Letter from Espargal: 35 of 2007

THE VIEW
This week has been about bureaucracy. No doubt you’re more concerned with your own bureaucracy than ours. But since these letters may one day serve as the basis of the book I haven’t yet written, here it is for the record.

If we had thought that our bureaucratic battles were over, we were wrong; for the scourge returned like the devils to the man possessed. We smelled trouble when we received notification of (yet) more registered letters awaiting us in Benafim. I went up to the post office there and came home in a daze, with a clutch of nine tax demands for supposedly unpaid local taxes dating back to our move to Espargal.

Scrutinising them, it seemed to me that the Financas was double-taxing our house under different codes. I pored over their website, spent an hour (mainly waiting) on the phone to tax officials and the next morning visited the Financas in Loule. The man at the desk there tried to assure me that all was normal. Mercifully, his protestations were overheard by the official to whom I’d spoken, who intervened to put things right.

It emerged that our house had been allocated a preliminary tax code while under construction and a final code after completion. The preliminary code should then have been cancelled. But it wasn’t. Four years later the whole caboodle surfaced and with it a host of demands for unpaid taxes. My helpful official presented me with a form to fill in and advised to come back in three weeks when the whole thing should be sorted out.

Our next encounter took place at the conservatory of title deeds in Loule. This office is not one to be visited by anybody in a hurry. As is customary in these situations visitors take a numbered ticket and wait. Lucky ones may be served within the hour. A four-hour wait is not uncommon. A single person may take five minutes of the assistant’s time or fifty. (Lawyers often arrive with a whole file of documents to be processed.) Visitors commonly nip in and out of the office, taking new tickets each time, hoping to strike it lucky at some point.

FRONT GARDEN VIEW TO CASA NADA
To assist us, we employed Suzi, who runs a facilities service in Benafim. Our aim was to register Casa Nada – the Nothing House, so called because there is no official trace of it in the records. In one hand we clutched the Casa Nada document issued to us by the tax department - to prove that it exists; in the other the title deeds of the property on which the building sits.

When we eventually got the desk, the assistant took one look at the papers and shook her head. There was no reference to the house in the title deeds, she said, (which we knew already.) And she couldn’t accept the new tax document as evidence. What we had to do, she explained, was to make another appointment with the notary, who had overseen our original purchase of the property, to get the deeds amended. Once that was done, we could try again.

There’s another complication. There are errors in the tax document because it’s based on old information. Before we see the notary, we need to get these corrected. The parish president has to come to check the property’s boundaries and note the current owners of adjacent properties. Once that document is put right we can go back to the notary. If she (both Loule’s notaries are “shes”) agrees to amend the title deeds, we may return to the conservatory.

As it happens, we are not in any hurry and we think it worthwhile suffering the necessary pain. Eventual registration of the old house will enhance the value of the property and permit us, should we ever wish, to renovate it (officially). It will also probably be necessary in order for the property to be sold.

To calm our nerves we took ourselves to lunch in Alte (where Jones wanted to find a replacement item for Maria of the Conception, who had accidentally broken a favourite jug in Jones’s presence the day before). We chose an outside table at a restaurant. The dogs, as usual, lay at our feet. However, they were upset by two practised bummer cats that arrived to beg scraps from us. For a while I bounced olive pips off the intruders’ heads to keep them at a distance. But the cats grew steadily bolder and the dogs more outraged until there was a sudden hissing and confrontational scrabbling under the table. The cats retired, we soothed the dogs and peace was restored.

On the subject of dogs: Penny, an expat neighbour, came round last weekend to talk about computers and the internet. In the course of our conversation, she mentioned that there was a new stray in the village, a brown and white dog that had come looking for food. The same afternoon we bumped into the animal right outside our gates, just after we’d released our three from their leads at the end of a walk. Ono and Prickles promptly decided that the newcomer was surplus to requirements. Ignoring my yells, they set about hounding him out of town. Receding squeals could be heard from the field into which they’d disappeared, as I went after them, cursing their hides.

I found our pair down on the main road and shared my breathless annoyance with them. I was still panting by the time we got back home. Also, my right Achilles tendon, which has been playing up, was protesting loudly. The following morning, it was inflamed and sore. I hobbled to the loo and back to bed. It was clearly going to be a hobbling kind of Sunday.

Jones wasn’t pleased. (She never is by my intimations of mortality.) The setback coincided with the parish walk, for which I’d entered the pair of us. What’s more, I had been the moving spirit in persuading most of the other expats to sign up. To complicate life further, last Sunday dawned black and damp. Drizzle had fallen overnight and there was the promise of rain in the air. The neighbours decided against joining the great walk and called round to take Jones and the dogs on a local circuit instead. It was suggested to me that I get on with the ironing, on the basis “that you might as well do something useful”. (Which I did.)

Monday evening we went to see the Bourne Ultimatum. It was well done, although the stream of hand-held shots left our heads reeling. Tuesday it rained. We’d postponed Natasha to spend the morning at the Financas. Afterwards I dropped in on Honda to get two new front rubber mats for the car. My heel had worn a hole in the old driver’s mat. Must surely be time to look for a new car.

Wednesday brought my first English lesson of the new academic year. (4 pupils so far, with several more likely.) Before the lesson, I sat in on a lecture about the basis of Portuguese law. I’m interested to learn more but have my doubts as the lecturer never gets up to use the blackboard and doesn’t much like being interrupted.

On the way home I met the TV man who had sold me the card that was supposed to give us access to several encrypted UK channels. (It did but with severe break-up.) Like all such operators, he arrived in a hurry. After some preliminary checks he informed me that our dish was too small to give us a quality signal. I agreed reluctantly (read “expensive”) to let him install a bigger one. It seems to have done the trick. Neighbours subsequently informed us that in their case a new LNB had sufficed. (I conclude that there is more profit in big dishes than new LNBs. We live and learn.)

One of Jones’s plants has burst into stunning flower. We have never seen the likes. Jonesy called me outside one evening to see it. The pair of us oohed and aahed. The garden is looking lovely after the rain, and it's such a pleasure not to have to water it each evening.