One thing that has come across time after time is that whenever you need to sort anything in Spain, it will not be straight forward and it will not be quick, but with perseverance you'll get there. That dealing with town hall's will require knowledge of the language and a lot of form filling and probably a lot of queuing.
We were about to find out first hand.
The salesman at the Kia garage had told us that Spanish cars are registered at the local town hall where you live, in our case Pulpi. In order to get the car registered there we have to have our 'Certificado de Empadronamiento'.OK, we can do that. A quick session with the Nintendo DS and I have some phrases to help me and off we go to Pulpi.
Pulpi is not far from us and there is one main street to drive down but we couldn't find the town hall, so we parked up near signs for what we thought was the library to ask for directions. I don't know what the sign stood for but we certainly weren't in a library, more like a coffee morning for the homeless and needy - a hasty exit followed.
Across the road was the main post office so we went in there to ask and I managed enough Spanish to explain what we were looking for and then understood enough Spanish to get the directions - and we were close, just around the corner and we would see it, and she was right.
So, full of expectation of queues we entered the building and looked around for anything that resembled a reception desk or similar. The first office we saw was for registration so in we went. We only had a wait of 10 minutes before it was our turn. I explained we were english, spoke little Spanish, had just moved here and needed our Certificado de Empadronamiento in order to buy a car, all in well rehearsed Spanish and we showed him our documents.
The reply completely threw me. I understood the bit about him not speaking English but the rest, at speed, straight over our heads. We struggled on for a little and then he called a colleague who spoke a little english. It turned out our rental agreement didn't meet their requirements as it had passport numbers in and we needed the NIE numbers, ours and the owners. The official kindly took the time to explain as well as he could that we needed to get a further statement done that effectively quoted all NIE numbers and gave permission from the owner for us to live in the villa.
We thanked him and left in order to arrange this. I had read that town hall officials rarely give help like this but are more likely to just send you away, so I was grateful that we at least knew what was wrong and how to put it right. We immediately set the wheels in motion to get the correct statement, and prepared for the return visit.
Link to Pulpi Council website: http://www.pulpi.es/
No comments:
Post a Comment