An enthusiastic knocking on the front door rouses him from a Friday afternoon siesta. He staggers to the door, still half asleep, heart already sinking. He knows who this is.
Opening the door, he is greeted by a young and smiling postwoman. A knock at the door on a Friday afternoon is nearly always a postal delivery, which can be good news of course - a parcel, the new toy he ordered a couple of weeks ago! - but is much more likely to be a carta certificada. A registered letter. These are always bad news.
The postie points to his name on the registered letter, which is correct although the address is a version long superseded, dating back to when the village was smaller and nobody really needed an address because everyone knew where everyone lived. She hands him the letter, keys his Spanish identification number into her mobile device as he dictates it, then gets him to sign the tiny screen.
The carta certificada turns out to be entirely typical of its species. Somewhere among several pages of dense legalese he discovers an accusation that he owes San Sebastián's Ayuntamiento, the town council, the sum of 60.79 euros. The claim seems to be that around three years ago he missed a payment for the basura, the domestic rubbish collection service.
His wife tries to get hold of the documents as he stomps around the room waving them in the air and complaining loudly. What nonsense! All their council-supplied services are paid automatically from the bank account, and always have been. Adding fuel to his indignation is that the sum includes - 'Look at this!' he rants - a 10% fine for late payment.
That night, during a wakeful session at four in the morning, he mulls over the demand again and slowly, reluctantly, realises that perhaps it might be justified. The alleged missing payment was around the date when they moved their bank account from a global superbank to a much smaller local one. Changing your bank is made easy by law, the new bank simply takes over your routine payments in and out. But between closing the old account and activating the new one there could have been a short hiatus where, if the Ayuntamiento solicited a payment just at that moment, it might have fallen through the gap.
Later that morning he checks his records. This is the kind of occasion, he justifies to his wife, defensively, when it's useful that he keeps records of everything on the computer. Unfortunately his records leave no doubt.
'Three years ago!' he storms, still trying to be angry. 'Why didn't they notice it at the time?'
Secretly though, one part of his brain, the more rational set of neurons, is quite impressed. Someone or something has been rummaging through the council's accounts for the past four years (the fiscal watershed) in search of remnants of lost income. He noticed that the postwoman was holding not just his registered letter but several others in the same kind of envelope.
The rest of his neurons switch into despair mode. This kind of problem inevitably generates no end of grief and wasted time no matter how you try to deal with it. A friend, trying to achieve a simple transaction involved in the sale of his house, was driven close to madness by the bureaucratic convolutions. A sympathetic official in the council offices, fluent in English, commented simply 'Welcome to Spain'.
Anyway, there is no escaping the need to sort this out. Manos a la obra they decide, let's get on with the job. That same morning they begin their odyssey at the source, the Ayuntamiento building on the town's main square, where the helpful young woman at the reception desk explains that, no, they can't pay there, they have to go to the Agencia Tributaria elsewhere in town. The tax office.
Fine, they know where to find that - you can't live in Spain for long without knowing where to find the tax office. In the Agencia Tributaria he shows the letter to the security guard, who also acts as a friendly guide for bureaucratically bewildered visitors. As he launches into an explanation of the problem the security man holds up a hand: stop! This is not the place they need to be. There is a different Agencia Tributaria office that deals with unpaid basura fees. He describes where it is, just around the corner. This is a mercifully compact town.
They find the office without difficulty, a small doorway next to a cafe. At the service desk, protected by a glass screen from covid-19 and irate citizens, a cheerful lady listens politely, scans the sheaf of documents and nods understandingly, clearly recognising them. They've come to the right place.
'We accept that we owe the money,' he explains, 'no problem there, but the postal address on the envelope is out of date by several decades and the address on all the documents is even more wrong. We don't live up on the hill above San Sebastián, we live in a village nearby. This is the address of some other person entirely.'
He has visions of paying someone else's basura debt instead of theirs, thereby unleashing a future stream of increasingly threatening demands from which there will be no escape because he is now two different people. 'We're two different people,' he emphasises, but the assistant seems unfazed. There is a form for this situation. There's a form for everything. She pushes a Change of Address form across the counter.
'But we haven't changed our address. We've lived in the same house for ever, and this address isn't it! The bank is going to be confused if…'
He pauses then gives up, realising that he's wasting his breath. There is only one form for putting an address to rights, the assistant tells him, and this is it. 'Sign here.'
He signs. She makes a photocopy, stamps it, signs it with an unidentifiable Spanish squiggle and passes it across the counter along with another form to take to the bank.
In their bank, two of the attendants are already occupied but the ridiculously young branch manager waves them over to his desk. There is absolutely no problem about making the payment, he assures them, no problem about the address being incorrect, no problem about anything.
All over in moments. Our hero wishes the manager a happy Carnaval because that's coming up the following week and the manager laughs as he ushers them to the door.
Over a restorative coffee they retrace the stages of their journey. There is a kind of glow around them now, an aura of success achieved in the face of difficulties. Reviewed objectively it has been almost - is this possible? - almost enjoyable. Nobody got angry or dismissive - stupid foreigners! - or imposed impossible hoops and hurdles. On the contrary, everyone was smilingly helpful and understanding. But then, they've been living with Spanish burocracia all their lives, unless they're from Cuba or Venezuela where it's even worse.
-------------- NOTES --------------
Thinking about this incident called to mind that doom-laden quotation, The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small. There are various versions and they all make me shiver.
However, full marks to our Ayuntamiento for discovering this discrepancy in their finances, even if it took a while to get there.
Not too many marks for the impenetrable documentation that accompanied the demand, but that's normal throughout Spain's administrative functions. It used to be the same in Britain before the highly successful Plain English Campaign transformed things, but I'm not aware of anything similar here, a Campaña por el Español Sencillo.
Dense legalistic language is of a piece with the bureaucratic processes involved in anything official. I'm not playing the whingeing foreigner here, Spanish people themselves are entirely aware of how bad it is. There's a hilarious video on YouTube called Funcionario Público, Civil Servant:
https://youtu.be/NmXCmmjJQ_c (or just search for the title)
But credit where it's due: Spain, along with most of Europe, has a remarkably simple system for identifying its citizens. You have a number, and that's it. For Spanish citizens it's referred to as the DNI (Documento Nacional de Identidad) or, specifically for financial stuff, the NIF (Número de Identidad Fiscal), but the number is the same. There's only one version of you.
Foreign residents get a similar number, the NIE (Número de Identificación Extranjero). This is extraordinarily useful. You can apply for a card bearing your NIE along with your photo and signature and it serves to confirm your identity for just about anything you need to do in everyday life, from buying a new pair of shoes with a credit card to catching a ferry, where the card serves as a ticket.
There is nothing of the police state about this card, you are not obliged to carry it, but everyone keeps it in their purse or wallet anyway because it's so handy.
