Life in Culebrón

Second-hand car prices being what they are in Spain, and because I could, I bought a car from new. I was actually in a situation where I could have paid outright (pension lump sum), but the dealer offered a better price, even with all the interest, on a finance package. The finance period had to be 48 months or more. When the last instalment left my bank account on September 14 this year I grinned. The car was mine. Or so I thought. I have an application on my phone called Mi DGT or My DGT (DGT is Dirección General de Transporte - something like The Ministry of Transport ). Apart from being a bit on the clunky side, the phone app's OK. It holds my driving licence and most of the official documentation on the car. At the top of the details about the car, there is a red band and a warning sign. Basically, it says I'm not the owner of the car, VW Finance is. I've been waiting for the red notice to go away since I paid the last instalment, but today, for the first time, I bothe...

I bought a new car yesterday evening. I mean new new. Pensions mean I have an income. Pensions mean I can get finance. The registration letter has just flipped over from K to L and my new SEAT Arona has an L registration. There can only be about 23,382 cars in front of mine in Spain with that registration letter. So far I haven't seen another on the road. I parked the Mini outside the dealer and drove away without saying goodbye after nearly 220,000 kilometres or around 137,000 miles together. The SEAT had just 10kms on the clock. They'd put a red cover over it. As though there would be champagne and stuff. It wasn't like that. I sat in the drivers seat whilst Juan Carlos tapped the screen where the radio should be to tell me that this activates the automatic parking and that is the on/off for the mirror blind spot warning and so on. He wanted to know what colour I wanted the ambient lighting! I remember my mum being dead pleased that her Ford Prefect had a heater and...