen as the central figure) as the English national anthem.  Just as the Union Flag has no part of it representing Wales, so we feel that God Save the King is, at best, ‘other’.

      And then I ran through the lyrics in my head.  You must understand that I never sing God Save the King.  Never.  And haven’t done for years.  I stand when the so-called National Anthem is played and I show respect, but frankly I feel none to the subject of the song.  But strangely, as I sang through the lyric in my head. I got stuck at line 4.  And the line would not come.  No matter how hard I tried. 

     I knew the words of the second verse (unlike so many members of that performative group of idiots in Reform) as a direct result of being in the Cubs, we had to learn the second verse as part of some badge or other.  But that line that I had heard, god knows how many times, remained hidden. 

     Although I am writing about it, and checking all the verses of the national anthem is but a click away, I prefer to remain in darkness.  After all, even if it does come back to me, I have zero intention of ever singing it!

     I thought that this piece of writing was going to be how different the Oath that I took and the Promise that modern Cubs take were.  But they are basically the same, and there is something rather splendid in the simple and direct injunction to “help other people”.

     Isn’t all human decency encapsulated in that phrase?