Una calle de Madrid by Joe_aesmorga
“I am English and I love to queue”
George Mikes, the distinguished journalist, once observed that, “An Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an orderly queue of one”. Indeed, this English peculiarity holds me up each time I have to visit General Pardiñas, as a barrage of underhand manoeuvres from expert queue dodgers always conspire to ensure that I spend longer in the building than almost anyone else – even perhaps longer than the civil servants.
Funcionarios, or better put, public servants, are one of Spain’s great idiosyncrasies. The country has one of the highest percentages of government paid workers in Europe. They are rich in power and enjoy an unparalleled level of job security; owing much of their status and clout to the forgotten days of the dictatorship, when Spain was very much controlled from the middle. At one point, it was claimed that everyone in Madrid was either a civil servant or training to become one.
Morning timetables, endless holidays, a tidy office and a reasonable salary combine to offer the lure of a contented existence for aspiring civil servants. Even in the early twenty first century with much of Madrid’s power already devolved to Spain’s 17 autonomous communities, students will often be found scribbling away in their bedrooms late into the night, studying for the exams that could act as the gateway to the comfortable life.
However, there are signs that as a profession, the civil service’s star is on the wane. Increasingly affluent and losing its introspection, Spain is a society being permeated by change. Etorne Samanes is one young Spaniard who could speak for a generation when she declares, “I wouldn’t want to work for all of my life in the same job and with the same people. Change (at work) is a good thing”.
This shift in public perception and attitude has fused somewhat with a number of acts of parliament that have drip fed through government during the past twenty years; capping and compromising civil service power. The public perception of what remains, is that the system appears antiquated and rather odd at ease. I’ve heard on many occasions the accusation that the Spanish civil service resembles a cumbersome glut of individuals that seems to possess all of the motivation of a stoned sloth.
The existence of such a bulky organisation perhaps goes some way to explaining Spain’s puzzling and convoluted approach to paperwork. As far as I can discern, this paperwork is comprised from a rich list of acronyms. There is of course the ever present DNI, and the NIF. Companies need to ensure that they have their CIF and everyone is expected to have their social security number (NSS). Foreigners need to make sure that they have their NIE and then you might want to apply for a residency card or register yourself as self-employed. All in all, there is enough red tape in Spain to wrap up the Bernabéu.
Recent arrivals in Madrid will know that all roads eventually lead to either General Pardiñas or Guzmán el Bueno, where the civil service can be located in tangible form. These drab grey edifices don’t match well with the bleached, brilliant white buildings around Sol or Gran Vía, and their façade is rather ominous of what awaits inside.
These governmental buildings are the main point of contact that anyone from the international community will have with Spanish civil servants, and it is well worth bearing in mind that in this particular context, customer service means that the customer provides the service. It is up to you to have completed the forms correctly, to have remembered all of the relevant photocopies and to have arrived before the shutters crash down at two o’clock sharp. Even then you may have to scamper across the city later in chase of an elusive social security stamp.
Civil servants seem often to be on the receiving end of a good deal of criticism. Many Spaniards complain that their working timetables are too short; others say that they can be curt or rude. An American friend of mine, lamenting the poor service that he encountered at the tax office complained that he’d, “Rather be told to ‘have a nice day’ by someone in the States who doesn’t mean it, rather than be told to ‘go away’ by someone that does”.
Accustomed to the Westernised values of ‘service with a smile’ and‘ time is money’, the task of understanding the life of a Spanish civil servant can be a difficult one for an outsider. Indeed, the idea of forty years working in the same office seems to be a complete poke in the face of the American dream. However, in exchange for forty years of fun and a good salary living in a city as magical as Madrid, there are some days I’d grab the civil servant’s life with both hands.
Filed under: Spain | Tagged: bueno, endless, etorne, Funcionarios, general, george, guzman, holidays, Madrid, milkes, office, pardiñas, salary, samanes, security, social, Spain
