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Life in Galicia
Life in Galicia
Galicia life and experiences as seen from Mer near Sober
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The move

Our move from Kent UK to Galicia

One year in Galicia – A quick review

Yes time flies, even here at the end of the known world (before C. Columbus).

It is hard to imagine that one year ago on this day we arrived in Monforte. A glorious but cold afternoon. We had the keys to our future house and a car full of stuff.

Wisely we had reserved a room in a small hotel as we didn’t really know what awaited us. Would there be water and if so hot water as well? Was there really electricity? Would the phone be connected? And so on and on and on. But before we reacquainted us with the shopping variety in Monforte and had a good drink and evening meal.

Next morning waking up to freezing fog we scraped our way through to the windscreen and set off.

We opened the door to see a brand new switching cabinet. Electricity with all the trimmings. Not much of it (25A) but all shiny new and connected.

The light switch turned on the first bulb.

We went upstairs into the old kitchen and turned on the taps. Not only did the water flow but a nice subdued “wuufff” told us that some appliance considered it its purpose to heat it up and it did.

It was freezing cold and thus my endless fight with the “cocina economica” started. Lighting it and holding a burning wad of paper into the chimney is just about possible when one has a 2 meter stretch. Getting the timing wrong results in a nice gray-black cloud hovering in the kitchen.

After first ignition this oven becomes ones mistress. It demands attention very regularly or it will simply expire and the process starts again.

Penetrating further into our future home it was confirmed that we not only bought the house and grounds but all the junk, furniture, spiders webs and dust as well.

The cold, the dust, the junk it didn’t put a damper on our enthusiasm we got stuck in.

With hindsight the sheer audacity and strength required to keep us going can only be explained by the desire and excitement to plunge into something new.

As we had told lots of friends about our undertaking and had invited them to partake – they did.

It put sheer stress on us to get at least some accommodation done but also they were a great source of encouragement and real help.

In no particular order and far from complete:

The advanced team (Monika & Bernd / Germany)
team Germany

The retired DIY team (Doreen & Deryck / UK)
diy team

The Dutch artist (Olga / NL)
dutch meister artist

The Anglo-Irish family (Margaret, Paul, Joshua and Joe / UK)
diy team

The Swiss army (Chris, Patric, Felicia & Loriane / Swiss)
swiss army

The UK girl scouts (Barbara, Andrea & Angela / UK)
girl scouts
to name and show a few.

Sorry if I have not yet written an article about every occasion but until recently I didn’t even have an office.

In this year we managed to renovate a large part of the houses, get the garden and the vegetable garden (big difference here in Galicia) going. We threw a successful summer fete with, and for all our neighbors, and most of all we enjoy the friendly and kind generosity of the Galician people.

Would we do it again? Well, not in a hurry. There is still a long long list of things to do and finish, but after that – who knows.

Again a big thank you to all who helped us along the way and encouraged us when we were down.

Galicia is a great place to live – believe me.

 

Expat

 

Import a car UK to Galicia (Spain) – Rematriculation – Bureaucracy goes wild

This is the story of finally successfully re registering our good old car bought in the UK here in the province of Lugo, Galicia Spain

rematriculationOne needs time (lots of it), nerves and a basic understanding of Spanish. It is possible to make this painless by using a „gestor“. A gestor here in Spain is a sort of middle man – between you and bureaucracy.

We like to hear and experience everything right at the coal face – so obstinate as ever I decided we are going to try this without a “gestor” or other such ilk.

The biggest „bug bear“ is that one has to go to the Xunta and Traffico in Lugo. Rematriculation is too complicated for the local offices.

So here is the short form with the long winded explanation backed up by experience at the end. 

You need:

The original matriculation which also contains the owners details.
The original purchase / invoice showing VAT if not a private sale.
Passport
Registration in Spain (NIE – national identificacion estranjero) which is the registration at the local police station. We always have the original and at least one copy with us.
A NIF (national identificacion fiscal).
Have a certificado de residencia from the local council (required to get NIF).
Get new head lights (for right side drive) fitted to the car. Although it is possible to adjust the lights to pass the ITV (Spanish MOT) it’s not allowed to rematriculate a car with a wrong set of headlights.
Local (Spanish) insurance.

Important:

Now you can only register a car in Spain when your primary residency is here.
The car is insured, regardless who drives it. So the owners age determines the premium.
Its also a good idea when borrowing a Spanish car to make certain it is insured.
Road tax is paid at the local council, once a year or proportional if one „jumps“ in.
Tax office in Lugo is open till about 1pm. Traffico in Lugo is open till 1:30pm.
ITV till 4pm and later (might differ locally).

Processes

1. Get a reduced basic matriculation (approx. 127 Euro incl. IVA)
2. Go to the local ITV and get the car passed (incl. head lamps). Paperwork will take a week. A re-pass because of a fault is free within 15 days. The ITV for rematriculation costs about 70 Euros.
Don’t forget to detach the export bit and send it to the UK to be released of road tax.
3. Go to the council and get a certificate of residency. This is a one off paper not like the certificado de registration (NIE) which can be copied).
4. Pay road tax (proportion) at local council.
5. Xunta de Galicia in Lugo – Tax office – Get a NIF (form you need to buy is .60Euro). Its done there and than, allow 2 hours.
6. Traffico in Lugo. Pay for rematriculation (about 67 Euros). Get a number and queue with all your paperwork.
7. After a week go to Traffico in Lugo again to obtain your matriculation.
8. The local garage will make and fix the plates (approx. 16 Euros).
9. On-line or via  a local insurance broker get insurance. A 5 seater is classed as a small van and expect to pay 300 Euros or if you have  4 seater it may only be 200 Euros.

bureaucracySo here is the full story of our rematriculation.

We started with the local hacienda (tax office in Monforte). The administrator was nice and told us once we are registered residents here we have 30 days and we have to import the car at the border. Rubbish! This is Europe – we went to Vigo port to the aduana and a nice chap told us, all this is not needed as we paid VAT in the UK and this is Europe. But we got a little note from him with a stamp (stamps are always important here) that if anyone thinks differently they should call him.

We than enlisted the help of a local garage. Through this we got in contact with a qualified and accredited engineer who came out looked at the car, took a copy of original matriculation, took photos of the car and within a week produced the reduced basics for matriculation. In Spain the matriculation is an A5 sheet with the car details, a unique number and in the end a matriculation number. Which is the number on your car plate. This costs between 120 – 170 Euros.

With this we drove over to the ITV. They were very nice but insisted that we need „Continental“ headlamps.
After the guy in the garage got of his heart attack, charged an arm and a leg we had new lights fitted.
Back to the ITV. They where happy and told us in a week we can pick up the papers.

We visited the local council and paid a bit of road tax and picked up a certificado de residencia.
A nice document, but the only guy who can sign it maybe out of town for days.

This by the way is a „one off“ document, so no copies are accepted and it is a good choice to always have at least one.

A couple of weeks later we made it to Lugo and went to Traffico. They looked at the papers and decided as I was the owner everything had to be in my name. They refused to acknowledge that I’ve just sold the car to my wife and anyway we hadn’t had a NIF.

paper computersThe Xunta offices with the office for national tax and other problems is in central Lugo about 20 Minutes on foot away. We found a nice administrator who send us to buy a form and than send us to another counter where we became fiscally acknowledged and my NIE number is now a NIF number. It takes lots of stamps, serious looks and the usual wad of forms before it is all entered into a computer and a printer spews out some nice stickers and jet another form.

As it was past 1:30pm we drove for a wet lunch into the countryside.

Again a couple of weeks later we had sufficiently recovered from the bureaucracy to have another go and went to Traffico in Lugo again. As experts in the queueing system there, we took one number for information to get a payment form and one number for the admin / matriculation queue.

We paid our dues, about 67 Euros, queued and surprise, surprise our papers were accepted . We received a receipt and were told to come back in a couple of days to pick up the matriculation. They don’t send it and its not their problem that one happens to live 2 hours away. But anyone in possesion of the receipt can pick up the papers at the end.

We grumbled for a week but ran out of excuses not to go and finally on a glorious sunshine filled day we had our MATRICULATION.

One of the quirks of the system is that you can drive a car with valid number plates but no insurance. It’s illegal but hard to check. So no wonder it took us a further 10 days to get round having actual Spanish plates fixed and a further week to find the time to go into a very friendly local insurance office and get cover.

Now the car is Spanish, insured and still has the steering wheel on the right. All I need now is a second steering wheel. I just look forward to the faces when they overtake and two people are steering the car…….

If you found the above sufficient and helpful why not donate a pound or a Euro so we can keep sharing our experiences.

The Expats

Try to cancel your TV license – An experience – A tip

To us it looked very clear cut. We leave the UK, the house will be empty and certainly have nothing with a plug attached to it. If it has a plug you need a certificate when renting.

No plug, no TV, no licensing fee or so we thought.

It is not that easy. If, like us, you have a DD mandate and you simply try to cancel your license tv-licensing is unable to do this when calling their service? center. Can’t they imagine anyone ever leave the UK???

So we cancelled the DD. Yup, within days we received a notice that we may be  illegally watching TV. The renewal was due a couple of weeks later. So we made a quarterly payment via a new DD. They don’t do monthly, particularly if you are well off.

This payment is to cover the period January to March. Today my wife phoned them and advised that we will leave at the end of January and we would like to be reimbursed for the two month we have paid in excess.

When I scraped her off the ceiling, she revealed that the flat answer was „… we don’t reimburse for less than a quarterly payment ….“

Sorry, but in my book that is another „Rip off Britain“. It’s not that you have a choice, if you want to legally watch TV by means other than the Internet you have to pay.

When I book a hotel, I only pay when I leave. I may give a credit card as security but if I cancel 24 hours beforehand, no money is taken.

So here is my tip:

In time, stop an existing DD and have them beg you for money. This is when you can switch to quarterly. Then don’t forget to stop / cancel this DD. When you leave within a month or two just send them the money that is due to them. With hindsight it’s what we should have done.

Update March 2009:

Checking the official licensing site, there is still no obvious means of cancelling. If one uses the search facility and types cancel one gets some answers. How do I cancel my DD – well contact us or go ahead.
Under refund one gets a downloadable PDF this one allows under reason to send a ticket, final bill or something else so they may determine that one is no longer obliged.

Go here http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/information/index.jsp  top right corner is a search box, type in cancel………

Expat

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