Access denied

I picked up four pieces of post from our PO box in the Post Office today. This is quite unusual. Often there is nothing. Two of the envelopes were from departments of the Spanish Government. One was my European Health Card from the Social Security people. I applied for this, online, last week. I did it as I brushed my teeth getting ready for bed. It took moments, it was easy. The card's only valid for six months but, next time, as a pensioner, it'll be for longer. No problem anyway. I brush my teeth every night.

The other was from the Catastro, the Land Registry. It was an answer to my appeal of February 2017 when they said we owned half of next door and charged us much more IBI, the local housing tax, than we should have paid. A lightning 25 months to respond then. In that time I've sent several emails, been to their Alicante office (where I metaphorically banged on the table) and reported them to the Ombudsman. That's probably why they answered so quickly.

Instead of sending me the notification by post the letter inside the envelope told me how to get to that notification online. To get to the notification I had to "sign" a receipt but, being the 21st century, they wanted a virtual signature. No problem; I have a digital certificate, an electronic signature, on the computer. Up to now that has always been sufficient when dealing with Government Departments. But not today. It took me over three hours to eventually get to the notification. Their systems only worked with Microsoft Edge or Google Chrome after several modifications and not at all with Mozilla Firefox. There were links to pages and pages of supporting documentation about how to access the notification along with helpful hints on how to get around potential hiccoughs. I tried downloading the older versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer mentioned in that supporting documentation but Windows 10 didn't like them. There were three potential programs to "sign" the receipt. Neither Chrome nor Edge wanted to talk to Java and the Government software, AutoFirma, something like SelfSign stalled in downloading at 99% time after time and the dodgy downloads wouldn't delete. I had to disable pop up blockers (the on/off on Edge wasn't where all the answers in Google said they should be) and I had to dismantle all sorts of other safeguards like firewalls and non acceptance of cookies. I got there in the end, because what I lack in skill I make up for in doggedness, but it was a hell of a job.

To be honest it was so outrageous that I didn't get particularly cross. I was doing that cursing and laughing out loud thing. I remembered the strikes of workers within the justice system asking for computer systems that worked and the piles of paper that you can see behind the judges in the current Catalan trials. Obviously the roll out of technological solutions varies from one department to another. I wonder if Catastro still has ink wells on its desks?

The good news is that they seem to have put everything right in their records. They've even regularised a bit of land that we didn't know wasn't registered. Now all I have to do is to hope that they give us some money back!