Monday and we are off to buy our new car in the Covid19 world of car showrooms, no coffee, no handshake, just masks and security tape. Has the glamour of car buying come to an end?
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Day 85 Testing Times uncorrected transcript
Monday morning, normally I do the hateful administration work but this morning we are off to the car showroom to collect our new car. Yesterday we did a test run, found the dealer and the car looking rather dusty sitting in the disabled parking space.
We arrived just before ten a few moments in front of our Bank Manager who accompanied us to translate the paperwork. Car showrooms in our part of Spain are exactly the same as anywhere else.
So Chris, Laura and I entered the showroom, the interior done out in Germanic grey tiles and fairly stark furniture, that was taped off, yellow and white tape marked out where we could stand and the cars all had a security tape on the doors, to stop you casually opening them without a salesman, welcome to the Covid19 car buying experience.
Our new car was in the showroom facing a large glass door that led to outside.
Suddenly a thin man with kind brown eyes appeared. He might have had a beard, who knows, he might have smiled, who knows. He addressed Chris in very fast Spanish. Laura interrupted with the “he is English but understands some Spanish.”
“Come to the desk, please have a seat.” He said arranging three seats at two metre intervals, he sat behind the desk, behind a plastic screen with a little hole to pass documents through.
“Pasporte please or your Residence card.” Chris produced his little green card. This unimpressive bit of green card, that you need to keep safely behind a plastic wallet, or the ink and print wear off. Is our identity that allows to stay here in Spain during the Alarma. Now in a perfect world it would have a photograph, but the British Government objected to the Spanish Government keeping photographic records of its citizens. Never mind that a scan of your Passport at Passport Control here, brings up your UK photo, your address and pretty much everything else about you!
Luckily we now both have Spanish Driving Licences and they have our photograph on, Spanish style. In the UK you go to a Photo-Me booth, here you go to a photography studio and a woman with a camera tells you to look ahead, “no smiling.”
Then you sit in the window of the shop waiting for her to print out the pictures and take a pair of scissors to cut each photo by hand. That bit was easy. The next not so.
Our Lawyer – Paco took us to Trafico in Granada, a building in amongst a large housing estate, driving through Granada is bewildering, traffic coming at you from all angles and directions. Paco weaved his way in traditional style, missing the exit for a roundabout so swinging the car back on itself and the traffic to exit. I found myself gripping my seat as he ignored the red light ahead and turned into a side street where the Government office was.
We were early and had the strongest coffee I had ever drunk in a small bar nearby that looked over a piece of derelict land where people clearly took their dogs to do their business.
The austere Trafico building had an equally austere inside, Paco had to punch a great deal of information into a touch screen to produce a ticket, “come” he said “we must go upa the stairs.” We followed him upa the stairs. “Sit” we sat down in those chairs that had not only been joined together but bolted together onto the floor.
In front of us stretched a row of desks and behind the desks some very serious Functionarios were processing paperwork, that when completed was filed behind them in acres of filing cabinets stretching back int
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