change of address

Things that are relatively easy in the U.S. are not so much so in Spain. And it took a bit, but I finally realized the issues were cultural, not linguistic.

Case in point: change of address.

On 30 August we made our padron appointment. The padron is the official filing of your residency which allows, among other things, government moneys to be allocated to your town of residence.

I emailed our padron forms and info to a Spanish-fluent friend to be sure we filled everything out correctly.

On 18 September, we met our translator friend and made it to our padron appointment. Only one person could be at the desk, so El Marido and our translator had to stand by the wall and wait. The clerk handed most of my paperwork back to me (I make it a point to always go with more info than we need), scanned what she needed and handed that back, then printed, stamped, and initialed our padrons. Done!

But there was more…

One week later, El Marido went to change our address at Caixa – I had to sign, but I had to have an appointment. AND he left his TIE there, so that meant yet another trip.

Oh, and we have a specific bank branch office assigned to us. It used to be just across the side street from our old apartment, but they moved to a larger property several blocks away. BUT that office is not our designated office. We can use the ATM there, of course, but any in-person services have to be done at the office a half-mile away.

On 30 September, I went to Caixa to sign off on our change of address. Our regular contact Johanna got it all set up, then the system wouldn’t take it. It seemed to be related to the issue that I couldn’t do the changes to government documents online : even though we had the padron, our new address was not in the government system yet. She was able to scan the padron and override it in the bank’s system, but that didn’t help with our TIEs or El Marido’s driver’s license.

Flash forward to 22 October: Our new address (filed 18 September) was FINALLY in the system – a month later. I requested address changes for our TIEs and El Marido’s driver’s license.

My bad for feeling smug about figuring out the system.

On 3 November, I noticed we had an error message on our address change request (thank Google for translation of web sites):

We needed to contact them – but I didn’t know what to say except “why do we have an error message?” The last letters of two words of our street name were missing, but I couldn’t correct that. We opted to wait until next summer, when we have to renew our residency permits, and let our lawyer handle it.

All that was left was our health insurance.  We went to the Adeslas office, but, no, you have to make that change at your bank, so BACK to Caixa in early December to take care of that. That change went smoothly.

So we’re on hold until our residency renewal in the fall…

a close call with COVID

We had one close call with COVID – and it happened while we were finishing up the details for our new apartment.

On Sunday, September 6, we got word that our agent had tested positive for COVID. We were supposed to meet with the landlady that morning to do a final check of the apartment, so we met without the agent.

I called our friends so they could make a decision about our planned trip to Logroño to take their daughter back for the school year.

I called a friend who volunteers at the hospital for advice.

El Marido set up a WhatsApp group for the 20 (!) people we’d been in contact with since we last saw our realtor at the signing Aug. 25.

The agent thought she caught it on vacation the weekend after we met to sign the apartment lease. She was in quarantine until the 14^th. The following Tuesday would be 2 weeks since we’d seen her.

We waited for contact tracing, but it never happened, and the RadarCOVID app never alerted us. That wasn’t a surprise, since the app depends on everyone using it, everyone reporting if they test positive, and everyone keeping their Bluetooth on so it would connect.

We didn’t get tested, and we all decided to proceed with the trip to Logroño.

But we also decided to scale back on our contact with friends, since our goal throughout the pandemic was to keep our large group of (mostly older than us) friends safe.

Our agent had only a mild case, and felt fine within a week.

always issues with a new home

From our move in September 2020:

As we were dealing with packing and lining up movers, we discovered the issues you always find with a new home.

We found out that the trastero is shared – not that we were planning on using it. All we put in it is the odds and ends from the apartment that we weren’t using: curtain rings, a Roman shade, a shelf we took down in the plancheria. So, vale.

Parking is not assigned, since they couldn’t agree on who had to deal with the posts:

By charter, the parking space has to stay with the apartment; it can’t be leased out separately, either by the owner or by the renter. We got permission for our British friend to keep his car there – so El Marido can drive it whenever, right-hand drive and all!

Back inside the apartment, I sent pictures of the wall/paint issues to our agent:

She scheduled a meeting with the landlord to see what we could work out.

On Wednesday we headed over to the apartment early (with a suitcase full of liquor, a roll-aboard and a backpack) to meet with the landlord and our agent to discuss the paint. Our agent called to say she didn’t feel well and was running a fever so she wouldn’t be coming – apparently, she had caught something on her short vacation with family the week before. (You should be hearing shark-theme music here: it turned out to be COVID. But she recovered quickly and we had not been exposed.)

We met with the landlady’s husband and his English is passable. He said they didn’t even look in the kitchen (bullshit) and he thought the previous tenants had touched up the living room (he had previously said that he would do it). I didn’t buy his excuses, but he was going to meet with the painter in the afternoon.

El Marido took a load over Saturday morning and the painter was there. He had finished the living room and was painting the hallway. He had already filled the holes in the kitchen. He made it clear that whoever had painted before had done a lousy job. (You think?!)

While El Marido got a well-earned massage the next Wednesday, I took a load over to the new apartment. I messaged the landlady when I got there, and she brought me the keys. She was quite pleased with the new paint, especially in the kitchen. She reminded me that all of the bedroom windows were frosted so that those across the patio couldn’t see in – neat feature. I reminded her of the broken window in one of the bedrooms (still not fixed 9 months later):

She said her husband “forgot” about it (are you sensing a theme here?). Apparently, El Portero is the go-to guy for basic repairs. She said to start with him, then let her know if he couldn’t fix it. Same with the lock on the terrace doors.

And about the water trapped between the panes of the bathroom window, about which she just shrugged (also still there 9 months later):

The clocks in the kitchen made her nuts, so she reset the one on the microwave. She tried several times to reset the one on the oven, but couldn’t get it. She left frustrated over the clock.

After we moved in, El Marido cleaned the vent hood – it’s never been cleaned. The motor runs, but doesn’t vent. Replacement motor available online…He went to put it all back together, and we can’t find the screws. So, vale.

The oven doesn’t have a vent system either.

But the dishwasher runs much better since he cleaned it out and put salt in it. And he ordered new rollers for the bottom rack.

This seems a good place to put in a few words about Spanish appliances.

We had lived in our first apartment longer than I want to admit before we realized our washing machine had its own heater. We knew it wasn’t tied in to the water heater, so we assumed it didn’t do hot wash. When we had tried, it didn’t seem to be warm at all. But it’s self-contained, and it works – on a two-plus hour cycle! And the machine is so small that we could only wash one bath towel at a time, one sheet at a time…. we do some laundry every day. The washer in our new apartment is larger, so we can wash two bath towels at once!

Dryers are not a thing here. The airbnb we stayed in when we were looking for a place to rent had a combo washer-dryer. All that gave us – 3 hours later – was warm damp laundry. Friends have a dryer, but it’s not vented, so you have to check the evaporation pan and drain it often.

Dishwashers require salt – at least we knew about that before we got one with the new apartment.

The new apartment has an ice maker. Here’s how that works:

You fill the trays and slide them in. When the water freezes, you turn the dials to dump the ice, then pull them out to refill them. At least that method is easier on my arthritic fingers than cracking traditional trays open. We kept the traditional trays so we always have plenty of ice, because, you know, small trays, and only two of them.

Some friends use countertop ice machines, but they take up a lot of room that we’d rather have for food prep, so we make our system work.

One airbnb we stayed at had a water dispenser in the refrigerator door. But it’s not connected to water. You have to fill the reservoir from the sink. But at least it gets cold and you can access it without opening the fridge.

Considering all of that, the thing I miss the most is a garbage disposal in the sink – they just don’t do them here.