They mean “without an appointment”.
The words are music to the ears because, as I’ve pointed out before, it never takes less than two visits to a Spanish administrative office to get any one job done. And frequently that means making one appointment after another, usually online with systems that creak at best and breakdown as often as not. Usually for a week or two ahead, when you know you’ll only be told to make another appointment and be forced to wait again, to see someone else in another department.
In our case, our most recent experience involved the payment of some tax. We rent out a flat in Valencia and, as non-residents, a special rate of tax applies to us.
‘Special’, as with any kind of charge, naturally means higher.
You may have spotted the first minor discrepancy with this matter. We aren’t non-residents. But it’s true that we once were, so it’s not unreasonable that we should pay the extra tax. However, we really don’t want to go on paying it, if at all possible.
The tax authorities’ first trick was to write to us at our old address in Luton. In England, in other words. From there the letter made its way to the flat in Valencia, the one we’re renting out. We collected it there and took it to the house where we now live, further out in the suburbs.
There were five pages of closely typed Spanish. I have to admit that I couldn’t fully make out what it wanted, but I saw a monetary figure: €54.83 plus 41 cents of interest, making €55.24.
That reference to interest got me worried. It suggested lateness. And lateness with taxes tends to be frowned upon in most jurisdictions. 41 cents now but what might happen later, when they started applying penalties? A lawyer we consulted told us that, yes, the penalty might be several times the original debt.
My problem? However carefully I read and re-read the document, I couldn’t find any means to pay the sum outstanding. There were even some bank account details, so I tried to transfer the sum there.
“That’s our account,” Danielle told me, after the payment had been refused by the bank. Yep. Banks don’t like payments from an account into the same account.
I phoned the office that had written to us. It was in Madrid. Of course. Why should it be anywhere convenient? Dealing with non-residents is a capital matter, it seems.
“Ah, yes,” the friendly and helpful man dealing with my call told me, “you must make the payment.”
He gave me an address I should visit, and I carefully wrote it down. But then the postcode rang a bell with me.
“That’s in Madrid, isn’t it?”
“Of course,” he said, “that’s where we’re based.”
“But I live in Valencia.”
“Ah, OK,” he said, “That does indeed make a difference. But I hadn’t realised. Erase that address. Look up tax offices and go to your local one.”
Danielle kindly made an appointment for us. Well, two appointments, one for her and one for me. This is something we’ve frequently had to do: two separate appointments, but when we get to the office we go in together and they say, “of course, we’ll deal with both of you at the same time”. But the on-line system obliges us to make two appointments.
It was the same today. We arrived. We got lost in the labyrinth of the offices. We turned up at the desk of the woman we needed to see. She greeted us with a smile and remarked, in a friendly tone, “really difficult to find us, isn’t it?”
She looked through the papers.
“This was sent to you in England?”
“Yes,” I said.
“But you live here?”
“Indeed.”
“So when did you get the letter?”
“Last week.”
She laughed.
“Incidentally,” I went on, “we are now resident here.”
I showed her a payslip from the Spanish company that now employs me.
“OK,” she said, “this is just silly. Let me make a couple of calls.”
Ten minutes later she was back.
“That’s all sorted. You just have to pay the amount shown here and everything will be cleared up.”
Danielle and I both breathed a sigh of relief. It’s always like that out here. Get past the ghastly online services, get past the painful telephone conversations, and actually see a person face-to-face, and generally things go well and satisfactorily – and, above all, sensibly. Not always: we’ve met some awful jobsworths of civil servants, but generally you can find someone else to talk to, and in almost every case they’re not just efficient but fun to deal with.
But I said nothing can be done in just one visit, and this was no exception.
“I still have to pay this amount,” I said, “and I can’t see any way to do it.”
“They can do that at the other office, can’t they?” she called to her boss.
“Yes,” he replied. “Sin cita.”
Without an appointment! The magic words. We could just turn up and do it.
“Yes,” he went on, addressing us directly, “when it comes to paying us money, you don’t need to make an appointment in advance.”
It still wasn’t quite as simple as it sounded. We visited another office. We were seen at once by a friendly, pleasant and polite man who immediately agreed to see us together though we’d both had to take a ticket. He issued each of us with a little slip with which to make the payment (yes, we each had to pay the €55.24).
“It has to be paid today,” he warned us, “this slip won’t be valid tomorrow.”
“We’re going straight to the bank,” I assured him.
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| The bar code was read, the print was overtype above all the whole thing was stamped. We're in the clear! |
With no penalty. With no further interest charged. And all because we took the trouble to visit real human beings in their offices.
That’s what it takes in Spain. And if you do it, you can sometimes hear those magic words, “sin cita”. And feel the iron leave your soul.
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