There is no general information

For those of you who are aware of our ongoing struggle with Spanish bureaucracy you know that we have persisted in the belief that we could in fact be in Spain legally this year. I know many of you think this is foolish. Many of you have pointed out the absurdity of this belief by quoting short stories to us, by alluding to your experiences, by teasing us, both gently and mercilessly about our naïveté in thinking that we could do this.

I am here to say, that this week, it has literally landed us mere steps from the mad house.

And in prison.

Twice.

Let's go back. Let's go back. Let's go way on way back when, to quote Aretha in what I consider to be my personal anthem, all the way to July the 19th when we dropped off our documents to get our resident visas (without work permits since we knew that would be impossible) at the Spanish Consulate in Washington DC. We were told on that day it would take between 1 and 6 months for us to get them. This was after we had been finger printed, all documents had been translated, apostilled, notarized, sanitized, baptized, euthanized, and simonized. A mere 4 months, $500 later, we had temporary resident visas! And it only cost us an additional $2500 since we had to fly back to the US to pick them up! We returned to Spain triumphant! Ready to turn these temporary visas into little plastic cards with a picture and a number on them, good at every Corte Inglés in all of Spain for identifying you! Huzzah!

But no. Because at the Consulate all they said was "you have to go to the police station and get your cards there."

What did this mean?

We called the police upon arriving home on November 29.

What the fuck were we talking about? They had never heard of this. We needed to look online.

We went online. There were a series of places that seemed to offer appointments to issue resident cards. Some were in the city and some were out on the outskirts. Some took appointments and some did not.

Like all Spanish websites, it was both impossible to navigate and to understand. And like all Spanish websites there was no way to locate a phone number on it directly.

So we made an appointment. And then waited until January 24.

Fast forward to this week. It's Monday. We have our cita (appointment). We sleep in. Everyone showers and puts on nice clothes. Today is the day! We arrive and there is a line. But we have a cita and go right in. We are given numbers and sent upstairs.

Where we see the sign: all pages of the passport must be copied. I turn to Ricardo.
Did you know this?
No.
Is it on the form.
No. Shit. Yes.
Fuck. What are we going to do. They don't make copies.
Do you think there's a copy place near here?
Yes there has to be.

OK. I'll go find it and get the copies. You stall for time.
OK. I'll explain the situation. You go.

And off he goes. There is not a copy place nearby and he ends up in a post office where Pilar proceeds to copy everything slowly (God forbid anyone but an empleado be allowed to touch the machines!!) while helping other people. The Kid and I watch the numbers flash. Shit. We're up.

We're asked for our passports.

We don't have them. My husband is copying them in the post office. He's on his way back.
Why don't you have it? It's on the forms.
Yes I know we got confused. (she's now rolling her eyes at me).
You have to go get new numbers and wait all over again. she says stamping the backs of our numbers and handing them back like decayed turds.

We go downstairs and get new numbers. Ricardo is running back. We are called again as soon as he comes in, thankfully not by little Miss Bitchy.

We hand her our things and she looks at them like they are covered in vomit.

You need FBI finger printing.
We were told by the Consulate we needed only the state fingerprinting.
That changed on January 1.
We couldn't get an appointment before that point. We tried!
Let me check with my compañera. (this is absolutely never a good sign).

Who should the compañera be? Little Miss Bitchy. And we're already bad people because we hadn't had everything copied appropriately. She starts going through the papers.

This translation isn't apostilled. she says about the medical letter.

It is, Ricardo patiently tells her. The apostille is here.

It needs to be redone here in Spain. The apostille has to be on the same page not another one. How do we know it goes with this document if it's not on the same page? These men they come from Morocco and they have all their papers translated and it's much harder for them.

So now we're being shown up by the Moroccans at the next desk. Lovely.

And, she says. You need FBI background checks.

We did all this before January 1.

But it's after January 1 now.

But we made the appointment in November.

She looks at us like we've just told her that the Reyes Magos are in the building looking for asylum. But it's true and the other woman has found the request. And then she looks at the visas.

Just how long have you been here? she asks.

About 5 months.

No one comes here who hasn't been here more than 3 years. This is the office for people who have been here illegally and who want to become residents now.

It gets very quiet.

We are in the wrong place.

So, Ricardo begins. Where do we need to go to get our resident cards?

I don't know, says the woman helping us. Do you?

I don't know, says Miss Bitchy. Hold on, I'll make a phone call.

Because as soon as it's clear that you are not their problem, everyone is much nicer to you.

The phone call is made and the answer is handed down: Aluche. Sin número. (What the fuck kind of building has no number?)

We leave and head to Aluche.

Aluche is on the edge of Madrid. You take the #5 Metro almost to the end or you can take the Cercanias train. When you get off the train and look at the map of the area there is almost nothing. There is a large lunatic asylum. And there is a prison for foreigners. And a shopping mall.

We stopped at a café, got a drink and a bite (because who knew how long it would take to get to a building without a number) and asked the woman how to get to the office for visas. She pointed us in the direction of the prison. I made Ricardo ask someone else because we were going to an office not a prison and I didn't want to go to a prison.

The second person explained it was straight up the road, past the bus stop, about a 10 minute walk. You'd see it.

You sure do, because as it turns out, it is the prison.

And it is across from the lunatic asylum.

We arrived at Aluche and were greeted at the gate by a police officer who would not let us in.

Information, he explained, is only open from 9-1. It was 1:10. We saw there were tents inside full of people waiting.

Can we call information? Yes. He pointed to the phone number which we jotted down.

We left, completely discouraged.

The next day we called. They put us through to the "general information line." There, Ricardo was told: There is no general information line. You have to go to Aluche in person.

And so, yesterday found us up bright and early, dressed in sweaters and bringing our books. At 8:55am were were outside the metal detectors of the prison and in a nearly full tent in line with about 75 other people. We sat on freezing benches. Every 15 minutes or so and Ecuadorian guy would come out, count off about 15 people and herd them into the building. There we waited for an hour to get to the information desk.

Eventually we made it to the person who dispenses information. He told us we needed to go to the SACE line. But there was no one there to help us. We could however, talk "to that guy over there."

We'd waited about 1 hour and a half for 30 seconds of information.

"That guy over there" listend to us for 10 seconds, handed us a phone number and took the next person in line.

That was all the information we were going to get.

We called the number. We gave our name. We were in the computer. They could see us on the 2nd. This was the right office.

Will it really be the right office? Will we get our resident cards? Will we end up in Spain illegally? Who the fuck knows at this point.

All I know is this. I am fucking treating all of us to a Parador this weekend (thank you 100€ deals in Leon!!!). We're having a weekend away of rest and relaxation. Because I need to like Spain again. And I want to like Spain again. Because right now, I am wondering how long before I am thinking that that lunatic asylum is calling my name...