October 16th: Visa issue finally resolved!

San Sebastian autumn sky

La Concha Beach

La Concha inlet

We received a message from the university this week indicating that we must go to the police station to complete the required registration process.  This is required if you are planning on living in Spain for over 3 months.  Usually you have 30 days to register with the police after arrival in Spain.  We had to wait to register until the visa mess caused by the LA consulate  (giving us student visas for some inexplicable reason, when we paid and submitted the correct paperwork for work/residence visas) was resolved.  The university, Office of Extranjeros and someone, somewhere in Madrid fixed our visas for us.  I really don’t know how it would have been resolved if we would have tried to do it ourselves.  Drew was given a paper indicating he now had a work visa.  We had our proof of *permanent residence paperwork and our passports (*last week we had to take our apartment contract to the city hall to prove that we had a place of residence, they then issued us an official document as proof of residence)... So off we went to the police station.

FYI:
In Spain, everyone has a Document of National Identity number (DIN)/identity card.  This number/card is issued by the police department.  Without that number, we are unable to get internet for our apartment, buy train/bus tickets online and many other things.  

We assumed we would be making one trip to the police station to get our resident card.  The process was actually a mini-adventure.  We went through security (like at the airport) and were escorted by an officer to show us how to get our ticket (number) to see the appropriate officer.  The officer initiated drew’s paperwork, and gave him a triplicate form to take to the bank to pay for the residence card with additional instructions.  I was told that I needed to go to the Office of Extranjeros first before he could start processing my paperwork, to get a paper showing proof of my resident visa status.  Luckily he gave us a city map and marked vaguely where we needed to go.  With a little bit of "explaining" we obtained the right paperwork from the Office of Extranjeros.   From there it was to a photo copy shop to have every page of both our passports copied, even empty ones, as well as a copy of out proof of residence/work forms.  Then we went back to the police station…through security, got a ticket, waited our turn, and initiated my paperwork process…I was issued my triplicate form to take to the bank to pay for residence card.  We noticed that this form was a "790" form...I remembered that I had paid a similar fee when submitting a 790 form in Los Angeles, so I showed the officer the copy of that form, thinking maybe I didn't need to go to the bank after all.  He said "Its a different 790 form."  This just struck us as funny, that with all the possible numbers to choose from, there would be 2 different 790 forms.
Off we went to the bank to pay the two 15EU fee's.  The bank clerk confirmed that they indeed take payment for residence cards, but only the first 2 hours of the banking day (she pointed to the sign indicating this strange policy), and of course we were too late...bummer.   Off we trudged to a second bank, which processed our payment.  From there it was back to the police station, for the third time that day…After presenting all my paperwork, and proof of payment,  I was electronically finger printed.  We thought this was odd, since electronic finger printing was part of the original visa process.  The police then issued papers with our national identification numbers.  The official cards will be ready in a month...requiring one more trip back to the police station!

First thing we did was rush to the Vodafone store and get an internet plan for our apartment. YES!

These hurdles are all part of the process.  There is a lot of running around, but in truth, everyone was totally nice.  When you talk to Spaniards about the bureaucracy they just shake their heads in acknowledgement.  Here are a few photos to show why all this hassle is totally worth it.