All systems Go!

Finally!! We have at long last exchanged contracts on the sale of our home in the UK, and have a week to organise everything before flying out to Fuerteventura. Panic? Me? Never!!!!

Shipping of all our worldly goods was booked, plus flights for both us and our 3 dogs that we are taking with us, and our chauffeur for our final trip to East Midlands airport organised.

There have been so many phone calls to make that we ran out of our free minutes on the mobile phone!

Previous to moving to our current home we had moved quite a lot of times, and it was all really easy.  Simply write or phone the relevant companies (council, phone, electricity, etc.) and tell them you’re moving.  Not any more!  Take the TV license, they want PROOF that we are in fact moving!  Then there is the Council tax.  Ian thought it would be easy to do it online, just tell them you’re moving, right?  WRONG!  Their form was like something from the Spanish Inquisition, so we rang them; nope, gotta be done online!  So, armed with a cup of tea Ian settled down to complete the form.  Trouble is he couldn’t because there was no provision for those who are moving out of the country!    Anyway, finally decided to simply write them a letter with all our details and send it snail mail – let them sort it out!  And there were similar sagas with other companies.

Then it came to the Spanish side of things.  We will need to obtain an NIE certificate (numero de identificación fiscal), which is basically an identification number as soon as possible after our arrival on Fuerteventura.  This is urgent as it is required by the company shipping our goods. We had looked into this previously, and thought we knew what was needed. However, speaking to others we also needed to register on Empadronamiento (similar thing to our electoral role) BEFORE applying for NIE. As we didn’t have an address this was going to prove difficult. Anyway, cut a long story short, a friend of a friend is used to dealing with NIE applications and will be helping us with everything when we arrive. Once we are settled I will write an article on how to go about all the necessary paperwork for this website, and hopefully help others through this.

Hoping to get this website up and running quickly, but for now we still have lots to do and very little time, so it may take a little while!