LIVING IN SPAIN - BUREAUCRACY
It is a moment of relief tinged with dread! You are living in Spain and encounter officialdom. This a part of Spanish culture that can challenge the best of us. However, if you are living in Spain then, somehow, you will need to find a strategy that works…
Imagine, after waiting for what usually seems like hours, your number finally comes up in lights and you walk across that large space separating the waiting area from the chair that has just been vacated. No matter whether it is Telefonica, Endesa, Hacienda or the local town hall, the look on the waiting face says it all.
You don’t have to be a mind reader to interpret that, ‘Oh God, another ****** guiri (foreigner) with a sheaf of papers, this will take hours’ look. No doubt the offical is thinking that they will be late for their coffee break or actually have to do something – all because of this unwelcome intrusion into what they had hoped would be a morning’s light workload.
What should have been a simple bureaucratic exchange becomes, inevitably, a confrontation, with the official doing all he/she can to show the foreigner, even the ones with good language skills, that this is Spain. Not just ‘this is Spain’ but ‘this is how things are done when you are living in Spain’ – however illogical it may appear to the uninitiated.
In the worst type of encounter, voices become raised and only the fear of disciplinary action stops the official from throwing you out of the office.
However, I have a formula that usually works…
Before each encounter with officialdom, I make a bet with myself about how long it will take to get the first smile or the first laugh.
As a first step you have to weigh up the opposition, but there’s plenty of time for that and while waiting you will be able to predict whether that spotty youth in number 4 will succumb to your wit more quickly than the well-endowed matronly lady in number 2. (Forget the bald but with side-hair-combed-over-the-top-of-his-head guy in number 3; he will never smile, much less laugh). And watch out for how they interact with their fellow countrymen.
In a large town or city officials will probably not recognise the person sitting face-on, but in small towns they will certainly know their cousin, ex-, mother, son/daughter. This makes my formula easier to operate, even guaranteed to succeed in such places, although I admit I have never had the opportunity to try it out in the great urban centres that are now as impersonal as the USA or the UK – but a sense of humour is a sense of humour wherever you are.
The trick is to make that grim, unsmiling, face lighten up and for the first time look at you as if you may be something other than a stupid guiri.I am not boasting when I say I can usually crack it in the first 60 seconds from sit-down, but then I have had a lot of practice and have studied officials’ Achilles’ heels, humour-wise, for decades.
Of course, when dealing with officials, you have to stretch the truth a little. I have never seen a football match in my life (sorry Clive!), but who knows that – apart from my wife and a few kindred souls? Therefore, when you ask the boredom-personified official shuffling his papers in front of you, “Didn’t I see you at the Málaga match last Sunday?”, he will prick up his ears.
Quite likely the official doesn’t like football either and, almost certainly, he was not at the match (nor were you!) – but he may just be an aficionado and that fact will allow him to react to what he believes to be another aficionado, at least with courtesy. I promise you will get a smile and, if you can follow it up with a remark like: “Actually, this was my first football match and I was taken by some Spanish friends….” Then the chasm reduces to a crack.
This is only an example. There are many such remarks that will melt the ice and that are critical to anyone living in Spain.
I asked a lady at Hacienda (the Spanish tax office) the other day whether it was true that they were all going out on strike in sympathy with the air traffic controllers and I got more than I bargained for. She broke into guffaws of laughter, nearly fell on the floor, and shouted around the office what I had just said – with a correspondingly gratifying response from her fellow bureaucrats. They will never forget me there.
It won’t always work though. I was stopped at a police checkpoint the other night and asked to take a breathalyser test. I made some obviously inadequate remark to the young officer about: ‘was it true that the government cutbacks had reduced the number of hours he had to be out late chasing drunken drivers like me (I had just left a funeral)?’
Unsmilingly, he told me: ‘Pongase serio! (‘Be serious!)……’
It was a rare failure. However, if you intend living in Spain then it really is important to understand Spanish culture and recognise that dealing with officals here is an art form and one worth studying carefully – if you want to succeed quickly in getting anything done!
RELEVANT INFO: How to Move Safely to Spain
Written by Andrew Linn who has lived in Spain for over forty years. Andrew also writes for Spanish wine and food – a Blog for anyone with a passion for Spain, Spanish wine and the food of Spain.
Great strategy and so true!
Can be dificult in practice. – Endessa, Algeciras….opens at 9, queues down the street, miserable, inflexible and agressive staff……people just like me there…electric meter removed from their properties without warning for no explained reason.
In my case they had sent bills to an address that did not actually exist. It was a temporary blueprint address given to the apartments development over thirty years ago. On explaining that the address they had sent the bills and letters to not only didn’t exist but that the person they used as a contact had been dead for five years was met with obtuse resonse,
‘It’s YOUR responsibility to find the letters and contact even though you had no idea that there were any. Oh yes, and now you need to pay 285 Euros for inspection and fit a new switch as the flat hasn’t been inspected for over twenty years! No payment = no electricity’.
‘But I have paid everything I know about…please tell me what I am supposed to owe…’
‘Well there’s the bills of this dead man at an non-existent address and if you don’t pay these you won’t get any electricity from us’.
‘Can you wait over there now as this desk is closing for half an hour?’.
Three staff get up and go for breakfast leaving one lady alone with at least ten people waiting to be servied and its only 9.15…..!!!!
I stand my ground and I explain again that the bills have been sent to an address that doesn’t exist and to a man that died five years ago…..Please change the address to the actual one and use my name so I can pay my bills.
‘We can’t do that as its on our records and we will not change it….its your resonsibility to find the bills at the dead man’s family and pay them’
But that address doesn’t exist!
‘You should go to the post office and ask them to redirect this mail’
(Getting even more surreal now).
‘But why don’t you simply change the address and name to the correct ones’
‘No, we can not do that, pay your bill or no electricity’
‘But its NOT MY BILL’
‘Not our problem…….you pay it or no electricity’
So rediculous that I burst out laughing.
Girls looks at me suspiciously…I say. ‘ It must be very dificult in your job from the moment you get here you have trouble all day long …it must be very unpleasant’
‘Yes,its an unpleasant job and I have to endure abuse all day long’.
‘I guess that makes you defensive as most people you meet here are angry?’
‘Yes, they have no electricity and are generaklly very upset’.
‘But the system you work within is so inflexible that your job is impoossible, no?’
‘Yes, but we are not allowed to be flexible or use initiative…nothing will change here. We have to deal with many people who want to steal our electricity….our methods are a direct reflection of our customers behaviour (assume she means her view of her customers is life scum!’ (Broad translations of course!).
‘So the customer is always wrong?’
‘We have no authority to make any decisions ourselves’
‘So you are here as the front line for taking the abuse!’
Empathy and a smile follows….some noticable warmth…’Its horrible, I hate this job…..I tell you what I can do…I will put in another ‘temporary address to fool the system…they will not chnage the contract address even though it doesn’t exist as system won’t allow it and the dead man owes some money!!’
AAaagh, I see what thsi is about now….Endessa want me to pay someone elses’ electric bill and threaten me that I will not have any more electricity if I don’t pay it immediately.Less than 50 euro..!!!!!
‘Ok I’ll pay it now. Here you are, here’s the money, I need my electricity back on please”
‘You can’t pay HERE’…..embarressed smile’. (Reads – We are not trusted to take your money!!)
I really feel for this lady and show it with a further empathetic smile.
Yes, she’s stuck in her ways and inflexible but that is her indoctrination from her employer, gets paid a pittance, takes abuse all day long……etc. She knows I know how dificult her job is…she shows a little respect than decides to help me more…she goes through all the material and changes information here and there to ensure the bills at least get to me even if they are for somebody else. Then she sets up a change of contract etc etc….’ We parted with smiles and empathy’ .
I needed a coffee….the other staff were still in the cafe (the queue now twenty-fold at the Endessa office). Do I say something to the boss lady? Do I just give her a look of contempt or sympathy, do I complain?
She looks at me like I was a piece of dirt and leaves the cafe with her two staff.
My new friend appears shortly for her break….I smile at her she smiles back’
We chat…….she explains how impossible her job is, how the Endessa company treats its staff like children, her boss acts like a thug and when anyone stands up to her she threatens them with the sack and threatens customers with denouncement and has called the Guardia many times!!!
She says there is simply NO respect for customers. Its not the Spanish way. No trust for anyone internally so how will there be trust externally?
But she has to work …women get the jobs these days in Spain as they are cheaper to employ…there’s 25% unemployment here…she has no choice but would rather work in an international hotel and etc etc.
We part as friends.
All from not just a laugh but from an empathy and a smile in this situation.
Its great advice…go anywhere for anything and you know already the dificulties you are going to face….so go with a jovial attitude and laugh about it.
Change happens first in changing yourself…(thanks Ghandi!).