MY SAY
By Dave Martin
CATALUNYA, SPAIN: Seriously Spain, what the fuck. Everyone knows that moving to a new country on a new continent, that speaks two entirely different languages, and that has a bureaucracy entirely different from where you come from is a walk in the park, right?
Fucking Wrong, motherfucker.
Turns out that when you move to a country with nothing but 3 bags, a dog, no job, no permit to work, no place to live and only a poor grasp on one of the two official languages (and a non-existent one on the other), shit doesn’t go perfectly. Seriously, how hard can it really be to first obtain an empadronada before you can apply for a numero identitad de extranjero by completing form ex-18 (Solicitud de inscripción en el Registro Central de Extranjeros Residencia ciudadano de la UE), and by simply paying the Regimen Comunitar workrio, Certificado de Registro/Tarjeta de residencia fee and then finally get a numero seguridad social so you are legally allowed to start looking for work? Man, I hear ya. You’d think it’d be a lay-up, wouldn’t ya, but no, because turns out it’s a lot less like being on a fastbreak and kissing the ball off the glass for an easy 2, but instead more like Vince Carter’s dunks at the 2000 All-Star game.
I mean, seriously, what the fuck Spain. Right? Exactly.
Everyone from your Grandma Beatrice to the kid hurling rocks at passing cars from the freeway overpass knows that uprooting and shifting to a new land on a faraway continent is child’s play. I mean, no shit, right? Yeah, totally. But get this, right, after I rocked up to Spain last week and stepped off the plane at Barcelona’s El Prat Airport, I wasn’t immediately handed a lucrative job, a cushy place to live, a permit to work or even a measly tight-as-fuck Spanish girlfriend or pissy little rockstar lifestyle.
Seriously, Spain, Get it together. Everyone knows that moving to a strange new land that you’ve only previously been on holiday for three days, where you have no idea how its bureaucratic system works and that you’ve done little to no research on said system, is easy as piss. So come on Spain, what the shit. You really dropped the ball this time.