The local tax bill

I just got a scary looking email. It was full of number codes and it came from the Government of Spain. My first thought was that it was a fine, the second that it was a scam. In fact it was from SUMA, the local tax collection agency, to tell me that a couple of new household bills were waiting for me on their website. Official Spanish is laced with over complicated and little used words. They really do need to start using plain, everyday language.

Britons living in Spain often complain about Spanish tax. I can't actually find anything on the internet that directly compares the average tax burden between countries. I suppose, in the end, there are so many variables, from obvious taxes like income tax and VAT/IVA through to the sugar tax on soft drinks, that it's almost impossible to calculate. What there are are official figures, at country level, about how much tax revenues represent, as a percentage of the total budget. For instance in the UK taxes represent 35.5% of the total GDP. In Spain that figure is 38.4%. So, in Spain, a greater percentage of the money that runs the country comes from taxation - that's all forms of taxation from tobacco duty and corporation tax through to inheritance tax. The specific gripe of Britons is that they feel the Spanish Government takes more of their personal wealth than the British one did and I don't know whether they are right or not.

Whatever other Britons might say I still take a sort of guilty pleasure when I get notification of my road tax and it's less than 20€ for the year. Our IBI which is a bit like Council Tax, for the year, in Culebrón, is 97.41€. In Huntingdonshire, the last place we lived in England, I understand the average (mean) council tax is now £1,860 per year. That's a bit of a saving, in fact it's more of a saving than my Spanish income tax bill for the year.

Our Culebrón water bill for the first six months of the current water year is 41.70€. From the detail on the bill it seems that the actual cost of the water is 0.0518636363636364 cents  - five hundredths of a cent - per litre. With all the additional costs for renting the water meter and paying towards the upkeep of the system the real cost per litre comes out at a staggering 0.0956363636363636 cents or, rounded up, a tenth of a cent per litre.

That water price reminded me of the furore there was in 2005 or 2006 when the boss of Nestlé argued that water wasn't a right, it was, he said, just another foodstuff best valued and distributed by the free market. The quote was taken out of context and used to beat Nestlé with a stick but, given their reputation for dodgy marketing and exploiting the poor, that's hardly surprising. Anyway if you decided that you wanted to buy bottled, Nestlé brand water from our local supermarket the cheapest you can get works out at 34 cents per litre - 350 times more expensive than our tap water. The cheapest, own brand,  bottled water from a local supermarket is only 112 times more expensive than the tap borne equivalent.

Just to make any British readers groan my car tax is 17.39€. The same car would cost £180 in the UK. The other bills we get locally are 60€ a year for rubbish collection and 41€ for drainage. That last one I don't particularly like given that the drains installed in the village fell short of our house by about 300 metres. We're paying for something we don't have, something tangible and real, not a shared community asset like education or road signs and that seems a bit unfair. On the other hand it's only 41€ so I can just about bear it.

______________________________________________-

Here's the, translated, email I got from the Spanish Government/SUMA

THIS EMAIL IS IN RELATION TO A NOTICE OF AN ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATION.

Please be informed that a new communication is available for CHRISTOPHER JOHN THOMPSON with NIF/NIE ***935*** as the named person with the following details:

Cardholder CHRISTOPHER JOHN THOMPSON with NIF/NIE: ***935***

Issuing body: O.A. Suma Gestion Tributaria Diputacion de Alicante, with DIR3: LA0004956

Identifier: 743506564db1b955160d

Quality: CSV-2023.2727.6758.4931

Link: This was a webpage address

You can access this communication at the Single Enabled Electronic Address (DEHÚ) of the General Access Point, available at: https://dehu.redsara.es

We provide a direct link to the communication.

Government of Spain

Careful with That Axe, Eugene

Bétera, near Valencia, mid August, years ago. Our friends had taken us to join the crowd in the main street. We didn't quite know why. They weren't explaining and our Spanish wasn't up to asking. When the fireworks, hung from overhead lines, started to go off and shower the crowd with sparks and flame we knew what to do though. We retreated before the wall of fire. The end of the street was sealed, there was nowhere to go; hundreds of us cowered, cheek by jowl, knowing, or at least trusting, that the flames and sparks wouldn't reach us. And sputter out they did. 

The next night we went back to the same place to join in the fiesta. We noticed there were no parked cars and that all the windows were boarded up. As midnight approached our friends herded us back to the car and abandoned the town centre. We didn't know why. We found out though. After midnight gangs of young people wearing overalls and crash helmets, and with at least one fire extinguisher per group, just in case, mount a firefight using Roman candles. In Elche, on the Nit d'Alba, they used to do something similar. First the official firework display but later, much later, the same idea. Firework armed gangs battling it out.

The Day of the Innocents, a reminder of the day when the biblical Herod had all the male babies under two put to the sword to protect his crown from a potential usurper, Spaniards do what we Britons do on April 1st. In Ibi there is a bit of a fight that day. The Ibenses, like the Beterenses and Ilicitanos, use fireworks but first they go to work with flour and eggs. The Spanish word for flour is harina, the word in the local Valencian language is farina. The event is called els (the) Enfarinats (floury ones).There's more to it but, in brief, one group elects a mayor and other officials to run the town and another group takes exception to this coup and stages a counter coup. That's when the flour and eggs fly, the flares go off and the bangers and jumping  jacks bang and jump.

The first time I saw els Enfarinats in 2011 their fight evolved in front of the church in the old part of town. I watched from a safe distance. I thought it was bonkers. The second time, in 2016, I got in much closer at the risk of a camera dusted with flour and garnished with egg. I took a pal there in 2022, a couple of weeks ago. This time the fight wasn't in front of the church because the church square was one big building site. The battlefield had been moved to an ordinary looking street with a PA system blasting out reggaeton as the event got underway. There was a wire fence type enclosure around the battle zone. The clash had two halves, like a Crystal Palace v Brighton and Hove Albion game. For the flour part anyone could get reasonably close but only outside the fence. In the second half, with fireworks, it was Enfarinats and pass holders only. We sat some fifty metres away in tiered seating to watch. It wasn't the nearly participative event I remembered; it was something I viewed as a spectator. I know in Elche that, to take part in the firework battle, you now have to attend a pre-event training course.

People say that health and safety rules are regularly flouted in Spain. It's true and it's not true. Sensible health and safety practices are ignored all the time, everywhere, by people who decide that those ideas are a bit silly, a bit unnecessary or too much faff. Most of us clamber onto a wobbly kitchen chair from time to time to reach the top shelf or sprawl out in the sun without sunscreen but for some people H&S has become so second nature that they'd never go up a ladder without someone at the bottom or fix the wonky toaster by prodding at its insides with a kitchen knife. The smaller, the more domestic, the situation the less likely that safety will be the paramount consideration.

Eleven or twelve years ago I taught some English to the management staff of the Dos Mares Shopping Centre in San Javier. I remember their building officer pacing the room and cursing after a visit from the H&S inspector. "Can you imagine," seethed my pupil, "I've already got two blokes on the cherry picker we use to do maintenance at height on the building. One on the ground holding on to ropes and harnesses that are fastened to the bloke on the platform. Both wearing goggles and hats and gloves and safety boots and this idiot wants a third person in the team. I asked him why - will he be there to catch the falling man if the harnesses and ropes fail? Lunacy". 

I remember someone who worked for the Town Hall in Pinoso sacking a building firm he'd hired in 2007 because the building workers were not using any safety gear whilst they worked on his private house. "I make sure people follow the rules," he said, "how can I possibly have people flouting those same rules when they work on my house?" And yet, in Forcall last year I watched as people ran in and out of a burning bonfire, in Vilanova d'Alcolea for Sant Antoni they have horses running through fire and locally I've run in amongst people dressed as devils as they unleashed fireworks left right and centre. 

Now I understand a bit better how things Spanish work I've often wondered about going back to Betera to run away from those fireworks again but I've had trouble finding the details. Maybe it's because what we did then won't fit behind a fence and so it's just not acceptable anymore.

Don John

My Spanish is odd. I know a fair bit. I can talk alright but sometimes I can't. Sometimes I can get really flustered and cock it up completely. Sometimes I can laugh at my mistakes and plough on or I can get angry and sulky. Language, or problems with language are still, by far, the biggest stumbling block to my day to day dealings with Spain.

In the last post I mentioned that the Consumer Office had suggested the only way to sort out our overpaid local taxes was to go to the nearest office of the Land Registry, the Catastro, 60 kilometres away in Alicante city. Nowadays, with most government offices, you need to arrange a prior appointment. That doesn't mean you don't have to queue but it does mean you'll get served. There are lots of systems for making an appointment online and even the most basic website usually offers some sort of email possibility. Not the Catastro though. You can get access to plenty of information online but sorting an appointment has to be done by phone.

I used to live on the phone when I had a real job but, nowadays, I find phone calls to help lines really difficult irrespective of the language. First there are the technical problems; the headsets not set up properly so that the volume is too loud or too low and the VOIP connections with the corresponding clicks or echoes on the line. Then there are those more physical problems like balancing the phone under your chin whilst you search for the reference number that you didn't expect them to ask for. Now add in the Spanish. If talking to people face to face can vary from ordinary and normal to a bit embarrassing talking to people on the phone, for me, tends towards nightmare. There are non of those corporal cues to help - you can't nod or gesticulate or smile - it all depends on the words that you utter and only on the words.

So, I'd put off phoning the Catastro as long as I could. As I pressed the number buttons on the phone I remembered approaching the end of the 10 metre board at the swimming pool in Skipton when I was a boy. The connection was dodgy - a beep on the line every three seconds or so. I listened to the "Please hold we'll be with you in a moment" message for a while with the knot in my stomach getting tighter and tighter. "How can I help you today?" said a cheery voice in Spanish with a nice clear accent. No niceties on my part I just blurted out "I want to arrange an appointment with the Alicante office" with the Spanish steeped in the broadest of Yorkshire accents. Questions and answers; ID numbers, reference numbers, post codes, phone numbers - easy questions. Then there was a question about why I wanted to speak to them, I fluffed and muttered. The man said "Ya". Ya is a multi-use, often confirmatory, word that can mean lots of things. When he said it he said it in a way that I know well, with the vowel sound lengthened and a click at the end, so that it sounds resigned and world weary. I got the appointment though.

As he confirmed the place, date and time he made the mistake, common amongst Spaniards used to their double barrelled surnames, of thinking that my middle name was my surname. Thank you for your call to the Catastro today Don John. As I sniggered I failed to say "adios" properly. Ending on a low note.

Els Enfarinats in Ibi

Els Enfarinats means covered with flour in Valenciano. Ibi is an inland Alicantino town. Each 28th December, the local equivalent to All Fools Day, there is a takeover of local government in the town  by the fourteen els enfarinats. Their battle cry is "New Justice" and that's what they set about imposing on the town. One is the mayor, one the sheriff, one the prosecutor, one the town clerk etc. But it doesn't go smoothly. The old town authorities don't give up easily and there is a pitched battle in the Church Square. It's a battle fought with eggs, flour, talc and 12,000 jumping jacks.

The floury folk win out and they then go around the town raising funds. They check that local shops are using the correct weights and measures - their's - and when they aren't the shops are heavily fined. Punsihment for those who decide not to pay is jail or maybe an eggy and floury punishment. But by 5pm all they can think about is dancing and the new Government gives way to the old.

The taxes levied go to local charities.