Bits of Business

 

The other day I went down the mountain to do some gestiones. Down the mountain. Bit of an exaggeration; Macharaviaya, the village where I live is only 240 metres above sea level, but it’s ten minutes of spiralling downhill bends to get to the coast, so ‘down the mountain’ it is.

Bueno, back to the gestiones. On this occasion, these involved queueing for 15 minutes to send a registered letter at Correos, nipping into the Town Hall to sign an application for a home improvement subsidy, popping into my bank to ask for yet another debit card replacement on account of the magnetic band’s every-decreasing half life, dropping in at the insurance company where I have a plan de jubilación (pension scheme) to see how many millions (ha,ha) I’m due in the unlikely event that both of us are still around in 20 years’ time – and, a trip all the way into Málaga to hand in my three-monthly tax returns to the person who does gestiones for a living: the gestor, the sorter outer of all the bits of running around I haven’t got the time, energy or grey matter to do myself.

A gestión, in case you didn’t know / hadn’t guessed is a sorting out, an administrative or bureaucratic errand, a bit of business. To quote from our book In the Garlic, “Hacer gestiones can range from solving a minor problem with a bank to major negotiations like pulling troops out of Iraq.”

The gestor, on the other hand, is mostly concerned with running around or sending his/her minions to run around on your behalf to obtain official documents, permits, licenses and authorisations. He/She costs good money, but may save you from stress-induced heart attacks in the long run.

Though not necessarily - should your gestor’s office be located in the busiest part of town, where the nearest extortion racket, sorry, municipal car park, is always full, and the adjacent side streets are a mess of one-way, wing mirror-clipping madness.

Luckily, on this particular day, someone actually pulled out of a prime parking space less than 200 metres from the Gestoría. The sun was shining, the pavements were buzzing, and when I handed over my paperwork, it seemed that absolutely all my papeles were in present and correct - that for once, La Ley de ‘falta uno’, The Law of ‘One Missing’ did not apply.

A reward was in order. A nice sunny table on a sidewalk cafe, a copy of that day’s El País newspaper, and a leisurely breakfast - consisting of a sombra doble (large, not-too-strong coffee) and a pitufo (large toasted roll) smothered in fresh tomato pulp and garlic-steeped olive oil. Oh, and a small glass of freshly-squeezed orange juice thrown in for good measure. And all for €2.10.

Well worth a morning’s gestiones. 

Spanish Snow

Hello from rainy Manchester, where I’m visiting my mother. I left Barcelona in balmy, springlike weather. We flew over the snow-capped Pyrenees. And I thought: they look like meringue. And remembered the Spanish expression for beating egg whites till they form stiff peaks: montar las claras a punto de nieve – to snow point. And it was so good to see the snow. Snow, as well as a bit of a lift (sorry about the pun) for the skiing industry, means meltwater, and that means water for the reservoirs. However, as the TV3 weatherman reminded us on Friday, a lot of that meltwater is going to end up in France rather than Catalunya’s depleted reservoirs. In the high Pyrenees the Val d’Aran (where Baqueira Beret is located, a favourite ski resort of royals and celebs plus paparazzi, as seen in the pages of ‘¡Hola!’ magazine) is the only district of Catalunya that mostly belongs to the Atlantic rather than the Mediterranean basin. Here is the source of the Garona – the River Garonne which flows down into France and through Toulouse. Then it goes west to Bordeaux where it forms the Gironde estuary with the waters of the Dordogne and flows into the Atlantic. For all you lovers of useless information out there – and pub quizmasters — the Garonne is one of the few rivers in the world with a tidal bore, which surfers and jet skiers can ride more than 70 miles upstream from the Atlantic. I really had no idea.