My very first blog......or how me and José bought mobile phones

Bienvenido a mi blog. Mi nombre es Mark y vivo en Galicia, España..........or in other words, welcome to my blog. My name is Mark and I live in Galicia, Spain. La Coruña to be exact. I really don’t believe that the first couple of sentences required translation, containing as they do just fairly basic Spanish, but as I only speak fairly basic Spanish at the moment, I felt an urgent desire to show off the small but perfectly formed grasp I have of the tongue of my newly adopted home country.


I had intended to write an almost daily blog when we first moved here at the

Spinach: Nothing to do with this blog

beginning of July. There were so many things going on that it seemed a shame not to share them with friends, colleagues, ex-lovers and any random vegan who decided to click on the link in the hope of finding a recipe for spinach casserole. The problem with this is in the previous sentence.......so much happened when we first arrived that I have barely had the time to think about anything, let along commit my thoughts to electronic print.

We all know that the first edition of any blog can be as boring as watching “Gardeners World” but one has to set up one’s premise. Like Cheryl Cole, there really is no point to this, but nevertheless, I do intend to write on occasions and share my thoughts on living in this strange land with you lovely people, out there in the dark. Good grief, I came over all Gloria Swanson there for a moment!

I guess I need to start with the title. You’ll notice that there’s not a single recipe for spinach on here, on account of the fact that it’s one of those vegetables that makes me heave, unless it’s in a Marks & Spencer spinach and broccoli quiche. The lovely José has a cousin here who speaks great English and together, we take the piss out of the worst of our own cultures. I speak in cod Spanish to him, hence the phrase, “I am spinach”, where he says to me that he is “Speakin de eeeeengleessh””. In fact, to get the Spanish accent completely correct, one needs to say (in a heavily accented stylee), “I yan e-spinach” (the e is pronounced as ‘eh’ rather than ‘eee’, but quite frankly, that would have looked ridiculous at the top of the page, so “I Am Spinach” was born.

Now, I need to hook you in, so I’m going to use this first blog to highlight the fun we had when buying our mobile phones. Settle back with some mint imperials and read on – it’s not for the faint hearted.........

Having arrived in Spain on Wednesday 6^th July, we set out on the 7^th to buy a couple of mobile phones for use here in Spain, not wanting to attract high charges for using our UK ones out here. How easy would this be? We would walk into a mobile phone shop and they would be all over us for the custom, bearing in mind the cut-throat market in mobiles these days. Wrong!! Each phone shop we went to – and we went to a lot – told us something different. It was either:

• a.      going to cost us around €200 each, or
• b.      they couldn’t sell us anything more than a cheap phone like a pre-World War 2 Nokia (we wanted iPhones) as we hadn’t been resident here prior to 6^th July, or
• c.       it would be at least 3 months before we could have a mobile phone as we needed to have lived here for that period of time.

2 sim cards, earlier today

By the end of the day, we were totally fed up and slightly homicidal. We went to Orange, who at the time, gave us the best deals. They put two iPhones aside for us and told us we had to go and buy some prepaid cards from elsewhere, then they could let us have the phones for around €100 each. In the UK, for €100 each, we could have had two iPhones apiece, free calls for a decade and receive oral sex from the shop manager, but this was the best offer we’d had, so we decided to go with it, although we didn’t sign anything at the time. We set off to buy the prepaid cards, but got waylaid into Movistar and the lovely Loli. Why we went to another shop was beyond me, but we did and she tempted us with an offer we couldn’t refuse. Two iPhones, black for me and white for José, for €59 each, which included insurance for a year or so. All we had to do was pop across to the supermarket and buy two prepaid cards 

and take them back to her. She would use these to pretend that we had been with another company and this would allow to get the ‘swap’ price. One quick shopping expedition and €30 later, we were back and hastily completing forms. We were told that the swap would take about 5 days and that we would have the phones next week. So far so good.

At dinner that night, the phone rang. It was Loli. She had done the credit check on José and he’d got a debt of around €106 from........wait for it.........14 years ago!!! This begs the questions, why didn’t they ask for it at the time and why is it still on the system? I thought they wrote debts off after so long? Apparently not! Apparently, Movistar holds grudges and will wait long enough until you go back to them and then they delight in shooting you down with the news that they’ve found you again and that you still owe them money. There was no getting out of paying debts from the past with Movistar. Oh no! José knew nothing of the debt and thinks it came from a time when he naively passed on his mobile to the person he was in business with at the time and he thinks she didn’t pay the final bill. Anyway, the upshot of this was that he had to pay the balance before we could have our shiny new phones. He had to call Movistar and confirm the amount, then arrange to pay it.

He called them straight after Loli’s phone call and they told him he had no debt on the system and that everything was fine. He asked them if they were sure. Oh yes, they were sure. He was debt free. Marvellous! Loli made the mistake and our phones were now in reach again. He called her to tell her of her oversight but Loli told him that she thought she was right. Rather gleefully, José told her he wasn’t a debt-ridden chav (el chavo??) and could she please start parcelling our phones up for collection as soon as possible. Loli agreed to call Movistar back to check once more, which she did. Twenty minutes later we received another call. Yes, he did have a debt. Sorry! Could he please arrange to call them to find out for how much and arrange to pay. In debt again, José called them back. Do you see the pattern beginning to emerge here??? He told them who he was and that he thought he had a debt. The nice South American lady on the phone told him that he had no debt and that his account was clear. He explained to her that Loli had double-checked, but that he certainly did have a debt. The nice South American lady re-checked. No, there was no debt. He could hang up the phone with a clear conscience.

Frustrated, he called Loli back. She called them once more, called us back and gave José the amount of debt he had and told him to go to the post office to pay it – there’s no such thing as being able to pay online for things like that here.....more of that particular exciting phenomena in another episode!

Are you bored yet? There’s more...........No-one said this blog was going to be easy now, did they?..............The next day we went to the post office to pay the bill. When we got to the counter, the man asked for the mobile number that it was to be paid against, but José didn’t have it. 

We went outside to call Movistar and another nice South American woman told him he had no debt. He explained the whole situation once again, this time slightly more frantically, only to be told he would be transferred to another department. We waited about 10 minutes for the other department to answer, only to then be cut off. He tried again and a further nice South American lady also told him he had no debt. She didn’t transfer him to another department, but told him that she couldn’t do anything and that he should be happy he had no debt. Why was he trying to actually find a debt when he didn’t have one? What sort of weirdo was he?? Then she hung up. 

He called Loli, but she wasn’t working and her workmate couldn’t do anything about it. Here in Spain, if it’s not your issue, then you don’t touch it with a bargepole. No-one really bothers looking for someone else. They just thank some deity or other that it’s not their issue and pass el bucko.

Three days into my new life and I was wondering why I’d done it.

We went back on the Monday, as there was nothing Loli could do over the weekend. On Monday morning, she gave us the number of the phone with the debt and we poddled off to the post office to pay it. This time we were successful. Once paid, we had to take the proof back to Loli so that she could show Movistar there was no longer any debt. Finally, 5 days later, the phones were ours, a whole nine days after we’d initially gone in for them. I don’t even like mobile phones. I like to be uncontactable, but know that with the business we’re going to set up, I’m going to need to be on the end of a reliable phone. 

Oh, and José still can’t walk past Orange Mobile, in case the iPhones are still under the desk and the girl comes out to chastise him for not buying them.