El certificado de empadronamiento

In week 1 I told you that we went to the town hall to register as residents: “Now that we could prove we owned a house in town, we needed to go and register as residents. Off to the town hall we went. The kind lady spoke English with us and after a short 30 minutes, she handed us a document and told us all was done. Great!”

Then, in week 2 I wrote: “We went to the gestoría and handed her the car papers. She told us that she also needed proof that we were registered in the town of Huércal Overa. Ah! We had done that and we had a document to prove it. “That isn’t the right document,” she said. We needed to go back to the town hall and get the right document.” It turned out that the document we received in week 1 was an application only.

We went on Tuesday and afterwards I wrote “We got the same person as the first time. We handed her the document she had given us the week before and asked her for the document we needed. She told us it would be ready on Thursday.  We needed an appointment to collect it though and we were sent to the next window. There, a lady with reading spectacles asked for our passports and proceeded to type in her computer. In the end we got the appointment for Thursday at 09:20. Great, we had something.”

On Thursday we were there at 09:20 and explained why we were there. The lady asked for our passports and said “Please wait for 5 minutes.”. After a long while we were called back to the desk and were given a document. We read it and even though the lady had our passports, the document she handed us was not in our names. We gave it back to her and she examined it and our passports and asked us to wait again. Then, after a while she told us it would not be ready today. The eyes above her facemask showed she was sorry to have made us come in vain. We were to come back on Monday. “Do we need an appointment?” Mirjam asked astutely. “Yes,” she said and told us to come Monday at 09:20. Perhaps the lady with the reading glasses was off sick.

So, we went back on Monday. This time we knew exactly where to park the car and how the parking meter worked. We were a bit early, but decided to go in anyway and to our surprise, the document was ready, it just needed to be signed by one more person. We waited for 10 minutes or so and then we got the document. In a state of mild euphoria, we went back to the gestoría and presented our document. She looked at it, frowned, got out our file and then said there was something wrong. We looked at the document and immediately realized that it was in my name and in the name of the Jacky, the lady who sold us the house. A little embarrassed for not having checked better ourselves, we headed back to the town hall, which luckily is just around the corner. When it was our turn, we explained what the problem was. This time, they had a closer look at all the data and said “There are people living at your address.” “Yes,” we replied, “we do. And the people who sold us the house live next door.” We were then asked to tell them to come in and change their address. They were going to draw up a new document, but one of the two people who needed to sign it was in a meeting now. We were told to come back in 1 or 2 hours. Unsure what that meant, we decided to go into town, fill up the car, go to the market and just explore the town.

We went back to the town hall 1.5 hours later, at 11:30. The document was ready and this time we decided to read it well, before accepting it. Mirjam’s name was on it now, but with the wrong date of birth. We showed them the error and the document had to be drawn up again and signed of course. Once it was ready to be signed, we were asked to inspect it. It was error free. We were asked to wait 10 minutes so the lady could get it signed. Half an hour later we left the building with a correct and signed certificado de empadronamiento, ready to proudly present it to the gestoría. We were home at 13:00 hrs.

I just realized that between the day of our application and the day we returned to get the right document, our lawyer told us she had been called by the police in our town wanting to know if it was true that we had bought the house and now lived at the address. So, there is some verification that goes on, which is good I suppose, but why the lady at the town hall didn’t explain this when she gave us the application form, is something we’ll never know.

Also, we are considering the next time we need to go to the town hall, to bring folding chairs, a flask of coffee and sandwiches.