The Sea, The Sea!

Today was an early day, as Patra and I set off to obtain residency cards. This must be done at an Oficina de Extranjería (immigration office), of which there are only two in the province of Cádiz. It also must be done within thirty days of your arrival in Spain; I had been here 20 days already and Patra was at something like 23. We chose to go to the office in El Puerto de Santa Maria, a town on the beach with a reputation for being awesome. The bus to Puerto, though, left at 7:20 in the morning so we were up much earlier to get ready and make it to the station on time. Luckily, this time we didn’t have to walk in a downpour. It was somewhat eerie to walk in Arcos while still dark, though, as the white town is awash in an orange glow from streetlamps at night.

Once on the bus, we traveled west toward the Atlantic. The moon was like an overripe winter melon in the sky, rotting at the bottom. Mist clung to the fields; lone farmhouses stood as though without foundations.

From this dreamlike beginning, the industrial entrance of Puerto was a shock. The bus stopped by an unimpressive bus shelter just before a busy roundabout. Expecting an actual station, I didn’t get out of my seat. “Jenna,” Patra said, “This is our stop.” I got off the bus with grave misgivings. We scanned the map at the bus shelter for Avenida de la Constitución, where we were supposed to find the office, but couldn’t find the name anywhere. We asked a woman seated at the shelter; she said she may have heard of the street, but she really couldn’t be sure. We went across the street to the train station and asked for directions there. Following those directions, we ended up ten minutes away at Avenida Diputación. The man hadn’t understood us. We looked at the map in Patra’s guidebook, also lacking Constitución. We decided we would walk in the general direction of the historic part of town, since there was, at least, a tourism office where we could hopefully get a better map of the town.

It was nine-thirty when we arrived at the tourism office, which didn’t open until ten. There were women directly inside the office and we poked our heads in as politely as possible to ask if they could just give us one map. “We open at ten,” they said abruptly, then shut the door. We asked a woman on the street if she knew where Constitución was. Her eyes opened wide. She told us it was possible to walk, but very long and complicated. Downtrodden, we went to a café and ate croissants until ten. Back at the tourism office, a much friendlier man showed us maps of the town and pointed out all the highlights, as well as a ferry we could take to a neighboring town if we wanted. Desperate to get to the immigration office, we thanked him and asked if he could just show us how to get to Constitución. He pointed it out—maybe five or six blocks from where we were. Neither long, nor complicated.

We arrived at the office a little after ten; already the waiting room was filling up. I recognized one girl from our orientation in Sevilla and she told us that this office required you to have a copy of your every page in your passport, as well as extra copies of your information and visa pages, and any other pages with stamps on them. Flustered, we hurried out of the office and to a nearby copy center. Back at the immigration office a few minutes later and several pounds more paperweight in our bags, we found that six or seven people had showed up since we left, thus surpassing us in line. We sat down to wait, like all the rest, for the one woman handling all of our cases.

After about an hour, the girl we knew was called in to the office. She emerged, triumphant, twenty minutes later. We congratulated her, feeling all the more closer to our own eventual success. We did sudokus to pass the time, read up on the news from the US in Spanish, and kept counting down the people until it would be our turn. In Spain, you don’t take a number or sit in line. You enter a room, ask “Quién es el último?” (Who’s the last one?) and keep track of the line in your head. This system, for the most part, works just fine. Also, you become more aware of everyone around you, begin to put them in a hierarchy based on their timeliness.

It was getting close to our turn, when the one woman handling immigration cases decided to take a lunch break. This was deflating, but I still had hope. There were three people ahead of us. If each one took twenty minutes, and the woman came back by twelve-twenty, then we would definitely get a chance to give her our paperwork. I felt bad—but also a little smug—about the people who were showing up just now. They had no chance of getting into her office before two, when she would close for the day. The woman came back from lunch at about twelve-fifteen and we were back in business. One appointment before ours lasted only five minutes. When we were finally next in line, I told Patra that I had been getting nervous, but at least now we had nothing to worry about. No coming back to Puerto for us!

We entered the caseworker’s office, sat down. I pulled out my application form and handed it to her. She looked over it for a few moments, then said, “You live in Arcos?” I confirmed this, thinking maybe she would say something about how beautiful the town is. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I can’t process your papers. You have to go to the office in Cádiz.” I felt slightly comforted by the fact that she used the phrase “Lo siento” for us. This is taught to Americans as the equivalent for “I’m sorry,” but it’s much stronger than the casual way we sometimes use our own apologetic phrase, much more full of regret. At least, I thought, she wasn’t just a jerk.

Patra and I left the office. We’d waited for over two hours just to be turned away. What’s more, we hadn’t been aware that there would be any division between who has to get their cards processed in Cádiz or Puerto.

At least, we agreed, it was a beautiful day. And we were exploring a new town, albeit what we saw the most of was the inside of a government office. Walking past a fruit store, Patra stopped in for a pomegranate to cheer herself up. My consolation was the ocean. It was easy enough to find, just a few blocks from the immigration office. Past hibiscus bushes and dunes, we came upon a wide expanse of beach. We rolled up our pants and took off our shoes and felt the sand give way beneath our toes. We wandered to the water’s edge and waded in. As soon as the first wave slide over my feet, I felt completely rejuvenated. So the day didn’t go as we had planned. So we will have to go to Cádiz next Friday, our last possible day to register for our residency cards. None of that mattered when I realized that I am alive, I am living in Spain, and the ocean is just forty-five minutes away from my cliff-top town. The day once again became dreamlike, and this time it wasn’t interrupted.



(My feet in the Atlantic! At last!)