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.