Paper chase

Part Of The Queue Originally uploaded by semantico.

Well, after the ease of my initial brush with Spanish beaurocracy, Liz didn’t have such a simple time of it. She needed a social security number to get a contract to work legally. The academy’s accountant prepared the form and the director gave it to her and told her where to take it. At the social security department she was told she’d need an empadronamiento, and directed her to the appropriate building. This sent us scurrying to the dictionary.

The empadronamiento is the piece of paper saying that you’re recorded in the padron, the electoral roll or the census. Now I didn’t have to do that (for whatever reason… I’m not sure why not) but Liz, being dutiful, and needing her social security number, headed off to see the wizard, sorry, the census bloke. Who promptly told her that she needed to show him the contract from the flat to empadronarsela (to ‘encensus’ her). The contract on our flat had run out so we emailed the landlady and told her the situation, asking for a new contract.

The landlady was not impressed. She was very clear in her desire for us not to show a contract to the council, citing a friend, who had had nothing but trouble since this had happened to her. Reading between the lines, I guess she’s not paying certain taxes that she ought to be paying. Which is not uncommon, according to my payslips over the summer I wasn’t being paid as much as I actually was. She said we only needed something proving our address, like a gas bill or something.

So we wandered back to the council bloke and I took along my social security receipts, my medical registration, my foreigner’s certification, all of which had the address on. The bloke didn’t seem like he was going to accept any of them, and kept saying we needed a bill or a contract, we kept pleasantly saying we didn’t have them and these had our addresses and smiling like idiots. Eventually he gave in and stamped the form (twice), before printing out the two empadronamientos, stamping each of them and signing them in the margin (otherwise they’re not valid).

Then Liz had to go back to the social security place and get them to get the number, but this time it worked flawlessly.