Life in Cartagena

It has recently become necessary for foreigners to declare any overseas holdings in cash, property or goods with a value of over 50,000€. This has caused a bit of a stir amongst some of our compatriots. I was checking to make sure that there wasn't any small print which affected Maggie or me. The stories of problems of interpretation, using the form etc. were legion. Recently I completed my annual tax return. I was happy to do so because this year I got a rebate. Whilst I was in financial mode I sifted through a few of the expat websites to check that my Teachers Pension, a government pension, as distinct from the state pension, was not eligible for Spanish tax as it has to be taxed at source in the UK. No problem. I seem to be perfectly legal. As I read I realised that lots of Britons who are living on their UK state pension here in Spain want to be squeaky clean and declare their pensions to the Spanish tax people. As the amounts they get are covered by the Spanish tax...

Within the expat community there are shades of opinion whether it's legal to drive on a UK licence or not. I decided that it was safer to get a Spanish licence so I exchanged my UK one for a Spanish one. When Spaniards first get their licence and every time that it is renewed they have a sort of medical that checks general health, eyesight, hearing, reactions and what not. It is not difficult and I know what it involves because, when I was still driving on my UK licence, I wasn't sure whether I needed to do the medical or not so, again, I chose the safest option and did one. When I exchanged my licence I was not asked for a medical certificate so I presumed that the Spanish authorities took it on trust that I was medically fit because I had a UK licence. I thought I wouldn't have to take the medical until my Spanish licence became due for renewal in 2022. However the medical certificate I had expired last week and it made me wonder whether I was driving legally or not...

This post is very long. It's not the usual chit chat about something I've done or something that happened to me. I showed it to Maggie for checking. "It's a bit long," she said " And a bit of a rant," "Is it boring," I asked "Well, err, a bit," she said. But it took me hours to write and the typist's chair has made my back ache so I'll be damned if I'm not going to use it. You have been warned. ___________________________________________________ Drinking coffee. Huffing with indignation as another phrase sank into an oblivion of overcomplexity. The usual sort of scene in the bar Capitolio for one of my weekly intercambios - the exchange of English for Spanish conversation. We were talking about Spanish business, attitudes to work and education. Actually, before I forget, a little episode. We were leaving. We'd been in the bar nearly two hours and drunk just four coffees. The bill came to 3.70€. The pers...

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...

Crisis, it's said like kreesys here, everywhere, all the time. bad news rolling in, wave after wave lapping on the shore. The news is full of it. On the radio today I've listened  to stories about Local Authorities, unable to pay their creditors, being bailed out by Central Government to stop the businesses they owe money to going belly up. In Catalonia they're going to start charging everyone a euro for every prescription. The pay of Local Government workers is being cut at the same time as working hours are being increased. Another hike in VAT is on the cards.There will be a General Strike on the 29th of this month. And so on. The news is one thing though and personal experience is another. In our house, from this week Maggie has been expected to work two hours more per week than she has been up to now. A pay cut or a work increase sliding under the wire. I teach English to a bunch of people in a local business. It's a strategic industry and, as such affected ...

We got our house insurance renewal notice a couple of weeks ago. I thought it was a bit steep. 410€ for 30,000€ of contents and 150,000€ buildings. I think the premium has more or less doubled since we first took out the policy six or seven years ago. The renewal isn't due till next month so I did a bit of ringing around and quickly found another company offering slightly better cover some 90€ cheaper. I signed up for the cheaper insurance. Just to avoid any problems come the renewal date I thought I'd tell the old company that I wouldn't be renewing the policy. Now I don't like ringing Spanish customer services. I don't like it because they make me pay for the call with their stupid 902 numbers (the equivalent of the 08457 numbers in the UK) which are excluded from our free calls packages and I don't like it because I have to speak Spanish. I like email or writing a letter. Plenty of time to think and very impersonal. There was no mailing address on the r...

Life in Spain has been very ordinary for the last couple of weeks and we've not done anything very bloggable for a while. This entry is really to prove that I'm still here; it may not be worth your time reading it. The local elections are coming up in May and the campaigns are beginning to hot up. I will be voting in the town elections in Pinoso but I can't vote in the regional elections. I'm not quite sure why and I decided yesterday evening as I was reading about some dodgy political dealing in the paper that I should make a little protest about that. After all one of the basic rights or responsibilities within a democracy is the right to representation through the ballot box. I get to vote in national elections in the UK and the locals and Europeans here but I am denied a vote at regional level in both countries. Time to get in touch with my European representative I think. Another one of those basic rights written into the Spanish Constitution is the right to he...

We have a strike in Spain today aimed at civil servants and local government employees to complain about planned salary cuts and freezing of posts. To be honest it doesn't seem to have had much effect. Maggie hasn't come home from school, the arts centre was open, the buses are running and there were the usual crowds of Ecuadorians and Morrocans outside the Town Hall. Reading the press it seems to be pretty solid in some parts though with the Unions claiming 75% on strike and the Government 11%. The sign says "closed because of strike"

The last post mentioned trying to change the details of the phone contract on the website. I tried several times. Someone who moderated a project I did at College about homelessness described my work as tenacious; a word I've used ever since to describe myself. Maggie, sticking with Hemingway in the "there's always a better and shorter word" sense tends to the word stubborn when describing me. Anyway the website said no and continued to say no. It worked in that infuriating way where you complete the whole form then press the button to save changes at which point it dumps the lot and makes you start all over again. By the end I'd learned how the Movistar database deals with our, rather vague, up a track with no street name and two possible post codes, address. I went back to the shop to get them to change the address on their reseller's database which I can't access. I spent 20 minutes explaining our address over and over to the young woman in the shop...

That printer doesn't work, and the other one's broken. Rather a subtle difference to my mind but that's why I signed, on some sort of digital pad, the contract for my phone without seeing it. My father would have been cross with me. The phone shop sent me the contract by email and I read it yesterday for the first time. No problem with the details of the contract but, despite having official documents to copy from, despite careful explanations on my part, despite writing out the name of the village, the town, the postcode etc. the shop assistant recorded on the contract that I live in Alicante city, on a street called Culebrón and my postcode reflects that address. I have tried to change the details on the Movistar website but, characteristically, it reported an error over and over again. Spanish websites often don't work. They made a big fuss last year about everyone registering their mobile phones. It's an anti-terrorist measure they said, not an infringemen...

At a guess I'd say the small block of flats we live in is about three years old. Obviously then it's perfectly reasonable that it doesn't have "official" electricity yet. As you can see from the photo there is no attempt to hide the rather temporary nature of the connection. When a place is being built the builders need power for their cement mixers and kettle so they arrange a supply with the power company. Once the building is finished the building's owners apply for the appropriate licences and someone from the Town Hall pops out, before or after breakfast, to make sure the place is safe and fit for use. With those certificates suitably stamped, stamped again and signed the owners can then arrange for light, water etc. We know of lots of foreigners who have rented or bought houses only to find out later that their electric and water supplies weren't quite as official as they'd supposed. Our landlady told us we were on "builder's elect...

I had a slip in our letterbox to say that the Post Office had been unable to deliver a small packet and that I should go to the local office and collect it before 17 March. It's the first time that I've had to collect anything here in Cartagena but there was an address on the slip - Calle Submarino, 63 - just up the road. There is a Post office at Submarino, 63 but it's new and it's not open yet. I wandered around a bit with the distinctive yellow and blue slip in my hand. A passer by took pity "The Post Office is just up there, turn left by the Pharmacy." I did and there it was but at number 4, Calle Santa Teresa. Bit of a joke really.

We were just passing that rough looking bunch of houses, close to the "Open University" when my mobile phone went off. Being on the bus I was able to answer. It was SERVEF, the Employment people, the ones I'm registered as unemployed with. The bloke said they had a job offer for a teacher of English in Elche which is miles from here and a reasonable distance from Culebrón. He wasn't sure whether it was full time or part time or how much it paid but we both agreed it was worth going for an interview and taking it from there. He needed my CV and amazingly he not only seemed to understand my spelling of my email address but his message was waiting for me when I got home. As I was dealing with his email I got a text message from the same SERVEF about a job so I added a little addendum to my message asking the SERVEF man if this was the same or a different job. He replied within minutes saying it was the same job. Nothing to do then. It was about 7.30pm. This morning, ...