Yesterday, we bit the bullet and went to the Comissaria down on the coast. We had not set foot in the building for several years.

When we first came to the area on a short holiday, we fell in love and decided that we would like to buy a house here. This was the beginning of our introduction to the Spanish love of bureaucracy.

We did not realise that in order to buy often quite simple things, we would need to have our passports with us. A trip to the supermarket was no problem, unless we wanted to pay by card. Chip and pin was of no use at all. The cashier was adamant we had to present our passport, or else pay in cash.

The demands for paperwork were scaled up considerably for buying something as significant as a house: we must obtain an NIE. The Número de Identificación de Extranjero is, as the name suggests, an official ID number. It is required in any number of situations, from signing for registered mail to buying a super yacht. There are those who query its legality under European law, but without one you get nowhere, so it is pointless quoting the Schengen Agreement to some stony faced shop assistant or petty bureaucrat.

Once we had found the house we wanted, we had to go to the Comissaria early in the morning to join a queue. We were told that the doors open at 9am, and that we needed to get there well in advance. It is a good half hour to the coast. We arrived somewhat bleary-eyed at 8:30am, and found a queue a mile long had already formed.

When the doors opened at nine, the queue surged forward. An officious individual at the door made sure that we all knew our place, and grudgingly allowed people in. A sign taped to the wall pointed EXTRANJEROS, foreigners, to the right.

Once inside the building, we saw that people were taking tickets from a ticket machine, much like those on Tesco cheese counters, so we followed suit. There were rows of chairs in the stark box of a room, so we sat and waited. And waited. And waited. And waited some more.

Eventually, after a couple of hours, we were called forward. A dragon of a woman barked a few questions and thrust some forms at us: we had to go to the bank and pay some money, and get some passport photographs taken. I suppose if the interview had been carried out in English, it might not have felt so hostile and unpleasant, but the attitude of the old bat on the desk appeared to be in fluent Esperanto.

We traipsed about the unfamiliar area to find the bank and the photographer. It was the middle of the summer and uncomfortably hot. The pavements were glossy patterned tiles that looked slippery, the patterns turned my eyes inside out, and they were badly laid, so that we had to watch our step carefully. The signs on the shop fronts meant little to us, and we didn’t know where the photographer’s shop was. It was not a great experience.

When we had completed our mission, we returned to the Comissaria with the form duly stamped at the bank and our passport photographs. We waited again. The dragon barked questions at us, filled in a couple more forms, took the photographs and told us we would have to come back in a couple of weeks.

We returned to the UK and booked another trip. As we were both working, we made it a brief trip, allowing just enough time to fly in one day, get the paperwork sorted the next and fly back.

We arrived at the Comissaria bright and early, to find an even longer queue than the previous time. We waited, were allowed in and went to the ticket machine as before. It had run out of tickets, so we prepared ourselves for a long wait to be seen after those who had the last tickets. The dragon on the desk watched and said nothing. We waited for several hours. The seats were hard, the room was stuffy, and we were on edge, trying to keep track of who was being called forward.

Eventually, our turn came. We made our way to the desk. The dragon demanded our ticket. We explained as best we could that the machine had run out, although we knew that she knew it had. We said we had come to collect our NIE. She told us that without a ticket we could not have it. We would have to come again tomorrow morning. The fact that she had said nothing when she saw us start to wait, three hours ago was irrelevant. The fact that we had flown over specially and would not be able to come back the following day meant nothing to her. The fact that she clearly derived satisfaction from the situation was painful: our experience of Spain to that point had been welcoming on the whole.

Our options were very limited. We could continue to argue and give her even more cause to rejoice over our powerlessness, or we could go away and book yet another flight to come over again to obtain this wretched piece of paper. We chose the latter.

On our third trip down there, we finally acquired our NIEs. Looking at our disappointing sheets of A4, we resolved to stay well away from the place in future.

We put off the evil day for as long as we could, but eventually, we decided that we must get residencia sorted out. In the intervening time, we had got married and found that having a name that does not match your passport and NIE causes all manner of problems. Even with my marriage certificate and passport, I cannot have a bank card for our joint account in the right name. My Spanish will had to be made out in my previous name, with a clause mentioning that I am also known as.

Having recently gone through the rigmarole of changing my passport, there was no further reason to put off a visit to the Comissaria. We consulted a friend who speaks fluent Spanish and deals with officialdom for many of the expats here. She told us to go down and collect the forms, and she would help us fill them in so that we could then go back, with all the documentation required, having already been to the bank. It is good to have a friend who knows the system.

We parked the car and walked to the front door. I said that we had come to collect some forms. The policeman there made unconvinced noises at us and waved us through. The room was just as drab and unwelcoming as we had remembered. The ticket machine was still there, but our friend had told us to ignore it and go to the dragon and ask her for the forms to apply for residencia. The dragon was not there, but a young woman, plump and pleasant looking was sat at the desk.

“I’d like to collect the application forms for Residencia,” I told her. She looked at me, completely impassive, and told me that I would have to come back tomorrow, before 9am. No, I explained. I did not want to queue jump and do the whole procedure there and then: I simply wanted to collect the forms to take away and come back another day. “That is what they all want,” she said, sweeping her arm in the direction of the people sitting on the uncomfortable chairs. I tried again. “I don’t want to do it all today; I just want to collect the forms to take away.” She switched into English. “You must come back tomorrow before 9 o’clock and then I give you the form and tell you what you have to do.” A brief and unedifying conversation later, we left the building without the forms.

Our fluent friend is going to go and collect the forms for us. She has lived here long enough to be able to argue the issue and give the dragon an appropriate verbal slapping. I have no doubt that she will come back with the forms, and I am grateful for that, but I am saddened that it should be necessary. In these straitened times, when the Spanish economy needs expat spending, you would think that hostility and unhelpfulness would be considered counterproductive. You would be wrong. Sadly, the petty power wielded by jobsworths is used to frustrate and alienate the very people who are probably the most willing to be enchanted by their adopted country. There is nothing you can do about it: you just have to go with the flow.

I am slightly dreading our next trip to the Comissaria. I know that there will be a horribly early start in the morning, so the dog will not get her walk. I am not a morning person, and I know I shall feel disembodied and slightly unwell. I know that we shall be treated with thinly veiled contempt, and that we shall wait for hours to be seen. I suspect that when we finally get to see the old or young dragon, she will take great pleasure in refusing to deal with me because the name on my passport does not match the name on my NIE. I hope I am wrong, but I am not holding my breath.

There are those who watch the video below who laugh at it, enjoying the joke hugely. Of course, they chuckle, it is an exaggeration. They are people who do not live here. Those who live here also laugh at it. It is funny, and we thoroughly enjoy it too. However, we know that actually, it is an understatement.

Don’t get me wrong. I do love living here, and intend to live out my days among the loud, cheerful extrovert women and the toothless old gumbies I shall never understand, but who greet me as we pass in the street. I love the courteous greetings of the children and young people and the bueno dias of the stoical old men who sit in groups on roadside benches chewing toothpicks. The occasional foray into the world of officialdom will drive me nuts, and I’ll have a rant for a day or so, but then it will be back to sunshine, local colour, glorious fresh fruit and vegetables, cheap wine and good friends. This is my home, and I wouldn’t want it any other way.

Spanish bureaucracy at its best 🙂