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Showing posts with label Spanish Social Security Office. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Spanish Social Security Office. Show all posts

Monday, September 26, 2016

Swim to forget?

Resultado de imagen de empty swimming lane








It is a reflection of the uniformly depressing nature of the ‘news’ nowadays that gaining an empty lane in my swimming pool for the whole of the duration of my metric mile crawl is enough to make me feel that not everything is ill with the world!
            I am still trying to get my head around the fact that Galicia, for the umpteenth year in succession, has elected a majority government of the criminally corrupt PP (Spanish Conservative) party!
Resultado de imagen de 2016 galician election











Given the welter of adverse publicity showing clear maladministration throughout the PP organization it takes a particularly strong peg to block the nose from the stench of corruption to actually vote for such an undeserving bunch.  But vote they did and they have thereby promoted their president to be the most likely person to take over from the walking joke that is the acting president of Spain.  God help us all!
            The Basque country voted as it always does for parties who loathe the politicians in Madrid, and we get ever closer to the break-up of Spain.
            Enough.  Disgust with the present political situation is becoming an idée fixe with me and I am aware that I am repeating myself, and powerless fury becomes boring after a while.  Although I can vote in local elections, I have no say in national ones and I can not take a direct part in the changes that are essential if Spain is to develop from its long post-transition malaise.  Frustration does not even begin to cover what I feel.

Self-interest is always more refreshing!  I have had a message on my phone telling me that my state pension has achieved a “resulta favorablemente” and that I will soon be getting something by post telling me the “resolucion”.  I am not sure what this means as my pension is going to be paid by the UK and the few years that I worked in Spain are not going to make that much difference to how much I get.
            The whole process of getting my state pension has been interesting one.  The initial application form for people claiming from overseas was horrific in its demanding detail.  A panicked phone call to the UK revealed that, if you have worked in Spain, you have to apply via the Spanish social security system and not via the UK.  Given the propensity for revelling in pointless bureaucracy in this country I was, to put it mildly daunted.  The reality was a delight!  It took about five minutes with a bloke in the local social security office and the administration was done!  Unbelievable!  I dully received a notification for Newcastle that things had been processed and I am now waiting for the cash!  I will be interested to see what the Spanish system has to say as I had assumed that everything was done and dusted.  As far as I am able to work out, I think that the work that I did in Spain gives me an extra quid a week: not much, but I’d rather get it than pay it.
            I fear that the lurking missive from the Spanish state is more likely to be about taking money rather than giving it.  If you live abroad then your state pension is paid to you in toto with no tax deductions.  At this point the omnipotent hacienda or Spanish tax people take an unhealthy interest and demand that it be taxed by them: not unreasonable as I do actually live here!  
Resultado de imagen de panama papers spain








Resultado de imagen de new duke of westminster          I will try and empty my mind of the numerous graphic instances in the recent past (vide The Panama Papers) where many of the rich and famous in Spain have taken to heart the notorious words of Leona Helmsley who said, “We don’t pay taxes.  Only the little people pay taxes” and have done everything in their power to ensure that none of their hard earned cash (!) goes to the taxman.  As a teacher who has been ‘taxed at source’ for the whole of his working career I feel that I occupy the moral high ground when it comes to the payment of taxes, and certainly on a higher plane than the new Duke of Westminster who has paid a laughable amount in death duties and I am sure will continue (legally) to pay the absolute minimum of tax, resulting in a retired teacher (e.g. moi!) paying a higher proportion of his income in tax than a man who owns Belgravia – among other choice chunks of London!
            Ah well, one mustn’t be bitter as it only shortens one’s life and affords merriment to those, like His Grace, above!

Resultado de imagen de note 7 exploding battery






My new phone (complete with un-exploding battery I trust) is now set to be delivered in the first week of October.  I have bought a charging station; a case, and extra memory for it already and so, quite apart from the horrendous price of the thing, I am now left with a further investment that will be nullified if I decide that I have waited long enough and cancel the order.
            To look at my frustration from another point of view, I could retexture this enforced period of waiting as a Zen-like meditative interlude of delayed gratification.  Which is good for the soul and is, of course, entirely foreign to modern expectations – and therefore I will be practising a dying skill.

At this time of the year, the weather can be gauged by the degree to which the foam cushions on the sunbed have dried out.  Although we have not had a great deal of rain during the day, we have had theatrical OTT storms during the nights, and the intensity of the sun during the day is sometimes insufficient thoroughly to dry out the material to the intensity of ‘bone’.  Today, for example, I have had to turn the mattress upside down on the terrace to allow the sun to do its work.  I was confined to plastic chair to lounge about a bit.  In fact I have just checked and the mattress is almost dry: it should be perfect for a little light sunbathing this afternoon!  There are advantages to living this close to the Med!

Tomorrow I go to the third of my classes in Spanish here in Castelldefels.  I am, it has to be said, dreading the experience as I fear that I will be way out of my depth given the extent of the knowledge of all the other people in the class: they seem to approach the use of verbs with delight while I am like some medieval cartographer inscribing “Here there be dragons” over those parts of a sentence which allow it to make sense!
            I shall, however, give it a go and see if I can survive and, as one friend has already pointed out, it will be an invigorating experience for me to be the inarticulate one in a language class for once in my life!  I only hope that there are revealing pictures in the textbook that we are due to be given tomorrow!

Life really does have a relentless quality that is both exciting and intimidating at the same time!



Sunday, July 10, 2016

Never trust stereotypes


The only good thing about the Express newspaper was the cartoonist Giles.  And since he is dead there is nothing at all good about that vile little rag.  However, a cartoon by Giles came into my mind when I thought about what happened to me in the Spanish Social Security Office.
            The cartoon showed a class of worried school children watching Chalky (the death mask looking teacher) writing a pile of reports.  One of the kids is whispering to another, “I hope that’s not my report he’s writing.  He’s smiling!”  A normal reaction to those in authority when they show enjoyment.  If they are smiling then someone is going to suffer.
            So, waiting to hear just how much paper pushing would be necessary for me to claim my state pension via the Spanish system was worrying enough without the person dealing with me smiling a lazy smile!
            It took five minutes!  It was all done on-line and now any inefficiency will be on the part of the British system and not the Spanish.  And the smile on the official’s face was genuine happiness, sharing my delight!
            It is difficult to understand.  If I had (as I couldn’t) pressed my claim in Britain then I would have to have filled in an astonishing document which, in one section, asked me to list all the places in which I had lived with full addresses and dates!  And that was only one section!  Carmen tells me that her application of her Spanish state pension demanded reams of paper to be filled in.  But a Brit, having worked for a short period in Spain and now living in Spain: a few minutes, and job done!
            A sobering thought is that the rest of this swift process can take up to four months!
            I have been entitled to my state pension since last October but I wanted to delay it for a year as you get an extra percentage if you wait.  Brexit has wiped out the advantage of that, by already reducing my pension by more than 10% thanks to the plunging pound.  I need ready money rather than jam tomorrow!  It will be instructive to see when real money makes it into my actual account!  But still, just a few minutes and the administration was done!  Unbelievable!
            And to cap this extraordinary result, we also found a wonderful little restaurant, exceptional value and tasty food.
            The only thing to make the day even more perfect will be to discover that the lottery tickets that we purchased on a day of such obvious propitiousness have turned up trumps and I won’t need the pension!