Voting; The unexpurgated version

We did it. We went and voted. An odd experience.

For a start all the candidates, or at least a good number of them, were just hanging around the polling station. I think that in the UK candidates have to stay some set distance from the ballot box but apparently not so in Spain. The current Mayor said hello to us, the second on the list for the centrist party had to step aside to let us pass, the socialist party candidate, our pal Eli, did the cheek kissing thing and a woman on the conservative list who I'd talked to at one of the meetings explained which table I needed to go to. That was a bit disconcerting because I felt there was a touch of personal pressure even for someone as unknown as Maggie and I; it must be really tricky if you're friends with one of the candidates but aren't a big fan of their policies.

The system is actually simple enough. Each of the parties, five in our case, puts forward a list of candidates. The list is printed on white paper for the town elections. There is a similar list, printed on sepia paper, for the district elections. As European citizens we only have the right to vote in the local elections. We take along our voting card, prove that it's ours by showing some form of ID and then pop our list of names, inside an envelope (again white for the locals and sepia for the district), into the transparent ballot box. Then we're done.

One complication was that in their election pamphleteering the various candidates provides the white lists and envelopes to make it easier for you to vote for them. I didn't understand, beforehand, how that could work. Could I simply pop along to the voting station and drop my ready prepared list into the ballot box? If I could then I could make multiple votes depending on how many lists I'd managed to get my hands on. However,as you turn up at your voting table the person in charge of the voting table ensures that you have the right to vote and that you only place the number and type of votes that you are entitled to into the ballot box.

Voters are allocated a voting table based on where they live and what their name is, a neutral person administers the table. This meant that Maggie and I had to go to different tables in different rooms. We had to face the system alone. I went to my table, told them who I was and proved it was me with my passport. They expected me to have my voting envelope ready to go into the box. I'd expected, like the UK system, to be given my ballot paper as I handed over my voter registration card. No problem though, I just went to the curtained off voting booth where I collected the white candidate list, put it inside my white envelope. I was then allowed to put my single vote into the local ballot box. If I had tried to put more than one list (say for two different parties) into the same envelope my vote would be void. If I put two or more lists for the same party into my envelope that would be checked by the returning officer but considered to be one vote for the party list. It is also possible to put a blank piece of paper inside the envelope to show that you don't want to vote for any of the candidates. If those blank votes were to outnumber the votes cast for the actual candidates I think that the election has to be re-run.

On her table Maggie had a problem in that they wanted her ID and she didn't see why they needed that when she had the voter registration card. In the UK the card is considered to be proof of identity. They compounded the difficulty by asking specifically for her Residencia (see the earlier blog about how we can't get one anymore) rather than simply asking for ID but she got to vote OK in the end.

The only difficulty I had was with my name. In the UK there is often someone outside the polling station who asks to see your card. I presume they're just checking turnout. In Spain there is someone from each party on the voting table each with their list of registered voters. Probably the idea is that if they know old such and such will vote for them and if s/he hasn't turned up towards the end of the voting day they send someone around to bring them in to vote. So each of the five party reps was trying to work out what I was called; it's all to do with Spaniards having two surnames. The alphabetical lists are based on the first of those two surnames. Ricardo Perez Brotons, for instance, would be listed under P for Perez. So they were not only trying to work out the spelling of my (for them) very complicated name but they were also scouring the Js for Christopher John Thompson. Fortunately my Spanish held together and it all became a bit of a laugh.

Jorge Drexler, the Uruguayan singer songwriter was on in Elda at the Teatro Castelar last night.

We'd bought our tickets through a system run by one of the local banks (pay online, pick up from a machine in most of their branches) so when we turned up at the door we had no idea where we were supposed to go. Whenever I'm lost and confused I get cross and that's what happened as we wandered around the foyer. Maggie applied a much better approach and asked one of the theatre staff where the seats were. He directed her in English. Good seats, a box about a metre higher than the stage, right at the front, maybe 20 metres from the man. Plenty of room to shuffle, good view.

The theatre was a bit like the ones in both Yecla and Villena that we've been to. Dark "Edwardian" places with boxes, balconies, gilded columns, marble detail. Elda was mainly red velvet and dark wood. No ice cream though.

Señor Drexler was good too, nice gentle songs, very intimate and cosy with the audience. He told us when he broke his finger nail and set about filing it down and he explained how he'd ended up with his ankle and foot in plaster. He and his band seemed to have a good time throughout.

If you don't know who he is then think back to the film "The Motorcycle Diaries", the one about the journey through South America that formed many of Che Guevara's revolutionary ideas. Drexler wrote the song "On the other side of the river"- Al otro lado del rió - and it won an Oscar in 2004 for the best song. Drexler was a bit cross about the way his song was interpreted by Antonio Banderas and Carlos Santana at the ceremony - a bit too Mills and Boon - so instead of an acceptance speech he just sang the song and left clutching the statuette.

Free gifts

The local elections are this Sunday so all of the parties are running a series of last minutes meetings. I went to listen to Ramón Cerdá from the UCL (Central Liberal Union) last night. The meeting was fine but as it's the fourth I've been to I'm getting used to the routine.

However, if the meetings follow a similar pattern the gifts don't! I am becoming a bit of a connoisseur. The Conservative PP definitely won out on this competition - a calculator with pen set and an electronic thermometer, the UCL gave away a nice little notepad and a fag lighter but their biro didn't click in and out properly. The Socialists didn't do so well - their fag lighter is OK but the biro is shaped like a space rocket with a wide bit where the main engines should be, presumably so it will stand up - most odd.

Fiesta Fatigue

The first of the village fiestas around Pinoso took place over this weekend in Rodriguillo and we, sort of, failed to turn up. We did have a look on our way back from the market at Algueña but we didn't go for the dancing or the gachamigas or the barraca. In fact the thing I noticed most was the wiring on the wall in the photo. I just left the picture of the horse and cart to add a touch of Spanishness.

We went to the Moors and Christians in Petrer too. No pictures from there either. Is Fiesta fatigue setting in?

Red Tape

Last Thursday I queued for my resident certficate or "resdencia" at the Alicante Foreigners' Office run by the National Police Force. Whilst I waited at the front of the queue I heard the police officer guarding the gate say to tens of people "From Monday the system changes and you will be able to apply for a residencia at any National Police Station" - he would then go on to ask people where they lived and tell them which their nearest station was.

Maggie had, like me, been booked in for an appointment for the old style residencia card and she'd booked time off work to go and do it. Today was the day. We thought we had the choice of our local office in Elda (queue from 7.30am to get a ticket for the session that starts at 10am - or at least it was last time we tried it), go to Elche, where Maggie works, and where neither of us knew the system or go to Alicante which has always been the main office and where I knew the system from as recently as last week. We chose Alicante. Unfortunately, as of today, Alicante no longer issues residencias to pople who do not live in its immediate catchment area. We tried Elche too but they told us the same.

So not only did Maggie hold, in her hand, a letter calling her to an appointment that had been cancelled but the place she had been called to is no longer willing to issue paperwork to her. There will be lots of other foreigners making the same wasted journey to Alicante from all parts of the province.

Anyway, in a bid to salvage something from the morning I suggested we get our European Health Card (the replacement for the old E111) from the local Social Security office in Elche. We found it OK, waited about 90 minutes to be served and then were told that because we are both on temporary contracts we could only have temporary cover of up to three months in any one calendar year. We took what we could get.

Because I was a bit peeved about this I've just done a little research on the European Health Card. The legislation is exactly the same for the UK as it is for Spain. The validity of the card is at the discretion of member states (Spain chose 1 year for full time workers, 3 months for "temporary" workers and 4 years for pensioners, whilst the UK chose 4 years for everybody with some exceptions). The card can be issued to everyone within the health care system (in Spain that's workers, pensioners and their dependants whilst in the UK it's almost all residents).

So the same legislation, with only some very subtle differences at local level, has given me a much worse deal in Spain. I've always missed out on those Rail Card deals too!

The candidates

We have five parties fielding candidates in the local election. The five people who lead each group went out for a bit of a meal together as a sort of joint press conference. From left to right (not politically) Ramón, José Maria, Elisa, Vicente and Juan Carlos. Each party fields 13 candidates so that's 65 people or close to 1 in every 100 residents of the town standing for election.

The woman in the waistcoat decided not to stand.

Calling the meeting to order

I bumped into a pal who just happens to be the Socialist candidate for Mayor. She told me, conversationally, that she was holding a meeting at my local village hall that evening. No posters, no newsletters, nothing in the local paper, no note from the neighbourhood association - just chance that I got there. I never know how it is that everyone else seems to know.

The meeting started at 8.30 so I was obviously the first person there (other than the keyholder) when I arrived at 8.40. The meeting got under way at around 9.20.

The prospective mayor and five of the pospective socialist councillors sat facing the 25 or so people in the audience - about a third of the village's population. Eli, the candidate, seemed to know the name of everyone in the room. In fact everyone knew everyone.

Good presentation; the chap who would deal with the economy told us how reliant the town was on the income from our marble quarry, the woman with the health portfolio talked about new care in the community laws etc. Interesting stuff, clearly expressed, easy for me to follow and with occasional interjections or clarifying questions from the floor.

Then we got onto the Plan General approved by the current town council, which details building and planning. This is stuff close to peoples' hearts because the distinction between whether your land and house is classed as rural or urban, detailed in the plan, drastically alters both their value and what services have to be provided. Suddenly the order of the meeting collapsed. At one point each of the "top table" was speaking to at least one person and two had two conversations on the go simultaneously. There was a bit of an attempt to regain some structure but nobody's heart was in it. Then someone fastened a cigarette between their lips, someone else did the same and miraculously, the meeting was over.

Resident

Spaniards have to carry ID at all times. They have a little card that has their photo and a scanned version of their fingerprint.

Foreigners, like us, living in Spain have an ID number. Its format differs slightly from the one for Spaniards. It's called an NIE.

Getting the NIE number is dead easy, a bit of form filling and a queue. The next step, once you've been in Spain for at least 6 months is to get "resident" status. There are legal implications but basically for most Brits it means they get an ID card, which everyone calls a residencia, that looks just like the card Spaniards carry. It is recognised everywhere for guaranteeing credit cards, receiving registered mail etc.

Maggie and I tried to get a residencia last summer and we were turned away being told there was no need for us to have one. As EU citizens the NIE gave us everything we needed. Unfortunately as the NIE is just a piece of paper, without a photo, it doesn't serve as a form of identification so we had to continue to carry our passports around. The last time I looked it cost 121€ to get another passport if it were lost or stolen.

So we paid a solicitor to start the process of getting us a residencia. Comfirmation of our status as resident came last October but my appointment to get my fingerprints done to produce my photo ID card was today.

I dutifully went and queued for five hours to get the card. It's a long and boring story but the gist of it is that some interfering European Rights types have made Spain stop it's discriminatory practice of dealing with other EU nationals differently to Spaniards. So they no longer issue little cards (what the three other Brits around me in the queue and I all wanted) and have replaced it with another sheet of paper which proves our resident status but is valueless as a form of identification. The new system started just this month so we missed our cards by ten days.

Voting card

Our voting cards turned up yesterday. Not a big event in itself but, in Democracies, voting is an essential part of having your say. Nice to know we really will be involved.

The Mayor

The meeting between the Mayor and the Brits finally happened. In fact he turned up with at least half of the list of prospective councillors. The best part was the beginning; we were given an electronic calculator and an electronic thermometer both bearing the Partido Popular logo. From then on in it was all downhill.

A long winded complaint about the lack of town centre parking on the one day of the year when there is a big event in town. A marathon moan about the lack of facilities for stray dogs in Pinoso. One chap held the floor for at least fifteen minutes about his particular problem with his health card. It went on. The Mayor smoked a lot, the tanslator tried hard but buckled under the stress of rabbiting, idiomatic English.

I was dead sensible of course (well it is my Blog) and I asked a straightforward question about the plans for the drainage system in our village and got a straightforward and concise reply.

We didn't see the end. Maggie could bear it no more.

Monforte del Cid

Every year students and teachers from the Adult Education Colleges in our area get together for a bit of a celebration. Each of the participating towns takes it in turn to host the event and this year it was the turn of Monforte del Cid.

Twenty of us doing courses in Pinoso went to do our bit for intercollegiate solidarity.

First thing, naturally, was a bit of something to eat and drink just in case the 30km journey had worn us out. The food was set out on long tables in the town square. Next on the agenda was a tour of the town. Our group was guided by a young person from the host college. I think our original guide may have been on a basic skills course as a young woman had to take over the reading of his prepared notes when anything with more than two syllables caused him real problems. We saw museums, music schools, churches, old cemetries, the headquarters of various of the Moors and Christians groups and the Town Hall. We were all flagging by now so the upholstered seats in the town auditorium, where we were given an offical welcome, heard a "humorous" monologue and were presented with a book showcasing the work of Adult Ed students, was very welcome.


The main event of the day though was troughing down for lunch in the garden of the Sports Centre. Unfortunately Monforte produces a lot of different alcoholic beverages and we had to sample them all to avoid any sort of inter district rivalry.

A thoroughly enjoyable day.

Political meetings

This evening I went to the meeting organised by the Partido Popular to woo the British vote in Pinoso. That's the one mentioned in the Elections and Information post of April 24. Unfortunately the PP's candidate didn't show up. The people who owned the venue sort of expected him but then again they weren't quite sure whether he was coming or not.

Now there's a vote winning tactic!

Life is just a bowl of cherries

May Day, a public holiday. How did we pass our time? A cultural odyssey, a relaxing meal, a boozy day in the pub or a trip to the seaside? No, we went to the opening of the new "English" supermarket, bar and Internet cafe in Pinoso. Majorettes marched to the tune of the British Grenadiers, a chap with a shaved head and an ear ring sang to a sort of karaoke backing track and we nattered with lots of other Brits about the quality of the free sausage rolls.

Going offline

Ya.com phoned us up at the end of February. Would we like a cheaper, faster ADSL connection? We signed up. A couple of days later our current Internet provider, Iberdrola, told us they were going to stop all Internet services at the end of April. What a happy coincidence.

Despite their contract being full of guarantees about speedy installation etc. Ya.com have still failed to hook us up to their system. And April has passed. Iberdrola haven't turned us off yet but I expect to be offline soon - and for a while.