OnWednesday I got an SMS: You have a notification at this URL from the Canarian government. Just that. The URL was a “Notification inbox”. I had no idea if this was something about my “Degree of disability” application (surely not so soon) or my taxes (but I wasn’t aware of anything outstanding) or what. The uncertainty was stressful. When I got home I went to the URL and it said I could look at that inbox with either my electronic ID or my government password, known as a Cl@ve.
I used to have both, but I hadn’t needed either since before the pandemic, and neither was stored on my laptop. I was stuck. I knew I could get a new electronic DNI from the National Police, but I vaguely remembered that it took weeks. I mentioned my problem to a friend, who said that you normally had ten days to reply to these things, so don’t stand around and watch the paint dry.
By this time I’d been sitting so long that my phantom leg was painful, so I had to go and lie down.
Then I had the bright idea that maybe my electronic ID or my Cl@ve would be on the laptop in the Eco-geek office. After all, I’d been using that when I applied for my current ID card. I phoned Theresa and explained, and asked when would she be in the office for Carlos to collect it. Bless her, she promised to bring it here.
And on Thursday afternoon she did. Not just the laptop, but also my notes for the next thriller I’d been planning, before cancer crashed the party. It would be nice to get back to that. It took a while to set the laptop up because it needed an external monitor and keyboard because the innards were fine but the externals were borked. I remembered my password to get into the laptop no bother, but it contained neither electronic ID nor Cla@ve. I spent some time poking around government websites getting stressed, and found that you could set up a zoom call to get a Cl@ve. Great. But it would have to wait until office hours in the morning.
On Friday morning I tried to start the video call to get my cl@ve password, but when I put on my NIE it told me that access was restricted for this NIE. What?
I tried to renew my password, but you need the old one first, which I didn’t have. There were no instructions for changing your password, just for getting a new one. I thought the video call might fix it, or at least tell me how to fix it, but I couldn’t get a call without a password. Catch-22 whichever way I looked. It felt like a maze of mirrors.
I became a weepy mess again.
Carlos came and mopped me up.
He said, “Let’s go to the Delegación del Gobierno.”
Sorry, who? In thirty years of living here, I’d never heard of them.
From what Carlos said, they sound a bit like a customer service desk for the government. So I drank some tea, calmed down, Googled the phone number and rang.
The nice young man listened kindly and said, “It sounds like you should come down here and I will get you a new password.”
Brilliant. I felt much better. Did it need to be me? Could I send my husband because I am in a wheelchair?
No, it had to be me in person. “If you can’t get inside the building send your husband in, and we’ll pop out to make sure you match your ID card.”
Ah. A very sensible precaution for something that gives access to tax records, social security, some health records etc. etc. down a rather long list of important things.
“Can I just check that this is the office on the seafront?”
Right beside the Cabildo (island government.)
“Yes, my husband’s nodding. He knows it. We’re on our way.”
So we went, of course, and I got a nice push along the seafront. It was a beautiful, sunny day, not too hot. Carlos said, “You know, I’m sure there’s a ramp. And I can get you up a step or two.”
“We’ll manage somehow.”
The ramp was for the main Cabildo and there was no connecting passageway. There were four steps. But they also had a wheelchair lift. Yay!
The security guard saw me coming and lifted up the barriers for me. I rolled on and tried to swing the safety barriers back down.
Nope. They wouldn’t move.
I tried, the security guard tried, Carlos tried. Eventually, we got them down. Then the lift wouldn’t move until the third or fourth try. But eventually I rose up like Venus out of the waves. And then it took several tries to get me out.
After all that, they were waiting for me inside. Without meaning to, I’d made quite an entrance.
The nice young man on the phone turned out to be rather good-looking too. He checked that I really was me first. Then he didn’t give me a new password; he gave me an activation number and explained how to use it to get a new password. I was a bit worried, but OK.
We got kebabs and went home.
After lunch, I tried out my activation number, and it all went like a dream. I took my shiny new password and at long last got into the government inbox.
It said:
Required documentation notification: Recognition, declaration and qualification of the degree of disability.
There were three attachments. After considerable head-scratching, I finally understood that I had ten days from the date of the message to produce “Updated Medical / Psychological Reports.”
What? In case my leg has grown back? I don’t get it. I really don’t get it. I’m not at all clear what they want from me, but I can send them everything I have. The trouble is, they don’t give an address anywhere in the message, nor a phone number. I’ve googled, and there’s one office on Tenerife and one on Gran Canaria. Should I send it there?
And the original text message was on Wednesday. I now have five working days to deliver these documents. And I have a horrible feeling that means they have to arrive on Tenerife by then, so leaving me at least a day earlier.
I’m sure the people in that office are very familiar with their procedures, but I’m not. I don’t know how any of this works and I feel like I’m being attacked by an invisible man with an invisible baseball bat.
UPDATE: The printer/scanner refused to scan or copy. We tried the old one from upstairs, and that will scan but not print. So I’m scanning. And getting confused about what’s already been done and not.
As you say, it’s sensible to take precautions to prove you really are who you say you are, and really are entitled to any help or information you request – but it shouldn’t be so difficult for genuine people to provide this proof and things should be simple once they have.
The details will vary, but I don’t think the British system is any better. There have been reports of terminally ill people having support stopped because they were too ill to go through the process of proving they hadn’t suddenly got well.
Only just discovered you over here Sheila, it’s a fab blog. You so have my sympathy with the paperwork, I have struggled many times with similar things. Fingers crossed it will go well now.