Life in Cartagena

I changed my bank account recently, basically the same bank but a different account. The bank offered the option to amend all my standing orders and direct debits online via the Internet site. I did that. The result was a bit curate's egg. Some bills have been taken from the new account whilst some have gone from the old account. Driving back to Cartagena tonight it struck me that maybe I should amend the payment details, that is the bank account number, on the websites of the organisations I pay the bills to as well as to the bank. The phone company is offline. I notice that the website gives my name as Christofher Jhon Thompson. The address is also wrong. My mobile phone provider is offline. My electricity supplier is offline. My credit card provider requires that I fax identity documents, proof of ownership of the bank account etc to them before they can confirm the change. The people who deal with water, rates and car tax are an honourable exception. Well done SUM...

I managed to download my draft tax return the other day. Today, with the help of Google and the WordReference dictionary, I made sure that I understood it. Good news, they are going to give me most of my tax back because my wage is so low. Hang on, is that good news? Anyway I went through the tax return line by line. Fortunately mine is very simple. By an agreement between the tax people in the UK and the tax people here I pay UK tax on my pension. That leaves my Spanish tax return just about my earnings here. I pay tax on my salary every month and, at the end of the tax year, in December, they do the sums to see whether I owe them money or whether they owe me money. There are two main types of tax allowance on my salary. The first is a lump sum. This is a disregard of a part of my earnings based on a reasonably complicated formula which gives more back to poor people than it does to rich people. The maximum disregard is just over 4,000€ and the minimum 2,650€. The interestin...

The Spanish banking system drives me crazy. It's slow and ponderous with piles and piles of paper, incredible waiting times and outrageous charges. I've got used to it of course, even old people like me are very adaptable, but it did strike me that I could save about 160€ per year by closing one of the accounts that I no longer really use. On the surface the banks are all very modern looking - chipped cards, Internet transactions and what not but not far beneath the veneer it's still steel nibbed pens and winged collars. I guessed that I would be expected to go to my own branch to close the account in person. The problem is that my own branch is 120km away. I got in touch with the bank's central customer services to ask how to overcome the problem. Their answer was simple. Only the one branch can close your account. To be honest I didn't get particularly cross. I wasn't surprised. I've lived here a while now. And, after all this is the bank that, when I ...

I bought a new camera this week. I put my last one on a bench in the street and left it behind. I bought the new one with my Barclaycard from an online shop and it arrived in a couple of days without any fuss or mishap. I only have one credit card here in Spain. The credit limit on it is pathetically low, not like the heady UK days when I had nearly twice my annual salary only a swipe away, but it does the job. Every now and again Barclaycard block my card. I've noticed that it happens almost every time I use iTunes. The card people don't usually tell me and I find out when the card bounces at the supermarket or petrol station cash desk. This makes me feel stupid and I phone Barclaycard in a huff. The people who work at Barclaycard customer services do not have a long working day. They like a late breakfast and an early evening meal. Their switchboard is routinely closed when I call the first time and this makes me huffier. During working hours they try to soften me up ...

It's called the Crisis here rather than the Recession or the Credit Crunch. A whole country teetering on the brink whilst some overpaid fat cats at Moody's or Standard and Poor's play with plus signs and their ABC to make some of their pals even richer. The text books I use at work to teach English include several topics over and over again - holidays, music, food and work. I've learned not to ask "What's your job?" So many of my students, young and old alike, are without work and so I've altered the questions to give them at least the linguistic opportunity to maintain their dignity. The current Spanish President said today that he won't be standing for re-election and the various new demands placed on the Spanish banks to placate the World's financial elite have Maggie's bank struggling after the scale of its debts scared off some potential merger partners the other day. Whether it's persistent stories of spending cuts or indivi...

There was an item in all the Spanish newspapers yesterday to say that the commissions charged by Spanish banks are the second highest in the European Union. The average charge for an average client to maintain a current account in Spain was given as 178€. Only the Italians charge more at 253€. If a customer isn't average and uses his or her account a lot then the estimated cost in Italy would be 1,540€ and 650€ in Spain. For comparison, based on an average user, Bulgaria charges 27€, Holland 46€, Belgium 58€ whilst Germany comes in at 89€ and the UK at 103€ - in France the cost would be 154€. The report also said that the four countries where the charges are most "opaque" were Austria, France, Italy and Spain. In fact the experts from the EU who were set the task of compiling this report found that in two thirds of the banks surveyed they were unable to determine what the charges would be from the published details. They had to go direct to the banks for further infor...