(This post reminds me of some of David Lebovitz’s posts not about food but about living in Paris — and working through the bureaucracy there.)

So I may not have mentioned this, but I was sort of worried I wouldn’t get my visa: when I arrived in the EU, my passport didn’t get stamped. Ni sello ni papel ni nada. I asked a police officer at the airport, and he told me that I could wait for a few hours, get seen, and get an entry certificate — or I could just not worry about it and hope that being an American would mean they didn’t care. So, errr, I left. I contemplated it, and some people told me it was a huge problem, and others told me it didn’t really matter, and I guess I figured that it really depended on the person doing the paperwork for me. And then I realized that it needed to have been done within three days of entry, so at this point there was Nothing To Be Done, and I stopped worrying.

Last Thursday, I tried to open a bank account. They told me I couldn’t do that without having a foreigner’s certificate, or something, so I went to one police station, who sent me to another. (This was the day I got blisters, by the way. My blisters are doing a lot better; I bought this ridiculous stuff called Compeed which is amazing, and forms a layer of protection between skin and everything else beyond what a band-aid would do.) Anyway, at the final comissioner’s office, they had me fill out some forms, make some photocopies, and I ended up with a “Solicitud de Certificado” form, which they claimed I could use to open a bank account. (I have yet to try — maybe on Friday. Most banks are only open to customers ’till 2:30 in the afternoon on good days; on bad days they close at 12:30.) I’m still not sure what this form is, nor what it gives me — they also gave me a little slip of paper to call the office of foreigners and make an appointment to get my Tarjeta de Estudiante (Extranjero), my foreigner’s student identity card. (Although I’m working here, they consider me a student because of the nature of the program; it makes it easier to get the visa, and means my payment is a stipend, rather than pay.)

I called, but couldn’t understand the woman — actually, she couldn’t understand me — and I complained about it to one of the teachers at school that day, and he called for me, and made me an appointment for today at noon. I should add that although you can check your appointments online, you can’t make one online — who knows why.

Over the last few days, I searched Spain’s Interior Ministry website, and ended up finding this, a list of the things I needed for my student card. Let’s go over the items:

• Form, filled out, original and copy. I printed that this morning at school, because I don’t have a printer at home.
• Passport, with entry stamp, or in its place, entry certificate. Well, I didn’t have the proof of entry, but I at least had my ticket stubs. I couldn’t tell if this would be enough.
• Three passport photos in color with a white background. When I bought my monthly metro pass, I had bought four photos from a photo store. Unlike passport photos in the US, here he took his camera, took a photo of me against a white wall (no smiles! he was nice, and it turned out pretty well), and printed them in the Kodak machine, and then cut them into the right size. But I had three extras, which was what I needed.
• Visa. Great.
• Proof of why you need the card. Well, this had to be what I needed to get the visa, right? They couldn’t possibly want something different?
• Proof of payment of fees. What fees? Well, it says elsewhere on the website that the fees are 15 euros. How to pay them? In a bank, apparently.
• Social Security. I had no clue what they meant by this. My SSN? Spanish social security? Mra.

Well, I figured I would go, figure out what I needed for next time, and then make a new appointment. Seems reasonable, no? What else could I do?

I left work early, went to the office (near where Emily lives, actually, in a place called the Campillo del Mundo Nuevo, which as near as I can figure means “Land of the New World,” although I feel like “Land” isn’t the right translation of Campo — which means more like farm, usually; the illo just is a diminutive), and stood briefly in line. I got there slightly early, and after waiting briefly told the guard my business there. I asked him if I needed to pay, and he said that I did so afterward (uh huh. very obvious, that.), and gave me a ticket to wait my turn. I waited five, maybe ten minutes, and then went into speak to a middle-aged woman who looked tired and slightly bored.

I gave her my ticket, and then my form and passport. She looked it over, saw that there was no stamp. ¿Cuando llegaste al España?, she asked — When did you arrive in Spain? A las 25 de septiembre, I told her. A las, no. She said. A las es para horas. Al día 25 de septiembre. She corrected my Spanish! Yes! This could’ve upset me (it was a stupid mistake — I know this sort of thing), but instead I thought it was awesome. I’m sure she gets a lot of bad Spanish. Of course, I probably am rendering what she said incorrectly as well — but the point is that she was very much a disapproving mother. And then she took the copy of my visa (which totally wasn’t on the website, but which I had, thank God, made the other day), and wrote under it the date I arrived. Simple as that.

I sat there for a few minutes, watching her as she frowned at her computer, looked annoying, and so forth, and then she handed me a form, told me to pay it at a bank, wrote my NIE (Numero de Identificación de Extranjeros, Foreigner’s Identification Number, necessary for doing any business in Spain as a foreigner) on a receipt, and told me that was it. I could collect it in 45 days at the police station I had been to before. And I was out of there. It was 12:10. It was so much simpler than I expected. Hooray.

Apparently, the likelihood is that when they say “45 days,” they mean “sometime within the year.” Such is what I’ve been told. But I’ll go and check 45 days from today, and see what they say.

Win. End of story.