Ayuntamiento, Residencia and Building Works!

Still busy, busy, busy!

Last Monday we went to the Ayuntamiento (town hall) in Caleta to collect our updated empadronmiento showing our new address. We had been in the previous week to sort it all out, but just needed to collect the paperwork. I must remind everybody, that in this country you must never be in a hurry! All we had to do was collect a couple of pieces of paper, or so we thought! Sat down with the woman who had changed it the previous week. Passed over various documents to her as she requested each one. A lot of umming and aahing ensued. Then a child came in behind us and sat with the woman at the desk next to us, and she became more interested in listening to what he was saying than sorting out our paperwork. Then it seemed that gazing out the window was more important. Then she couldn’t find one of the documents that we had handed her and had to ask a colleague at the back of the office about it, but then found it right in front of her. All in all it wasn’t too bad, taking about half an hour to get the correct paperwork to us.

This morning, a trip to Puerto del Rosario was in order to get our residencias, the next legal step for us. Armed with our folder containing originals and lots of photocopies of all the various documents, we met up with the translator who was to help us. Meeting up at a bar, we went through filling the forms in together, and collating all the required documents.

Once getting to Puerto we had to get the required form from the photocopy shop just up the road from the Police station. Amazingly you can’t get them from the police. Armed with that Ian rushed off to the bank to pay while the translator and I relaxed with a hot drink at the nearby bar. The problem was that time was against us. In order to pay at the bank it must be done before 11am, and Ian unfortunately didn’t get there until 11.10am and they refused to allow him to pay. So he had to rush off to the next bank, a good 200 metres further up the road. After queuing up for half an hour, Ian found out that here cash payments can only be taken before 10.30am! However, as we had a bank account with this one we were allowed to pay direct from our account.

Ian finally arrived at the cafe where we were waiting, but the bank had not stamped the form and had just given him a receipt. The gestora had never known this before so we had to hope and pray that the police would accept this, otherwise it would mean another trip back to the bank!

Getting to the police station we were amazed to find nobody else there and we went straight to a desk to be seen. Thankfully they accepted the receipt from the bank and our application for residencia was accepted. We have to go back in two days in order to pick it up.

Got back home to find Sebastian and his father had been hard at work! We’re just having some remedial work done in the garden. Ian had already taken up a large square of picon (black volcanic chipping) and our friend, Sebastian, and his father were preparing the ground for the tiles.

Unfortunately, they came across a large mass of tree roots left over from a palm tree that was once there, and, as these are simply impossible to remove, we’ve said to make a small central raised feature where we will plant some flowers. They’ll also be changing the steps from our drive, which at the moment is one big very high step, to several smaller steps. Of course the problem will be keeping the dogs off the concrete when they first lay it!