Day 85 - "Testing times"

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 into the distance.

 

To amuse us while we waited there were four TV screens hanging from the ceiling all showing the same thing.  They were driving safety films, various hapless drivers crashing into each other, mangled wreckage and bodies and blood, not the cheeriest introduction into our future as Spanish Licence holding Brits.

 

The was a loud BUZZ and it was our turn.  A very serious man sat behind a tower of papers, Paco did the talking, the man said nothing, looked at all our paperwork.

 

He then moved his chair back a few inches and took in a large breath.  This is always the point when you know things are going to go badly wrong.

 

“Now,” he said in Spanish “I can under the European law give you a new licence, but it will end when you do the Brexit, so maybe a few months, maybe a few years,” he laughed.

 

There then followed an intense conversation with Paco. Paco turned to us and said, he thinks you are better to make the exam and then come back.

 

It took me 23 years to pass my driving test, and I only passed because the examiner knew a friend of mine really well so we just took a gentle trip into the country where I did some parallel parking and we came back to the test centre, I botched up reversing into a parking space, but he said, take another go at it, I did and he said I am pleased to say you have passed.

 

But no, not that sort of an exam a medical one. We were told to go over to the building across the road where they did the exam.  The first part involved you grasping two bath taps and a very old computer in front of you showed a game of pong that you had to steer with the two taps. When I played this game there was a lot of buzzing sounds and at the end it came up 40%

 

The lady in a white coat sitting at the desk looked at me, sighed, looked at my score, sighed again and said “you pass, got to the lady of bloods.” “It is OK,” said Paco, they just want to pressurise you.”

 

In the next office another woman in another white coat wrapped a blood pressure monitor around my arm. There was a lot of peeping, she sighed, “You are very pressurised, you bloods are too high.” She said.  Paco interjected, “He has just had a cup of strong coffee,” “Oh,” she said “That is OK you pass, go to the room for your eyes.”

 

Another room another lady in a white coat.  “You wear the gafas when you drive?”  Truthfully I didn’t when I was in the UK so answered “no”

“Take them off,” I took my glasses off, “you see the shapes ahead, tell me which way they are up?”  I actually couldn’t see the chart, let alone the shapes. “Put your glasses on.” I put them on, she got a large wooden stick and whacked the stick against each line, “Read,”

“In Spanish?”

 

“Si, this is a Spanish test.”  I told her which way up the shapes were but sometimes I got my “sube” mixed up with my “baja”

 

She put the stick down and sighed “You must always wear your gafas when you conduct,” she said, “will you?” 

 

“Yes I promise,” I said – “Good you pass that will be thirty eight Euros.”

 

So we both have a driving licence with our photos on and I do wear my glasses to drive.

 

The process of buying the car was very professional, Ruben the Salesman tried very hard to speak English, showing Chris the whips of rain, the spear of oil and the lights of always on. The paperwork done he handed Chris the keys.  You may take your car. Chris looked at the impossible turn out of the showroom, there was a large wall directly in front of the exit.  Ruben said, “Do not worry I take the car out for you,” and that was that, a very pleasant experience, no touching, no coffee, no smiles no handshake but everybody was trying their best to be as new normal as they could.