Spanish Shilling

I'm away for a month - here's a story that's very up-to-date (from four years ago): I've toned down the f bombs.

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I got a letter from the Aduana today: the dreaded Spanish customs. Years ago, a fellow from Chile had sent me a sample of half a kilo of cod in a freeze-pack to see if it was worth starting a business importing Chilean fish to Spain. Anyhow, the customs got hold of it and - well, that was over twenty years ago now. I wonder if they've noticed the smell yet.

Today's letter as seen here, addressed to Lenox Naier (why can't they get our names right in Spain? F*ck me, it's not as if I'm called Rachanivarakonkul), and  dated " Mi�rcoles " (Curse those nineteen eighty computers!) is to tell me of a massive package of dubious merchandise waiting for my attention in Madrid.

The first thing I thought was 'it's a trap - they've found the fish!', but then, I saw that it had come from my daughter, who lives in foreign parts.

The package in question: a pair of sneakers for my birthday.

So, as you can see, I filled out the form, then read the back of the page to see that I need to contact our officious friends by email, sending them a scan of my silly police letter together with another of my passport (it would be a TIE these days), only their formulario doesn't allow foreigners' NIE numbers and my password -F*ckyou1- evidently wasn't long enough.

So now, I must put copies of all this in the post, being sure that they receive it before Mi�rcoles otherwise it will be 'Returned to Sender' (or more likely, destroyed in a controlled explosion or, of course more likely still, stolen).

But now I'm thinking: 'Customs, eh?' Aren't they the people who like to look through other people's stuff, rifle through steamer trunks and search diligently under the dashboard? Perhaps my box is full of Peruvian marching powder, or a rhinoceros' horn, or perhaps a pistola. So, why don't they open the f*cking thing instead of asking me for my maiden name? On the box it says 'shoes' but they may want to question this - that's why they get paid - to make the world a safer place. But why the f*ck ask me what's in the box. I'm going to say 'shoes' and they are going to say 'Ah hah! Got him!'.

In the improbable event the shoes make it though all the hoops, I will apparently be asked to pay ransom (or 'duty' as they prefer to call it) on them.

Sometimes, between all the pleasures, one forgets what a silly place we have chosen to live. 

The banks aren’t what they were. The quill has been exchanged by the keyboard and now there's a button on the street-door and a trickster in the manager's office.

My first encounter with a bank was with un corredor - an agent for the Banco Popular. This was the old mayor of Bédar, who used to keep his useful papers, rubber stamp and a modest wad of cash under his bed in a strongbox. One would be granted permission to enter his boudoir and the business would be done, the mayor sat on the bed and concentrating as he filled a line in his ledger, and a receipt for the petitioner.

Word was, that the books would be transported weekly by donkey to the bank in Lúbrin, a dozen kilometres away.

Back on the coast in Mojácar, we had a proper bank, of sorts, since it wasn’t a bank so much as a savings bank, or caja. These belonged to the Church and in principle they didn’t take commissions. Ours was the Caja de Ahorros y Monte de Piedad de Almería, a kind of low-lender and pawn-shop known to the foreigners affectionately as the Cage of Horrors.

We were treated well there, and at Christmas, the Caja would fulfil tradition by offering their clients a bracer, usually a glass of anís or menta. It probably helped keep their patrons happy.

Later, allied to the Málaga Caja de Ahorros and rebranded as Unicaja, they began to offer sets of crockery to potential customers. A Sterling cheque would take a couple of weeks to clear, but if they knew you…

There was another bank of sorts in the pueblo, the Banco de Jeréz (part of the Rumasa empire), where I kept a company account. The teller, young Marcelo, used to remove a cheque from the back of my chequebook now and again and treat himself to a meal or a bottle of gin or maybe two weeks in the Caribbean until I caught him out one day. The manager returned my missing funds, kind of him, and I don’t know what happened to Marcelo. He’s probably in politics these days. The Banco de Jérez, for its part, went bust in 1992.  So, back to the Unicaja for my banking needs and its occasional welcome drop of anís.

Banks grew in numbers and employees with the building boom, which started the day Franco died and continued until 2008. Then came the ‘restructure’ when 88 different high-street banks shrank down through mergers into the ten we enjoy today, albeit with 23,500 less branches and 115,000 less employees.

As for my favoured banking option with the passage of years, the Unicaja Banco (renamed again) has now joined up with Liberbank (an operator from Asturias, Cantabria and Castilla la Mancha) and, keeping its Unicaja Banco name (sorry about that, Liberbank), has turned into something far removed from its halcyon days as a simple savings bank.

But hey, money talks. Any business one might have is not about making things, or deals, or dingbats, it’s about making money – and who is better placed to make money than a bank? Alright, the Royal Mint, but after that… No more bishops behind the door, now they are run by business-folk, or bankers as they call themselves. Indeed, bank staff are now strongly encouraged to sell products to their customers – home insurance, health insurance, house alarms (52,03€ per month with CaixaBank and don't forget to read the small print), investments, Ponzi schemes, crypto-currencies, ostrich farms, precious stones and sundry start-ups while the bank itself invests in property, bicycle teams and volleyball.

If all fails, and there’s the right government in power, then they’ll get bailed out at public expense.

Meanwhile, the Unicaja, having just raised their charges for keeping and investing my modest account to a whopping 20 euros per month, has a sign in our one remaining local office which says that the teller is only there until eleven thirty each morning, and furthermore that (says the sign with satisfaction in a piece of Newspeak) ‘Menos es Más’ - More is Less, and the handy cashpoint outside now does all kinds of tricks as the disgruntled queue to be found there will happily illustrate.   

A rival lender across town is only open two days a week (Tuesdays and Fridays). How much do they charge customers I ask?

As for mortgages - and some hard-won advice here: just don’t.

You may be wondering if my bank still offers a tipple at Christmastime to its patrons.  A flute of Bollinger maybe. I’ll get back to you on that one.  

It must be strange living with guns. People may decide at any moment to whip them out and take a shot at you. Perhaps because they were annoyed at you, perhaps it was just in a moment of excitement. It's also true that you could decide on a whim to pull your own gun out of your holster and shoot back at them. Hell, maybe go and shoot someone else while you are in the mood.

There are indeed a few people I would like to shoot, when I think of it (and the world would be a better place for their passing) but, since I live in Spain, I don't have a gun. Being British, the best I can come up with is to shake my fist in their general direction after they have safely passed by.

This is probably for the best. The picture, by the way, is me at the cowboy film set in Tabernas. Don't worry, it's a cap-gun.

As it happens, and talking of firearms, I am soon away to visit family in far-off Texas, a place where one can easily acquire a gun from the local supermarket. Or maybe an arsenal, since they often do a special three for two service. I once asked a fellow I'm friendly with over there as to how many fire-arms he had. He answered with - 'if you know how many guns you have, you don't have enough'!

Guh-uns: he said. Two syllables.

It turned out - and this was some time ago - he had seventeen.

On that visit, I was pruriently looking one day at the guns for sale in Walmart - a sort of gigantic Carrefour. Just looking, I really didn't want one.

Anyhoo, I saw a wrist-rocket (the kind of catapult that might be used by Tom Cruise) for sale and thought that might be a good thing to get, after all, we are infested with cats at home. The salesman said I needed to show him my driver's licence, to keep everything ship-shape.

He was a bit surprised to see a Spanish one (a country that didn't appear in his computer), but we agreed that it was, in reality, a driver's licence in Spanish, so he put me down as coming from Puerto Rico. 

I never got to shoot any cats with my catapult - you see why they named it that - and I think the rubber has since perished. Maybe I'll go and buy another one while I'm there. It's going to be a long winter.

Someone on Facebook today was missing some item of British food. Probably something to do with the Brexit cock-up. Anyhow, I was reminded of a story of my dad's.

My parents had bought a Mercedes and were heading out to Spain to live, once and for all. With them went two whippets - a race of dog unknown in Spain, but which would prove to be popular with the local hunters, who were to soon steal them.

The Mercedes, which was fitted with 'fuel-injection', didn't think much of Spanish petrol and it chugged across the country at a throaty top-speed of around 50kph, with numerous ratty old Citroens and Renaults overtaking with a gleeful squawk from the klaxon every now and again.

The boot was full of tinned turkey in sweetcorn sauce.

Our friend from Middle Wallop had been in the turkey business for many years and in 1966 he decided with his brother to take the empire a step forward by introducing tinned turkey.

He was flat broke within three months.

When my parents announced they were leaving the UK for good (coincidentally, the morning after they had left me in my brand-new boarding school), our friend pressed several boxes of tinned turkey with the sweetcorn sauce, unlabelled, into my father's doubtful charge.

'There'll be fuck all to eat in Mojácar', said the friend with a certain logic.

So, after a ferry crossing to Calais, the customs officer beckoned to my father.

'Ouvrez', he said, waving imperiously at the boot of the car.

'C'ést quoi ça?', he said, pointing at the boxes of unlabelled merchandise.

My father wasn't much good at languages, but he was game: 'un gran wuzzoh para mange', he answered.

The customs officer, stumped by this answer, called for a can opener.

On opening the first tin and viewing the contents, he burst out in English - 'Sacré bleu, you Eengleesh will eat anything'.

He was almost right about that, since in turned out the tinned turkey in sweetcorn sauce wasn't a popular dinner in our new home in Mojácar, although my mother discovered that the whippets liked it.

It’s likely going to be a tough winter in Europe, and one solution for those who can afford it – and there’s an oxymoron – is to head south to the Mediterranean.

We read of a new type of holiday – one that would need to stretch for six months to fully avoid the northern freeze – called ‘thermal tourism’.

Well, for the British the figure would be for three months tops to be exact, what with the Schengen rule of 90 days in any 180 for non-EU visitors to most of the Old Continent. November through February maybe. Still, it’s better than nothing.

While those living in the colder parts of Europe will be welcome to consider moving south for an extended period, the promotions are probably more centred on a couple of weeks holiday in the sun before returning home to chilblains, woolly hats and hot toddies. After all, we are talking here about the powerful hoteliers and their lobbying over at the Ministry of Tourism, rather than Ethel’s empty flat overlooking Garrucha harbour.

The Greeks and the Spanish are both working on their campaigns, as they welcome the chance to bring extra tourism out for the low season:  “Wanna feel 20 again?” asks one of the billboards slated to appear in London and other capitals across the continent. “With warm winter temperatures up to 20C, Greece is the place to be,” it proclaims, next to an image of an older couple lounging on a yacht, wine glasses in hand.

A senior Spanish tourist expert brings the clincher to the table when he says: “From what we’re seeing, people are realising that it’s cheaper to come here than it is to put the heating on at home”.

However, you should probably be laying in some firewood (or whatever the equivalent is in non-smoking areas) before you sign up: it’s going to be an almighty shock when you return to your chilly casa!

There has now been a pronunciamento on the subject of the vote for British residents in Spain for the municipal elections.

One of the many joys of the Brexit meant that the British residents in the EU lost a number of privileges, without apparently gaining anything much in return. One loss was The Vote in the European elections (not that any MEP ever spoke for the foreign residents), and another was our switch from ‘ciudadanos comunitarios’ to ‘residentes extranjeros’ with our snappy new TIE card. Those without them only being allowed in the Schengen Area for ninety out of 180 days, regardless of property-ownership. Indeed, we TIE-owners can stay in Spain, but we can’t spend more than 90/180 days elsewhere in the EU either.

We became, with Brexit, something less.

The municipal elections have always been of more interest than any other one – since one vote has little sway in a national or regional poll, but in a municipality with mere thousands (or maybe just hundreds) of voters, your word counts for something.  

Despite the ruling from the European Court of Justice following a case in France, it appears that the Spanish/British bilateral agreement on (at least) local voting rights remains firm, if with a few extra formalities to undergo.

These include having to prove you have been a resident in Spain for more than three years (alas, your TIE card makes no mention of your antiquity) and to claim your right to vote (for next May 28th local elections) sometime over the Christmas season. The Election Board (INE) should be mailing out a card soon to the British residents showing our seniority - a proof we will need to show when we register at the town hall.

As to whether one can still join a local party-list as a Brit – a British resident who is also currently a councillor says that ‘yes, we can. Unlike other non-EU nationals, a Brit can still be placed on a voting-list’.

The Spanish/British bilateral accord on voting rights post Brexit from January 2019 is here.

For other nationalities, resident in Spain, there are three alternatives.

-EU citizens can vote in European and local elections, and stand as candidates.

-Certain other nationalities can vote in local elections. The countries with an agreement with Spain (together with the UK) are Bolivia, Cape Verde, Colombia, Korea, Chile, Ecuador, Iceland, Norway, New Zealand, Paraguay, Peru and (for some reason) Trinidad & Tobago.

-Nationals from anywhere else can’t vote (such as… Moroccans, Brazilians, Argentinians, Venezuelans or Canadians…).

In a municipality, it is clear that everyone over 18 should have the vote, as a town hall must represent all of its citizens, not just the ones with the right paperwork. Otherwise, which bit of land will get re-zoned, or who will receive preference in some local project or engagement?

(We are reminded that many Spanish voters, resident elsewhere, opt to maintain their name on the local padrón and vote in consequence).

In our experience, not many British residents voted in earlier elections, and the likelihood is that, with these fresh impediments, even fewer will bother this time.