Arguing about all sorts: the third year of our Spanish adventure

During the second week we really started worrying about the lack of progress. One day we arrived at the casa to find Denise standing, doing nothing on the second floor of the house, open to the elements, as although he had finished laying the bricks he had still not started installing the glass blocks. I could see him through the gaping hole where the glass would go; he was wearing a beautiful, pristine, fair isle sweater. In the meantime, Patrick was wheelbarrowing cement down the slope towards the house. The jumper about summed it up – I'd never seen a Spanish builder dressed in his best clothes when he was supposed to be laying bricks and shovelling cement.
Instead of installing the glass blocks as I'd asked Denise had decided to start building up the level of the upstairs room, facing the road. Each day we came the level of the floor seemed to be going higher and higher.
By the second Friday, Benjamin took us aside.
'Mira, I have to tell you that you're making a mistake with that one,' he said. 'The man is very lazy and slow and it is going to cost you a lot of money, having him work for you. He also doesn't know what he's doing.'
Adrian had been going regularly to the house to move the work on but Denise saw these visits as an opportunity to stand and talk about the work, rather than do it. On the other hand, Benjamin told us that if we didn't come Denise would also stand around and not work. We got an insight into the reasons for this level of sloth, later, a year after these events, when Patrick told us that when he’d previously worked with Denise and ‘Sid’ on Martin and Harriet’s house in a nearby village they often knocked off at 2 or 2.30. Denise would say:
'They’ve had their money's worth out of us today. I'm not giving them any more.' 
He and the other local British 'builder, 'Sid' reckoned that after four or five hours they had given enough ‘value for money’ for their 80 euros or however much. And because Martin and Harriet were not living in Spain at the time, they had no idea about this modus operandi.
Adrian said, 'Yeah, but when they've achieved bugger all or even made a big cock-up that costs us money, they don't bloody offer to stay late to make sure they've given 'value for money' on those days, do they?' 
But I felt sick all the same at the thought that we had to sack yet another builder.
'Why don't we go and see Simon and Charlotte?' Adrian suggested. 'I bet they'll know how to go about it.' Charlotte was a qualified psychologist and Simon was pretty astute.
So we walked down to their little house in the village and when we knocked Charlotte came to the door.
'We're after a bit of advice,' I said and explained the problem. It had actually been their suggestion that we employ Denise, so it would be good if they could help us to extricate ourselves from him, too.
'Simon's not in,' Charlotte said. 
'Don't worry. You're the one we really wanted to talk to,' Adrian said.
We both knew that her brain was at least as suited to the task as Simon's was.
'Well, if I were you, I'd say that you're not quite sure which steps you want to take next and exactly what you want to do, so for that reason you'll have to postpone the work until you've decided on the next stage. That way you get rid of him for now and you can then just not bother to ever call him back. He won't dare have a go in case you intend to call him back in a week or a month's time.'
'I just wouldn't have thought of that,' I marvelled at her intelligence and ingenuity. She'd missed her vocation in politics. 'Thanks a lot, Charlotte.'
'Right. Let's bite the bullet then,' Adrian said, 'I want to get it over and done with.' So we walked up to the casa.
'I want us to meet in the bar at 6,' Adrian said to Denise and Patrick. 'We need to talk about the work.'
Patrick looked worried:
'Oh no. I don't like the sound of that.'
We agreed that Adrian would do the dirty deed. Otherwise it would have been overkill with me there too and the children. 
In any case I was preoccupied. I'd spoken to my Dad on the 'phone the day before and he hadn't seemed at all well.
'Go and stay with Tony!' I ordered, yelling at him from the village 'phone box, whilst a couple of Romanians waited outside to make their long-distance calls. Adrian was going back to Wales the following Wednesday and would be able to look after him, get him to go to the doctors and so on, but in the meantime I didn't like him being on his own at home. What if he had a heart attack? No-one would know about it, alone in his house. Tony and Marlene wouldn't mind him staying with them until Adrian got back.
'No, dere's no need,' he said. 'I vonts to stay in my own house!'
'Yes, there is a need! Go and stay with Tony!' I tried to bully him.
In the end, I just said it again and again: 'Go and stay with Tony!' and then I hung up. I thought that might work, because it might shock him into going.
But the awful thing was that I was more worried about sacking Denise than I was about my own father and I didn't spend as much time on the 'phone as I should have. I also shouldn't have been so impatient with him. And I shouldn't have given a damn about Denise, who meant nothing to me and my life.
That night, Adrian sacked Denise and Patrick after nine days of working for us.
'I hope I can still go in tomorrow,' Denise said, 'because I was counting on that money.' Adrian reluctantly agreed (during that day the most beautiful of the glass blocks went missing and we never saw them again).  Indeed, Denise was so shocked and furious that Adrian thought he might hit him there and then in the bar. (The following month, he deliberately knocked into Adrian as he passed him in the bar, hoping to provoke a fight.) 
Whatever. The idiot thought we’d go ahead and lose thousands by letting him stand around and twiddle his thumbs all day. And in fact we didn't have much to show for his 10 days of labour (800 euros for him and 500 for Patrick), as he managed to screw up by using a mountain of cement (which we paid for) building up the upstairs floor so that it was way too high, and we had to put in enormous steps between that room and the adjoining one, and a very tall person probably couldn’t stand in the room now that the tiles had also been put on top of the massive layer of cement.
Also, apart from his dotting and dabbing the electrician’s cables that’s about all he managed to do. 
'Thank God he's gone,' we kept saying over that weekend. And it was just as well, as everything was about to take a dramatic turn for the worst. I spoke to Daddy on the Sunday night; he had relented and gone to stay with Tony. Then, two days later, Tony rang:
'I think your father has had a stroke,' he said. 'He's sitting opposite us and about twenty minutes ago his face all went weird on one side. The ambulance is on its way.'

To see the end result of all the work on the casa, take a look at the house now: 

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p86636

And also another of our completed projects:

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p475271

With Steve gone, we had to find a replacement. We wracked our brains and asked around, but it wasn't until the end of November that Simon suggested a man called Denis who he said was a bricklayer. We went to see him at his cortijo in the campo. He and his wife, Norma, seemed delighted to see us (I'd previously been introduced to her by Pepe, who knew everyone and had sold a house to everyone and it was as much as she could do to look at me that time). 
'I'll get the kettle on,' Norma said. 
We knew a bit about them, from Patrick and his wife Yvonne. I'd instantly liked Patrick and Yvonne, partly because Patrick had said how he liked to help people and I'd never previously heard anyone say that. I could relate to it. It was nice to do favours for people with no expectation of payment. They'd given us the lowdown on Denis and Norma one day when Norma had passed by their garden as we were having a cuppa. 
'She's a lot older than him, of course,' Yvonne informed me. 'He's her second husband. Apparently the first one broke his neck falling down the stairs.'
Judging by the sour look on her face I thought she might have pushed him. To my mind, she was the antithesis of stereotypical femininity; tall, thin, stern, with murderous eyes.
I was thinking of this while Adrian started questioning Denis; who now struck me as vaguely camp in his swaggering posture. (Indeed, it didn't take long for us to rename them Denise and Norman.)
'I heard you're a bricklayer?'
'Yeah, that's right,' Denise replied.
'Well, we've got a wall that needs knocking down for starters and rebuilding. Can you give us an idea of how long it would take you to put up a new wall? Like, looking at this wall here,' and Adrian pointed to their living room wall, which was about 8 metres by 2 and a half metres, 'how long did it take you to build that wall?'
'Oh, I knocked that up in under two days.'
Neither Adrian nor I had any idea how long it should take, but it seemed pretty fast. And he had done a lovely job, with the British-style bricks perfectly melded together in a way you never saw locally.
'You wouldn't have to be such a perfectionist with ours though,' I said, 'because we're going to have capa fina over all of it, so that will make the job a lot quicker.'
(It was only later that we found out he had not actually done his brickwork and was as much of a bricklayer as I was). We engaged his services that day and he agreed to start on the Wednesday. He had no work on at the time (a very bad sign).
We already had experience of employing British expats; the previous year when we'd used one to do the plumbing at the cortijo, as well as our brief experience with Steve, but we couldn't see any alternative. We had yet to find out that the British in Spain work like snails, do a crap job, moan like buggery and then want you to pay them a third over the local rate. 
Denise, with Patrick as his labourer were to last 10 days. The first day they knocked down an upstairs exterior wall, cleared away the rubble and prepared it for the new wall to be built. When we popped by just after 4 o'clock on the first day I was impressed with the progress. 
'That's more like it,' I said to Adrian and I made the mistake of also telling them that they seemed to be doing a speedy job. From that point on, the brakes went on.
Since the wall was ready now to be rebuilt, I rushed up to a town near Granada on the Thursday morning and bought 25 beautiful glass bricks – in the most luminous violets, purples and blues. Having learned from Steve's inability to think for himself, we were going to direct the work much more forcefully this time. I'd told Denise I'd be back by 1pm, by which time he would easily have laid a couple of feet of bricks on which the glass blocks would rest.
I raced back to the house and gave him a piece of graph paper clearly marking the pattern I wanted them to be installed in.
'I'd like you to put them straight in this afternoon,' I said. 'That's the absolute number one priority.'
He folded the piece of paper and put it in his pocket without looking at it. When we returned to the house just before 5 (the men had already left), the glass blocks hadn't been touched. Instead, it appeared the men had done some weird dotting and dabbing of the electric cables into the walls – a job the Spanish electrician was going to do as part of a priced job. We were paying Denise and Patrick 80 and 50 euros a day, respectively, for them to do someone else's job. 
It soon became clear that Denise knew best and was not in a million years going to take instructions off a woman. And although we hadn't actually said we would employ him to do the whole project, but had seen the bricklaying as a test, there somehow now seemed to exist an understanding that he was a permanent employee. Indeed, Patrick told us a year after these events that, at the time, Denise had rubbed his hands together in glee, calculating that he would now have at least nine months work off us, whilst agreeing to our face that he would have the old part of the house habitable within three.
There then came the matter of payment. We usually paid Benjamin and the two Romanians on a Friday at 5pm, but this week we hadn't managed to get to the bank, but knew that wouldn't matter. They were always very laid-back about payment.
'We'll pay you Monday, if that's okay?' we said.
'Si, no hay problema,' they said in unison. 
'What?' Denise said. 'But Norma is going shopping this evening. I need to give her the money. And she's leaving at 5.30.'
'Well, if it's that urgent, I can go to the bank now and get your bit out,' I replied.
'Yes, I need it,' he said, quite annoyed.
As Adrian walked down to the bank with me, he said:
'Well, considering a few days ago they had no idea that Denise would have this work, how come they're so desperate?'
'They must be living hand-to-mouth,' I surmised.
Yvonne told us that if they had a few spare euros they liked to go down the coast, have a curry, get completely smashed and spend the night in a hotel. Maybe that was the weekend plan.

To see the end result of all this work, take a look at the house now: 

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p86636

And also another of our completed projects:

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p475271

I am re-posting a piece that first appeared on Eye On Spain last year, having had my description of the experience below as a bureaucratic nightmare questioned in a thread on the Forum. You can judge for yourselves if the paperwork involved in the purchase of a second-hand car in Spain is a nightmare or not:

During the first six months of our new life in Spain every day was coloured by the fact of having that innocuous-looking and yet nervous breakdown-inducing Fiat Uno. Would it break down on the way to school?Would it break down if we left town to go shopping on the coast?I could never have foreseen that a car could cause so much grief and I thought, ‘How come, when they do those lists of the most stressful life events, they don’t include driving cars that no mechanic knows how to fix and which break down regardless of how many times they’ve gone to the garage and despite replacing bits of them left, right and centre every other week?’Whenever we got into it we became quivering wrecks. 
Because of this we had decided quite soon after buying it a cost of 2,200 euros, that we wanted shot of it in a part-exchange, with the plan being to buy a new car, and never again get a second-hand car in Spain. But there was a problem. The transfer from the previous owner (not the low-life  Les, who was the dealer) hadn’t been processed properly, and it now fell on us to do this. It didn’t matter that we had signed a compraventa, or deed of sale, or that we were the owners of the car’s documents or that we had a receipt for the purchase. We also needed to pay a transfer tax of 60 euros, before being able to part-exchange the car, but it wasn’t enough to just hand over the money. Apparently, there was some papeleo to deal with and these papers had to be handed in in person at the relevant office in Granada. 
In the meantime the car constantly thought up new ways of thwarting our plans. At first it didn’t like going downhill. Our local mechanic therefore advised us, after several trips to his garage, to always keep the tank at least half full, as it may have been because the petrol didn’t reach high enough in the tank when the car was facing downhill, to do whatever it is that fuel does. That helped for a week or two. Of course, the car was just lulling us into a false sense of security; pretty soon the car decided it didn’t like going uphill either. It would simply stop. It didn’t matter if it had been running for one minute or one hour. In time, it decided it also liked to stop after going around dangerous bends, so that unsuspecting drivers faced the prospect of turning the bend and slamming into us. 
Every time we drove to Granada there was the danger the car would break down en route. The first time, the car spluttered its way up and we got to the Trafico office around 11am. It was located in a big, chaotic and noisy building with open-plan offices relating to various traffic issues set on several floors. We had no idea where we should go, but eventually seemed to be on the right floor. Bewildered people were milling around trying to work out which of the four or five queues they needed to be in and by the time we worked out which was our queue, the time was already ticking away. The person in front of us in the queue told us that everything would come to a stop at 1. 30; even if you’d been waiting several hours, if you hadn’t been seen, you’d have to go through it all again another day. 
We got to the counter at about 12. 30,to be told we were in the wrong office; the one we needed was on the other side of the city. By then it was too late as we had to get back to Adreimal for 2pm to pick up the children from school. It took us a fortnight before we managed to steel ourselves for another trip to Granada. We had to feel mentally strong enough to withstand listening and even almost feeling with a sixth sense, that the car was about to break down on the motorway, just as a capricho. There was then the nightmare of parking a million miles away from the right office this time, hopefully, getting lost in the maze of streets several times and finally getting into another stupid, pointless, mind-numbingly unnecessary queue (why couldn’t you just send a bloody cheque through the post?). This time when it was our turn to go to the counter with our little number on a slip, the man casually informed us that we needed a copy of the previous owner’s photo ID before they could effect the official ownership transfer. 
Back to Adreimal and the attempt over the next few weeks to track down Les, the charlatan car-dealer, whom we had hoped never to have to see again. There then began a lengthy couple of months trying to get him to get a copy of the previous owner’s photo ID. We couldn’t do it as we had no way of contacting this person. When we finally got the necessary photocopy (more long-distance round trips taking up whole mornings and gallons of petrol), we took it to the second office in Granada only to be told that there were now several other items of documentation required in order to pay the tax. The man presented us with a sheet of paper that was written in the form of a letter. We had to study it carefully, transcribing all of the requirements contained therein, to create our own checklist. ‘So,’ Adrian had said to this funcionario:
‘If we bring everything that is asked for on this document, we can get it sorted?’
‘Si,’ the man replied. Off we went to collect all the little bits and pieces now deemed critical in proving that we had bought the car. 
Determined not to miss anything this time, we assiduously gathered everything and two weeks later marched back to the office, brandishing all of the photocopies, IDs, proofs of residence, marriage certificates, last will and testaments etc. 
‘Si, that all seems in order,’ the man said, ‘except you don’t seem to have…’He now asked for something else that had not been on the letter (I can’t remember what it was; I’ve blanked it out, as people do who’ve been through major traumatic events). This had been our fourth trip and it was still not over. The man was lucky I didn’t jump over the counter and smack him one. 
What a waste of one’s life on this planet, I thought. You move to Spain, thinking you’ll have more quality time. Well we weren’t. I thought of all the pointless, non-productive, expensive (in time and money) nonsense we were being put through. They would make you get a piece of paper and pay a fee for breathing in Spanish air if they could. And when you multiplied this across Spain and saw how it applied to practically every sphere of life, and multiplied it again over the previous umpteen centuries in the past and also into the future, it was sad really. The meaningless of it all. 
It was only on the fifth trip, with the extra piece of paper in hand, that we were kindly granted permission to pay the 60 euros purchase tax. We now just had to go back to office number one to present all of the documents once more, together with the proof of the tax we had paid in the second office (obviously, keeping a photocopy of all of this for ourselves in case the idiots lost it all). Miraculously, we managed to do this the same morning, saving ourselves a sixth trip. 
Over time we became aware that the people in charge of the many layers of Spanish bureaucracy were obsessed with these buying and selling ‘chains,’ which were meant to prove ownership. A while later when we were to try and sell a property, this illogical obsession and the associated nonsensical demands led to a delay of 12 months in trying to complete on a sale, and in the end the buyer pulled out. Their crazy system was to cost us a fortune, through the loss of the sale before prices plummeted in the recession, so as far as I’m concerned it’s not a harmless little idiosyncrasy of Spain; to me, it borders on the criminal or at least criminally insane. Of course, there are usually little fees sprinkled along the route as you try to get that final priceless document. 
The whole thing was Kafkaesque and the nearest I had ever come to madness of this kind was years earlier. Adrian and I had driven across a bridge, without realising we were leaving Germany and entering Switzerland. The Swiss guard on the other end of the bridge was very nice when we said that we didn’t have ID on us and said we should turn back and try the next day with our passports. It was then that we realised we had a problem; driving back across the bridge we came across the German guard who also refused us entry. He insisted on speaking to Adrian who kept saying he didn’t speak German, whilst I tried to explain to him in German what had just happened. He simply refused to let us in. 
‘Okay,’ I said in German, ‘we’ll just stay on this bridge forever. ’
At least now that we could declare the car officially ours, we could finally get rid of it. Our morals had prevented us from trying to sell it; it would be a crime to do that to another person. But we figured a part-exchange to a garage was okay, as they’d be making a big profit out of us and they could either fix or scrap the useless bit of metal. We decided to buy a fabulous Suzuki Vitara, which would be able to handle country roads and which, crucially, would have a guarantee. The dealer gave us 600 euros for the Fiat. It would have been more satisfying to set it alight on wasteland and stand over its grave till we were sure it was dead. 
And even after all of this, for several years we received letters claiming we were still the owners of the Fiat, trying to get us to pay parking fines and the annual road tax, as the Suzuki garage hadn’t properly transferred it to whomever they sold it to – and this person was running around the city getting into trouble in it. After our letters and ‘phone calls to the dealer achieved nothing, we had to visit them in Granada twice to insist they sort it and get our lawyer to send a letter, or else we would continue to pay the charges associated with the car forever (apparently, this does happen). 

Falta un papel (there’s a piece of paper missing):
27 Comments

Gerald said:
09 February 2013 @ 22:03

Oh dear Eggie what a catalogue of mad Spanish beaurocracy. I'm bad enough when I have to return too the embassy once, but five times!!!! No wonder the country is in a mess. And what cost these Government officials, we think the UK is bad, this sounds terrible, almost demonic.
Makes me worry!! 

eggcup said:
10 February 2013 @ 13:21

The thing is, you can't really win. You can employ a gestor or solicitor to do every little thing for you, but often you then have to keep pestering them and wish you hadn't put a middle man between you and what you aim to achieve... 

Maddiemack said:
10 February 2013 @ 17:35

It took us a while to understand why our Spanish friend's favourite word was and still is 'unbelievable!' The way that Spanish bureaucracy works is just that. Another popular word that was often heard by the local Spaniards whenever they were discussing politics was 'catastrophic!' 

Not wrong there, either.... 

eggcup said:
11 February 2013 @ 10:57

Yes, Maddie. Now that I can look at it objectively, more from the outside, I see not just how crazy it is, but how damaging too. Together with corruption, non-payment of taxes, waste etc., it's one of the things choking the country to death. They even have a profession for dealing with it - the gestores - we don't even have a word for that in English - it would have to be 'the people who do your papers.' Of course, they have also been necessary over the years because of the amount of illiterate people amongst the older generation who had to leave school very young, during Franco's reign of terror. But the average bit of paperwork is so complicated and time-consuming that fully literate people also have to use their services. Unfortunately, we've never found a good one so we've had to do all this excruciating legwork ourselves. I've found that a good solicitor is also very hard to find - they often don't seem to know what they're doing and make it up or work it out as they go along. There. End of moan. Have a good day. Eggie. 

MrsCastillo said:
11 February 2013 @ 17:43

Eggcup! I've just finished reading ALL your blog posts in one day (my son is sick and not at school, plenty of time for me to sit in the sofa surfing the web). Hope it doesn't upset you to hear I found it rather depressing. Still entertaining, but in a kind of sad way. Was therefore happy to read in some post that things turned out ok and that you moved from the awful village. Isn't it strange, that some villages are full of nice people and with a good atmosphere, while as other have a whole other feeling to it? Fortunately, we didn't have to buy or rent a place when we got here, as it was already purchased(and without problems,fortunately) . Still, I do also have some stories about CRAZY bureaucrazy, about loneliness and troubles finding friends, about being alone with children in a deserted place...Still, my experience is mostly positive. And after all, I've actually lived in a country 10 times worse than Spain when it comes to corruption and general chaos; Italy. But food was better there. And people generally nicer than in my part of Andalucía (wont say Spain as I've been in very friendly places here as well). So, I guess, as with everything; pros and cons. Keep up your good rythm in posting, Eggcup (love the nick). Besos, 

eggcup said:
11 February 2013 @ 18:27

I know this is a site about Spain, Mrs Castillo, but I would be very interested in reading about your experiences in Italy, if you ever feel like writing them down. I haven't found any book like that on the market and there are always similarities between countries that are interesting to explore.
Hey, you're a glutton for punishment reading all my posts in one day. Of course things worked out in the end for me and I'm quite happy where I am in my life now - I am writing about a while ago. It's probably the fact that some time has elapsed that has enabled me to write about difficult experiences. This latest one about the car bureaucracy was a challenge for me though - not only to go through the whole rigmarole, but then to write and re-write it so that it made sense. If anyone finds it boring to read (as I suspect they might), they can pity me for having to experience all that excruciating rubbish first hand... Compared to that, reading about it is small fry. Anyway thanks for the feedback and good luck with your blogging. All the best. Eggie. 

MrsCastillo said:
12 February 2013 @ 14:45

Hm...writing down my experiences from Italy...not a bad idea, only problem is time- lived there at the age of 17-18 and 22-24.. And it is, surprisingly enough(for myself), some time ago.. Maybe I'll have to go again? (wait a minute, just have to ask my husband...cariñoooooo...?) 

alan talbot said:
16 February 2013 @ 06:48

Hi eggcup,
That is almost as frustrating as banking with Lloydstsb international.
Simular experience with selling a car and having a car stollen.
Sold a car to an English couple who never registered the car in their name but sold it part exchange to a dealer who never registered but sold it on to someone else who never registered it but did park indiscriminatingly meaning fines coming to me, fortunately no problems in the dealer reimbursing me. Even when the guy registered it in is own name ( I actually checked with trafico) I still keep receiving fines because Ayuntomiento de Cordoba have their own records and according to them I still own the car.
The car stolen from me at gunpoint also gained me fines, the Guardia Civil where not interested & so on top of having my car stolen I had to pay fines. 

Paul said:
16 February 2013 @ 07:41

And I was thinking of retiring to a small Andalusian country property with land... but experiences like this would be the death of me - the stress would be too much.

It's not difficult to understand how Spain will never be as prosperous and industrious as Say Germany when they have such inefficient and wasteful processes.

I paid my UK Tv licence yesterday - it took me about 25 seconds.
(Honestly). And I renewed my car tax last month in a couple of minutes without leaving the house.

We Brits might have horrible scrappy weather but we do have efficiency in government (in a relative sense). I think I'll winter in Spain and do summer in the UK avoiding any complexity. 

peterscott said:
16 February 2013 @ 08:56

To prevent any parking in frount of my drive & bloking access to my driveway it is necesary to purchase a "NO PARKING" sign & fix it you your wall, in Pillar Horra dada. i notified the council I was moveing & the new owner wanted the sign, as did the new owner.
I continually received a demand to pay the rent for this sign .It took me 8 visits over 3 years to the council office to finaly get this sorted --unbeleivable !!! 

Bill Stewart said:
16 February 2013 @ 08:58

Paul,

I don't know if you have noticed, but we don't pay TV licence in Spain. My road tax is paid even quicker than yours, as it is done by direct debit.

I think it is high time some of the expats on here went back to dear(ambiguous) old Blighty and give the rest of us some respite from their whingeing. 

Linda P Harle said:
16 February 2013 @ 09:39

Hi everybody on this blog, I thought I would write something here, I lived in Spain from 1965 -1999 so you can say most of my life, first of course with my family parents brothers and two little sisters that were born in Malaga, I later married my husband was from Granada and have two children Spanish of course, I lived the Spanish way with a Spanish family mother in law and all the rest totally integrated into the Spanish way of life, I moved back to the uk now nearly 13 years ago but don't feel completely English and don't think I ever will, where I'm going with this story is that although I'm English and lived in Spain all those years I see a lot of things that I used to except as normal then were and are completely mad! My now partner and I are nearing retirement age and honestly want to do whatever years we have in Spain so to be near my children but I'm also dreading it because when I do go ever there for holidays I wonder how I used to deal with all the wierd things and strange ways of doing things that Spaniards have and not go mad, so I will have to say that if you want to live in a country you have to except all of that even if we think it should be done or could be done better and just enjoy what or why you decided to live there for in the first place, like the good weather the good food and of course the ever friendly people of the area which I for one always miss and they are the reasons that I will go back to Spain. Thanks for reading this if you do and don't make the what is called in Spain "las cosas de palacio" change your mind because Spain like every other country had a lot of faults but it all has a lot good things. A once expat that is now waiting for the day she will go back to Spain 

Eva2008 said:
16 February 2013 @ 09:40

Typical of Spain. We moved there, lived there for 18 months and were driven back to the sanity of the UK. Spain is a great place for a holiday but an awful place to live because of all these ridiculous laws and layers of red tape. The Spanish don't like the brits and want them out. The Brits refuse to learn Spanish and expect the Spaniards to speak English! The UK may be cold but at least the people are good and the laws are decent and make some sense. Sorry to say to all those who can't make it in England and have run away to Spain, but Spain is CRAP! Go, there, enjoy the sun, enjoy your holiday, laugh at the stupid Spaniards and there laws, and then GO HOME where you belong!
Now, bring on all the die hards.... 

Eva2008 said:
16 February 2013 @ 09:41

Correction....their laws... 

midasgold said:
16 February 2013 @ 10:32

Hi Eggy,
A well written and accurate piece, normal for our Spanish way of life.I just accept that the latin brain was put in upside down 
and any 2 minute activity will take the most of my day. 

Roland Quesnel said:
16 February 2013 @ 10:38

I've been here 14 years and experienced fair levels of insane bureaucracy. One needs to put it into perspective. Spain has had several hundred years less then Britain to practice a civil democracy, it has come a long way in a short time. I think it does however need a constitutional enema, to rebuild a transparent and streamlined public administration with genuinely accountable politicians. And then to copy the best practices from France (a superbly run place), Germany and even the UK. I do however hope that Spain doesn't adopt the UK's other wonderful advantages such as the near police state, the 24 hour surveillance of every aspect of your life apart from what happens in the privacy of your own toilet, the moral neurosis and intolerance (how hard is it to let Gays marry?), the excessive taxation of every corner of life, the blatantly corrupt and repugnant press, and the alcoholic excesses of its citizens. Anyone who comes here and learns to speak the language will find that braving Spain's idiosyncracies is worth the effort to avoid living in a Britain which seems to me permanently at war with itself. 

adimapamida said:
16 February 2013 @ 11:56

OMG you have just described my life for the first year of living in Spain. I also at one point had an incomplete list of paperwork that was required. I also had to return to each place three or four times only to be told each time that something was still missing. I have a huge binder of copies with stamps and i started carrying every single piece of official paper I had ever received in my life every single place I went. AAAAAAH i shouldn't have read this because now I'm reminded of the agony. 

eggcup said:
16 February 2013 @ 12:42

Hi all.
Alan: how terrible that you should be fined after having your car stolen at gunpoint. That is a vergüenza.
Paul: to add to your point, I think that it is lunacy for anyone to suggest that the bureaucracy in Spain is in any way comparable to that in the UK. It is not. I think 6 months in Spain and 6 in the UK is a good idea - although watch out for complications regarding bringing your car over, where you're tax resident etc. One of the main messages of this post really is NEVER BUY A SECOND HAND CAR IN SPAIN. And preferably, never sell one either.
Bill: what's wrong with a moan when things are ridiculous and stupid. So if you choose to live in another country, you have to agree with everything and go around with an imbecilic grin on your face?
Linda: you've made a very thoughtful contribution and good luck to you on your return to Spain. You are well-informed and your eyes are open, because of your life experience. Good luck.
Eva: you're entitled to your opinion and Spain can certainly send one around the twist and turn one against it, if you're unlucky enough to experience some of the worst of what the country has to offer. I, too, prefer the UK now as the place to live.
Midasgold: you have succinctly explained to me the mystery of why Spaniards put in shed door locks and handles upside down.
Roland: I don't agree about the UK being a police state; the Spanish police presence is far more felt on a daily basis and personally I love CCTV - it helps to catch countless criminals and makes the UK a safer place to live. And as someone who does speak Spanish, I can say that a knowledge of the language just opens your eyes even more to the lunacy of the Spanish bureaucracy. Linda (above) recognises this having lived in the country and being fluent in the language for over thirty years.
Alimapamida: yes, it is agonising to go over it again. Think of poor me, having to write it all up.
Thanks everyone for the comments. Eggy 

Anna said:
16 February 2013 @ 13:04

My sides are still aching with laughing after reading your article, we can identify with your situation exactly! we had more or less the same problems when we bought a second hand car.
Then people wonder why Spain is in such a mess. Until they sort out the bureaucracy here, these nightmare situations will continue.
Thanks so much for cheering me up today. 

eggcup said:
16 February 2013 @ 15:53

Thanks Anna. You've had a positive impact on my day too. Eggie. 

Scottie said:
16 February 2013 @ 17:12

I don't know what you lot are all fussing about! Moan! Moan! Moan!

I've lived in Spain for years and enjoyed every moment of it. Every day is sunny, bureaucracy is perfect, petrol prices are great, food prices even better and you couldn't wish for more friendly police. Only the Spanish citizens themselves are friendlier - and that's because they know I'm British!

I live in a beautiful Home where I am cared for by the most kind, loving and well-educated staff, and from where I sit each day there is nothing but blue sky.

If anybody wants to contact me I can be reached at:

C/O. Section Z, 
Bloque Extranjeros,
Campo 27,
Andalucia.

P.S. Does anybody know how to loosen the arms on a straight-jacket? 

eggcup said:
16 February 2013 @ 17:22

Nice one Scottie! 

gazzer said:
17 February 2013 @ 09:18

Hi Eggcup, and others, I sympathise with your plight but you and tens of thousands of others are duped either deliberately or by ignorance by LesUnscrupulous when it comes to car transfer. I have lost count of the amount of people in my area that have either "bought" or "sold" a car without having sufficient paperwork and being in the "can't register it or de-register it" situation.

My Aunt lived here in the '90's and I remember her stories of taking her sandwiches and a flask to "Trafico" for the day!

A friend of mine recently received the annual road tax for a car he sold in March. He never got the payment slip form the council so he missed the deadline and had the 5% sanction to pay as well. When he went to the correct council office it wasn't the usual guy who deals with taxes. The newbie looked up everything about my friend and proudly declared he owed for a car he had 12 years ago that was scrapped due to an accident! 50€ per year! 
He had an accident and the car was written off (here you get paid out by the ins. co. and you are left with the car). He sold the scrap to a repair workshop and gave them the papers....needless to say, they didn't do a transfer. Hence the 12 year annual bills.
Then there is a dilema: How do I effect a scrapping of a car, when there is no car and no paperwork in order to stop the annual car tax bill?
This where a GOOD Gestoria come into play. Before we get there you have to understand that when the Spanish make a law there invariably is a loophole that circumvents it and a good Lawyer/Gestor/Notario will know what to do to suit your purposes.
So, the Gestor said: we need to apply for replacement paperwork from Trafico, then we make a declaration of "Bajo" which is similar to UK SORN. Take the Bajo to the Council offices and the annual bills will stop.You have paperwork for a car that doesn't exist and no bills. They don't come looking to see if the car is there at all and as it doesn't exist it won't incur any fines! En permanencia! Simples!

It always worries me about Spanish cars being sold in the UK....do you REALLY have ALL the paperwork from the previous owner and are you sure there are no fines or taxes outstanding?
The answer is get to know a Gestor and take their number so that you can ring them with the vehicles registration number and they can tell you instantly what the legal situation with the car is. 
Also beware of Gestor "Agents". These are usually car Insurance Offices that offer to do your car transfer. They act as middle men and funnel your paperwork to a "friend" who is a Gestor for 10% rake off. Many times the paperwork goes missing and you have paid the bill but have nothing to show for it. So it will be you paying for replacement paperwork even tho' they lost it!

That's enough Public Service Advice....sorry whingeing as some might say for today!

Hasta la huevo! ........but I don't want any eggs!

eggcup said:
17 February 2013 @ 09:45

Gazzer, your Aunt had her head screwed on. There. You've added another bit of advice to all readers - to take sufficient provisions and maybe even a picnic blanket. 

On Wednesday we made sure we didn't go for coffee after dropping the kids off, instead walking straight to the house, so that Steve would have no excuse for not going directly there too. He arrived just after nine, and continued working on the archway, this time hacking away at the side walls. 
'God, I've really gone off him,' I said to Adrian. 'I'm losing the will to live. He's like a bloody Dementor out of Harry Potter.'
Thankfully, by the time we returned at lunch-time, there was good news.
'I think I'll have to pack it in for the moment,' he said. 'I can't get my head around it. The thing is it's a bit off-putting with Benjamin and the Romanians here. I'd rather wait until they've done more of their bit and then I can come back. It doesn't really work having too many people on site. I feel like they're looking at me all the time.'
Well, if we did as he suggested and Benjamin worked for us for six months and then he did his part, it would take twice as long as we wanted it to. So, no thanks. The whole idea had been to have one set of builders working on the new structure that would adjoin the house and other builders restoring the old part. He clearly was not the man for the job. 
By the time his bit was ‘postponed,' the only thing he'd achieved was raising the height of the doorway a bit. Had we paid one of the Romanian peones to do it, it would have cost ten euros in total. But we heaved a sigh of relief when he went, especially as we hadn't had to sack him; something we still find incredibly difficult to do.
The following weekend we went to Adreimal and Helen presented us with a bill for 220 euros for Steve's time and petrol. We stayed for a few hours, chatting and drinking tea. Steve was happy and relaxed and if anything seemed pleased to have extricated himself from a job he couldn't handle. Helen was more subdued, probably worried what work Steve would now get as we'd all assumed he'd be spending the next six months working for us.
'I'm taking it easy this weekend,' Steve said, smoking on a rolly and necking a beer. 'God I was wasted last week. I worked with Ronny the week before I came to you. Even the Saturday and Sunday. So I didn't get a break at all. And it was really heavy work, a lot of lugging around and wheelbarrowing cement until 6 o'clock every day. I got off my face Sunday night after all that.' And by that he meant, drugs as well as drink.
When we left to head back to La Gloria, I said to Adrian that even if he hadn't been wasted, the job was just too much of a challenge. 
'Yeah,' Adrian agreed. 'He might be able to tile a room and fit a bathroom, but he just couldn’t  handle a restoration project from start to finish. It's so good to be shot of him, although we've now got the problem of finding someone else.'
Helen had behaved normally towards us, but things changed almost imperceptibly then over the next month or so.  Nothing had been said and she'd gone along with the idea of 'postponing' Steve's work, but when I called in at hers one day and she was sitting having a cuppa with her Spanish neighbour, Carmita, she didn't offer me one. I was there for three quarters of an hour and I was gasping, and although she chattered away, there was something in her manner I couldn't put my finger on.
'Uh, I think she's giving you a message,' Adrian said, when I told him later.
She'd thought we would put Steve on a salary of 500 euros a week, regardless of whether he did any work and regardless of the fact that he couldn't hack it. But she couldn't say anything, because 'the job would never come in the way of our friendship.'
'Maybe that's how he got his money "back home",' Adrian said. 'There are plenty of useless workers in Ingalund who do bugger all all week and pick up their wage packet at the end of the month. Maybe they thought that we'd do the same. Everyone seems to think we're made of money and that they're entitled to a cut.'
We'd seen it before amongst expats in Spain – men do up their own house and then make out they're all-round builders. Instead, when they muddle through the work in their own house it makes financial sense; they don’t have to pay for labour and if they’ve got no job prospects, it’s an excellent use of their time. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work for us, paying by the hour at professional rates and getting an amateur. 
So this mistake cost me the only genuine friendship I thought I'd made in Spain... I stopped going to see Helen and she didn't ring and that was that.
(Adrian later rather unkindly pointed out Helen's resemblance to ‘Madge’ off the TV series ‘Benidorm’ - the old, wrinkly and obnoxious woman in the wheelchair (although Helen was in her thirties). But it was only when our friendship had well and truly bitten the dust, that I decided Adrian was right; yes, the resemblance was uncanny.)

To see the end result of all the work on the casa, take a look at the house now: 

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p86636

And also another of our completed projects:

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p475271

The next morning just after nine, Steve caught sight of us again outside the bar (we'd just dropped the children off at school) and he pulled over in his car and walked over.
'Christ,' I mumbled to Adrian under my breath. 'Why can't he just go straight to the house and get on with some work?' 
'Hi there, you two. God, I'm knackered. Get me a café solo will you?' he said as he slumped into a chair and got out his tobacco tin. 'I've got to lay off the beer a bit, I think. I've got a splitting head-ache.'
I could hardly say, 'Uh, no. Can you just go straight to the house and get on with some work, actually, because we're paying you by the hour?'
Instead I gulped my coffee down as quickly as I could and pulled faces at Adrian to do the same. I then picked up my bag, went to the little serving hatch, called out, 'Me cobra!' and having settled the bill I proceeded to stand by the table until the two men got up. I had to get this guy working.  
It was 9.45 by the time we got to the house this time but it didn't make any difference. Steve just got his tobacco tin out and wandered outside to the garden to try and make conversation with the Romanian labourers, in his non-existent Spanish. 
'Que?' he asked, pointing at the steel wires they were putting in place. He was all sign language and smiles, smoking his rolly, while they worked, until they stopped for their break at 10. Then he sat down on a log with them, while they opened their tins of sardines and got their barras out.
'Adrian, can you come inside a minute?' I called out from the exposed opening into the old house.
'What are we going to do?' I said in a low voice. 'What's he playing at? Can't you drag him away from Petro and Aurelius and get him working? Helen's going to be billing us for 20 euros for the last two hours despite him having done bugger all. It's stressing me out.'
So Adrian called him in and once more went throught the list of things that needed doing to make a start on the old part of the house.
'The thing is,' Steve said in a case of déjà vu, 'it's tricky to know where to start at this stage.'
This was a bit different to the attitude he'd displayed a few months earlier when we'd sat around in his and Helen's lounge, chatting about how we would go about the project. Then, it was:
'Yeah, no sweat. I can sort it out for you. I can turn my hands to most things, don't you worry. We'll work out a plan of action and I'll get stuck right in. You'll have no worries with me.'
Instead, I was now inwardly cursing and not in the mood for another day of him wandering around like a wet weekend. Adrian and I had wasted the previous evening traipsing down to  the coast, with the children in tow, to return the electrical box he'd erroneously got us to buy. 
'He's an electrician for Christ's sake,' I said. 'If he can't even get that bit right, what hope is there for him handling the rest of the job?'
This second day he decided to start chipping away at the ceiling in the open doorway between the two downstairs rooms. The doorway had been designed for a very short person, so it was necessary to increase the height of it and we would then get a carpenter to produce a mould that we could use to turn it into an archway. We also had to build up a layer of two or three steps, as the one room was about a foot and a half higher than the other room and at the moment we had to clamber down from one to the other.
Adrian and I went to a nearby town for building supplies for Benjamin and when we got back Steve was still intermittently hacking away at the ceiling. When he saw us about to leave at 2pm to meet the children he said:
'Hey wait! I'll come with you. I could do with a break.'
The three of us headed up to the bar. We only went there as it was where we met the children each day, after they'd walked up the steep road from the school. We both had a caña and Steve ordered an imported bottled beer; he didn't like cheap Spanish beer. 
We were in the habit of killing an hour at the bar, not wanting to rush back to the cortijo as frankly it was boring and it would be a long afternoon if we went there too soon. It also meant that we could pop back to the casa around 3pm and double-check if Benjamin would need anything for the next day, since we were in charge of ordering materials for the job. The problem was that it seemed that Steve was going to stay for however long we were there. The children had a drink and some huevos fritos con patatas and so it was 3 o' clock by the time we left. 
When I'd got up to order a second drink for us all, Steve had called out:
'Hey! How much is a pack of Fortuna?'
'Two euros fifty,' I called back.
'Oh, get me a packet then,' he said.
When it was time to pay, he made no move to even pay for the cigarettes and I ended up footing the bill for them and for his beers, on top of the  ten euros an hour.  
(Yeah, some of you out there. Don't tell me it's all my own fault and I should have asked him, because I just CAN'T. If there's one thing I hate doing it's asking people for money they owe me. It's my worst thing)
'I don't really see the point in staying this afternoon,' he then said. 'It'll be better to make a fresh start tomorrow.' And he got into his car and turned to go back to Adreimal.
'Well it's no loss,' I said to Adrian.'At least the clock will stop ticking earlier today.'
By the time he got back to Adreimal it would be near enough 4 o' clock and Helen would be writing down his hours presumably as 8.30 till 4pm...

To see the end result of all the work on the casa, take a look at the house now: 

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p86636

And also another of our completed projects:

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p475271

Against my better judgement, we had agreed my best friend Helen's husband, Steve, would work on restoring the old part of the casa. He was an electrician by trade but had done a lot of the building work on their Spanish house, including fitting a new kitchen, installing new flooring, tiling the walls and putting in a bathroom. They had only paid for a few things to be done by Spanish tradesmen, notably the plastering. 
'Oh, yes,' Helen reassured me. 'Steve will be able to sort it all out. He seems to be able to put his hand to anything.' 
'I'm just worried that if anything goes wrong, it could affect our friendship,' I had said to her a few times.
'It won't ever affect our friendship. We'll leave it all to the men to sort out and we won't get involved. They can have their little issues and deal with them themselves. And anyway, Steve will do as he's told. He always does what I tell him!'
As it was a big job though, we had also arranged for a Spanish builder, Benjamin, to build the new part of the house, as it would need a steel structure and was definitely outside Steve's capabilities. Benjamin found two Romanian peones to assist him and these two men had already been at the house from the end of August, clearing the garden of the overgrowth of several years and sanding down the beams in the old part of the house.
For Steve, we agreed a start date of Monday, the 1st of of October, and at 9.15am he duly drove into La Gloria as we were having our coffee. We'd just dropped the children off at the village school. Seeing us at the cafe, he stopped his car, got out and came and sat and ordered a coffee. We discussed the work that needed doing and then the three of us went to the house. The other builders had been working since 8am. It was now 10 o’ clock and time for their break. Steve started trying to chat to them in his non-existent Spanish – he seemed to think that if they were standing around or having a snack or cigarette, then he should too. When they went back to work at 10.30 he shuffled into the house, not sure where to start, it seemed.
We discussed all the work that needed doing and Adrian said that his first task could be to install an electrical fuse box. 
'I know exactly the type we need to get,' Steve said, 'but you'll have to come with me, Ade, because there's no way on earth I can explain it in Spanish.'
'Well, let's get going, then,' Adrian said, 'and let's get a move on, because time is money.'
We were paying Steve ten euros an hour from the time he left his house in Adreimal, and at this rate it would be afternoon before he actually did any work.
Adrian drove them both down to the coast and came back two hours later with the box. Steve was about to install it when Benjamin, the Spanish builder walked past and said:
'Que estas haciendo? What are you doing? You can't put that box in. They don't allow those indoor ones anymore.'
He said the box didn’t meet new regulations, because the boxes had to be the type that could go outside, where the electricity company could access them. 
'Damn,' Adrian said, 'well there's no way we're going back now. You get on with something else and Becky and I will take it back this evening.' We didn’t want to pay Steve 10 euros an hour to go on another drive to the coast.
Steve looked around. He didn't know where to start. I'd never noticed it before, but he was an energy-free zone.
'I don't see what you want me to do,' he said, finally.
'Well you could start working on the floor,' I suggested. It had to be levelled out so that the flooring could be put in.
'Mmm, I dunno,' he said, ignoring my suggestion. Instead he wandered outside and started pencilling in where the electrical box would be going outside. He then got his tobacco tin out and rolled and smoked a cigarette. By the time he left at 5pm we had no idea what he'd achieved.

It turned out that, to our later cost, advising buyers against buying seemed to be our lawyer's default position. If there were any kind of complication, which there was with every single property purchase in Spain, Ingrid would tell the buyer not to go ahead.  Several years later, she was to advise someone strongly against buying a piece of land from us, which had the tiniest possible complication and they took her advice and we lost the sale (instead they bought a cheap, substandard house from a local speculator, which moved in a storm and became worthless. Several years down the line, we recently met them for the first time and they said how sorry they were they hadn't bought our place, as it was so much better, so much nearer the village, had drinking water and so on; instead they're stuck out in the sticks, because they didn't dare buy when a lawyer said they shouldn't. We all lost out).  
Anyway, shortly after the purchase of the casa we found a better lawyer and had all our paperwork transferred from Ingrid's office. She had always been a nightmare to deal with. Even the old guy's daughter, from whom we bought the casa, couldn’t understand Ingrid and she came from the same area.  It really gratified me when I heard the daughter say to Ingrid: ‘No t’entiendo’ on the ‘phone.  It didn't matter if she spoke Spanish or English; she was incomprehensible in any language. 
Also, it was very strange how her 'advice' worked. We would start with a problem and she would suggest Solution A; we would point out the difficulties with that, so she would suggest Solution B; we would all talk a bit about Solution B and through this discussion would seamlessly arrive at Solution C. It would then turn out that Solution A would have caused us expensive complications further down the line; but if we had just accepted that she, as the expert, knew better than us, we would have ended up in a complete mess. Although our next lawyer was far easier to deal with and a very nice person, she also seemed to follow this pattern whereby the client did more thinking and working out solutions than the lawyer did. 
Going back to the casa, we completed in August and were now hoping to get the building work done as soon as possible as I was not at all happy about staying out in the campo, especially during the times when Adrian would be back in the UK, as he was for about ten days each month. Life with no mains electricity and no drinking water, with a five and six year old was not going to be easy, especially during a Spanish winter. We already knew that the idea of Spanish winters being warm and even the idea that heating wasn't necessary was an outrageous lie. And we weren't sure how effective our log burner would be in keeping the whole cortijo warm enough. It was an expensive 1,000 euro Scandinavian burner, so we assumed it would be good enough (it wasn't). 
I at least found comfort in having the children with me. Maybe it’s just me, but I really hated being on my own. I especially didn't like it at night, as the cortijo was set on its own, with not a soul living nearby. 
A German woman we'd recently met in La Gloria, called Steffi, thought I was a bit of a weakling, when I told her about this in the local bar one day. She interpreted it as a character defect on my part. 
'Vot? Vot do you mean you do not like it? Vot is de matter? De countryside iss so pleasant in de night-time, vissout the pollution frrom dee lighting. It vood not bozzer me at all. I vood seemply loff eet.'
She'd love it, but she chose to buy a house in the village, surrounded by people who would come running if she screamed. Nobody would hear my screams out in an isolated house in the middle of nowhere. And (for your information, German person) I didn’t meet one Spanish woman who would have been happy either – they all huddle together in the villages and towns and only venture out to the campo on sunny afternoons to do a bit of pottering – with the old man nearby. Steffi was talking absolut Quatsch (nonsense), to quote an old German teacher of mine.
But I had to grin and bear it for the time being, for a few months at least. We got into the routine each morning of driving into the village, dropping the children off at school, having a café con leche or two in the bar and then walking over to the casa to see how work was progressing. Naturally, the process was not going to be smooth, primarily because it is impossible to find a builder willing to simply do a fair and reasonable job in exchange for a decent wage. Stupid me to think it would be possible.