Residencia!

It was a 9am start and a quick trip into Alicante this morning. Darrell's Residencia card had finally come through at the Foreign Office. It has taken a long time to get to this point, mainly because of the slow Spanish Governmental system, that deals with official paperwork, documents and applications. Darrell's legal status is now the same as mine and there are no longer any conditions on his length of stay in Spain. We are both lucky enough to have completed this process, before the date, Britain leaves the European Union, hopeful that we will have no further hoops to jump through, when Brexit finally kicks in; something we will not know for sure until March 19th 2019.... 

....We decided to have a quick stopover at the beach on the way home. Despite the early morning cloud, you could see Alicante clearly to the left and Urbanova to the right. It was lovely taking in the views, breathing in the warm Spanish air and enjoying ten minutes of quiet tranquility, away from Gran Alacant....

....Next it was a rather brief stay at Banco Sabadell. Usually we are waiting at least an hour to get served, in a country that enjoys queuing more than the UK; today it was straight to the counter, to show the cashier Darrell's new Residencia card, which allows them to remove, all those nasty non resident charges, applied to foreign national accounts in Spain....

....Finally we stopped at Consum in the GA Centre, to get last minute supplies for Christmas and a couple of jars of Marmite. I am still very price conscious living in Spain; having paid 3'45€ for a small jar of Marmite two days ago, I wanted to get in some more, just in case the whole of Spain is shut for a week at Christmas, as is usually the case during a public holiday. Consum is usually the cheapest supermarket to buy the black stuff and as it happens, it was; 2'99€ is a bargain price for Spain, so I grabbed a few while I was there. After a quick trip to the market, to pick up the veg for Christmas dinner, it was a glass of Rioja to celebrate the end of a very rocky road and an hour long siesta to compensate for the early start!