Life in Culebrón

In the UK, in my youth, Post Offices were like Government outposts. They were a place to cash your dole giro, sort out your passport, renew your driving licence, buy road tax or get a postal order. You could even post a letter there. I suspect that, nowadays, lots of young people hardly ever enter a Post Office. In Spain the Post Offices have never had the same import as they once did in the UK but, for me at least, they are still one of the places to send and receive cards, letters and packets.  At the start of each year the stamp prices go up in Spain. Quite a steep rise this year. The price to send a letter or card depends on the size and shape of the envelope as well as the weight. In fact I only really use the post for birthday and Christmas cards and as cards almost always come in non standard sizes (C5 and DL are considered standard) with jolly red or green envelopes I get charged the "non normalised" rate even though the weight is under the 20g limit. The cost of ...

We are going to have a cut down version of the Pinoso Fiestas next week. Less than usual but much better than nothing. Well done Pinoso! The various conditions to keep the concert type events safe means that the audience for any events has to be controlled and that involves tickets. Most of the events are free so the tickets are called invitations but, nonetheless, you need to have one in your hand to get to see or hear the event. We've had to get the same sort of thing for months, and nearly years, now at lots of venues but mostly the bookings have been possible online. That wasn't the case for Pinoso.  As well as the fiesta events next week there was a concert by a local choir yesterday and the town band have a concert today. I got the band tickets by going to their office one afternoon. A bit of a trek but easy enough. I went to ask at the Cultural Centre about the choir concerts at the beginning of the month and I was told I was too early. I tried, unsuccessfully, on two se...

My bank sent me a letter, well there was a message on the website, to say that I should ensure that they held the correct details on me. Apparently this was going to help them combat money laundering. I can see that. Anyway the documentation said I was a teacher and, as I have an official looking certificate to say that I am in receipt of a Spanish State Pension, I thought it would be easy to do. Going into a Spanish bank requires time. A lot of time and the patience of a halo wearer. I very seldom have to go to a branch but, yesterday, I did. There was the usual confusion about which desk to use - not a linguistic confusion. In this case, four desks, three of which seemed willing to deal with people and one of which seemed to be doing something on his computer which may have been high finance or he could have been playing Fornite Battle Royale. I behaved like a good Spaniard, I staked my place in the general queue for the cash desk, just in case it was there, then I asked the spar...

In fact it was the English poet Lady Mary Montgomerie Currie who said "All things come to those who wait." In my case what came, after a wait of 12 years, was a branch of my bank in my home town. You may wonder why that's a bonus. The root of the problem is that we still use a lot of cash in rural Spain. Spanish banks like to charge for services and you can avoid some of those by using your own bank. There's nearly always a maintenance fee unless you pay in over a certain amount each month and there can be charges for both paying in and for withdrawals. I originally banked with the Caja Murcia, a savings bank, obviously enough, centred on Murcia. Murcia is pretty far to the right on the map of Spain and Ciudad Rodrigo is on the left, or if you prefer the technical term, the West, butting up against Portugal. I moved there in 2007. Not surprisingly there weren't a lot of Caja Murcia branches. The costs of taking money out of non Caja Murcia bank machines was ...

I still have a UK bank account. Last November my bank, the HSBC, asked me to prove that I was who I said I was and that I lived where I said I lived. I thought the whole process was ridiculous but I have learned docility over the years so I set about jumping through their hoops. By grinning at a webcam as I showed my passport they were happy to accept that I was me. Proving where I live has been a little more difficult. Now we're not going to talk about the fact that they have been posting things to me at this address for years or that the original account with them was opened in around 1972 and has been at the same branch since 1979. We won't dwell on the fact that, whilst the need for the bank to verify the address of their customers is an external regulatory requirement, the process for collecting the data is purely up to the bank. No, we're going to accept the possibility that I may be the front man for a Serbian money launderer and that this process is not a fatu...

Going into a bank in Spain is often the proverbial pain in whatchamacallit. I don't have to do it often. Cash comes from holes in the wall and most things get dealt with on cards or online. If I do have to go into a bank I always think it looks as though the clerks have never dealt with this particular procedure before. It's all a bit slow, a bit ponderous and there are always multiple documents to be signed. We have a few banks in Pinoso but there isn't a branch of my bank, the Santander. There is an office with a big sign outside that says Santander and I once foolishly supposed that I could go there to pay in money. I can't. A bit like the wrong type of snow, on the railway, I have the wrong sort of account. It was originally opened with a bank that was later absorbed by the Santander. The name of the account has changed at least four times since then but, apparently, it still bears some Mark of Cain which makes it inferior to a proper Santander account. Whatever...