Once upon a time……

Foreigners living in Spain all carried a small plastic card, the proof of being resident in Spain, and the card was known as the “Residencia” - a useful document since residents in Spain enjoyed many tax advantages over non-resident.

And then one day, our EU Masters in Brussels decided it was somehow “unfair” to EU citizens living in Spain (unfair ? But Spanish have to carry an ID card, so why shouldn’t foreigners in Spain ? Seems no one asked Brussels this interesting question….) so ! it was unfair to make them have a Residencia, and forced Madrid to discontinue the Residencia for EU citizens.

And the EU citizens who were resident in Spain now had no way to prove this.

So Madrid introduced a “Register of Foreigners” spending more than 180 days a year in Spain, to which everyone had to belong - By Law ! - with financial penalties for disobeying.

The administration of the Foreigners’ Register was given to the National Police, and not just the National Police, but only National Police in Province Cities - which means for example Figueras National Police cannot issue certificates of being on the Foreigners’ Register, but one has to go - twice - to Girona. That’s a total of 180kms to drive for us living in Mas Fumats.

And if one finally gets the Certificate, well ! it is a large sheet of paper which you fold up and carry in your wallet, not a nice little convenient card like the former Residencia.

Oh, and one last thing.

When you have your Certificate, you still have to carry with you your National ID card, or if you are British, your Passport - at all times, as the Certificate doesn’t have all the information the old Residencia card did.

So once again, our EU Masters took a perfectly good system which functioned to everyone’s benefit, and destroyed it - and a Member State of the EU was too cowardly to stand up in favour of the former system.

Vive the EU !

submitted by Robin Flood