Bureaucracy

I'm sorry to have been away for so long (I said this a couple of posts ago, but it's always worth resaying). One of the reasons is because I've had a lot of time taken away from me by the exciting Spanish bureaucratic system. An example:

1. Marian and I want to open a bank account together.
2. We go to the Caja Madrid, queue for an hour, and are told that we can't open a bank account together because our statuses are different. I am a non-resident; Marian is a resident. Non-resident bank accounts offer much worse deals than resident ones. Marian can open a resident's account, but even if I become a resident, I would never be able to become a co-titular of the account. The best I could hope for would to become an autorisado, who has rights on the money, but can't i.e. open or close the account, or change any of its details. To open a bank account, we are told, you need an N.I.F. (Número de Identificación Fiscal).
4. We go to the N.I.F. office. There is no one there waiting to be served, but we are told that they can't see us without an appointment. We phone for an appointment and are given one on 28 January 2009.
5. We decide to fill in the time by comparing the deals on offer at various banks. We go to La Caixa, queue for an hour, and eventually talk to a man who says that he can open an account for us today, and we don't need an N.I.F, but an N.I.E. (Número de Identificación de Extranjero).
6. The N.I.E. is handed out at police stations; you don't need an appointment; they give you one in person; it takes about five minutes. We go to the police station. They are willing to give me an N.I.E., but ask politely if I am registered as a resident of Madrid.
7. We make an appointment to register ourselves as residents of Madrid.
8. We fill in the forms they provide on the internet. You can only be registered in one place, and if there is someone registered in your flat, then they need to confirm that you are allowed to register yourself there.
9. We phone our landlady. She assures us that there is no one registered in our flat.
10. We go to our appointment. It turns out that our landlady is herself registered in our flat. We are told we need to get her permission, and her signature, on the application form. She comes into the city rarely, but will be there next week.
11. We meet our landlady, get her signature, make another appointment to register ourselves.
12. We go to the appointment. Everything is going swimmingly. Then the functionary asks for the photocopy of our landlady's D.N.I. (Documento Nacional de Identidad). Of course, she says, we have to make sure. You could have signed the form yourselves.
13. We go and find our landlady again. She gives us a photocopy of her D.N.I. We make another appointment, which is tomorrow.

On the other hand, the autumn weather's nice and we're getting a lot of fresh air walking from the Communidad offices in the south-east to the police station in the south-west, to the bank, to the N.I.F. office. To the bar, to the bar, to the bar.

Calle de la Fé

We are living on Calle de la Fé, Faith Street, in Madrid. Every street in Madrid has a little pictorial representation of the street name at each end. So how do you represent 'Faith' in a picture? A lot of nuns? No, apparently the best way is to have a heavily-armed Spanish soldier expelling a few Moors from the country. I like it here.

Thresher Shark

Stirling and Glasgow

We went to Scotland, before all the moving hassle. We were in Stirling, and took a day out to see Glasgow. Stirling has, as well as a conference on contemporary poetry, some interesting bird-life;

some tedious if tameish animal-life;

a Socialist Realist swimming-pool;

a folly;

minority-culture solidarity.

Glasgow has: a flat where Marian used to live

and a sense of humour, both inadvertent

and deliberate.

Quiz

It has terrapins, lots of terrapins.

And, the largest head this side of Ulan-Ude (which has the largest Lenin head in the world, as well as a mature drinking culture).

What is it? The main Madrid train station, naturally enough. Need you ask?

Madrid

I've been away for a while, for which absence, sorry. But now we have internet, and a house to put internet into, things should get back to, ah-hah, normal.

We're living in Madrid, in the excitingly multicultural and annoyingly one-volume Lavapiés area. Or is it excitingly one-volume? You never know if it'll be people practicing their drums, or having a fight, or setting their dogs on one another, that'll get you up at three in the morning.

This is in some senses the most Madriddy bit of Madrid, where people still celebrate their rich cultural heritage by making a lot of noise. Here are some authentic castizo Madrileños dancing the paso doble (loudly).


And that's enough of an introduction. If I were feeling stronger, I'd write down everything about our move from England, but you probably wouldn't believe me, and anyway, the facts are in the hands of my lawyer at the moment. Suffice it to say that by whatever means, we have got from this
to this,

and are much the happier for it.

Current Favourite Sentence

"It is very stupid for Georgia to start a war with Russia because we are very big and they are very small, but that is always the way in history with Georgia."

Harpy Eagle

They've Arrested Father Christmas

Ho. Ho. Ho.

More Avifauna

This upstart crow has lost whatever fear of humanity it ever had, and has been pecking at the ankles of all who walk down Hamilton Road.



I think, if I ever were to have a pet, a crow would be one of the top candidates. Although ownership might be a little unfair on that particular corvid.