Carrateras Can Take Their Toll

Carrateras Can Take Their Toll
by Mike Wilkinson

Ihere are a number of things that you need to carry with you when you drive a foreignregistered car in Spain. At all times you must have the following - your passport, your current driving licence, your valid insurance certificate, the receipt from the insurers showing that your insurance policy is paid up to date, your vehicle registration document, a national identity plate (GB etc), two red warning triangles, a reflective yellow jacket, a first aid kit, a fire extinguisher, a set of spare bulbs, a cuddly toy, a microwave oven and a partridge in a pear tree. And if any of the items from the list are missing you will possibly end up getting an on-the-spot fine or even more likely, get your car towed away by the grúa. Furthermore, although a driving licence from another EU country is legally valid in Spain it is only a temporary measure, and if you are here for the long haul you’re supposed to take your existing licence to the local provincial traffic department to be stamped and registered. You should also be aware that by far the best way of negotiating Spanish roads is either as a pedestrian or as a passenger on a bus, train or in a cab… but definitely not as a driver in a foreign-registered car.

I know these things now, but it wasn’t always that way. We have to go back to the days when I had only recently managed to relocate myself away from the blight of “Old Blighty” and on to the sunny shores of Spain.

I must have been having one of those moments of feeling strangely unfamiliar with myself when I agreed on the deal. What on earth did I need a car for, anyway? Negotiating traffic as a pedestrian had been difficult enough, up until then, as it was. In fact, just negotiating pedestrians as a pedestrian had not been without incident! But I was quite happy pedestrian-ing along in my own sweet way, and blissfully unaware of the untold follies awaiting me once I started driving a foreign-registered car in Spain.

So, there I was, blissfully unaware and about to buy myself a motor. Untold adventures of driving through mountain passes, discovering hot springs and hidden mountain lakes deep in the Spanish countryside were flashing through my mind as I turned the key in the ignition and it started first time.

“Yeah, man... it starts first time,” enthused Dave-the- Spade as he consolidated his sale. “It’s a great little runner. A babe magnet. And being as it’s a right-hand-drive foreign-registered motor you don’t need any of that MOT or ITV stuff. All the paperwork’s in order - it’s all in the boot. By the way, can you give me a lift to the airport?

”Yeah, that’s right, Dave, leave the country quick, before my reality check.

I ended up as a passenger while Dave-the-Spade drove to the airport, and it wasn’t until he’d disappeared through the departure lounge doors that I was really on my own.

OK… let’s get driving, my little beauty… take me home!

Herein lay my first problem… I didn’t know the way. That’s not good. Driving in an unfamiliar car, in an unfamiliar place, with unfamiliar road signs and strange flashing yellow traffic lights, on the wrong side of the road, without a clue about where you are or how to get to where you want to be, being attacked from all quarters by loco moto riders with the balance and agility of a trapeze artist but with the safety-consciousness of road-kill lying in the gutter… man, this ain’t good!

I managed to find my way to the autopista with tolerable difficulty. On the way I noted that the Spanish hadn’t really sussed out how to use roundabouts properly yet. I thought you were supposed to give way to traffic from the left… apparently it’s not obligatory. And on arrival at the motorway, I also noted that whatever the Spanish word for “slip road” was, it wouldn’t translate into “slip road” in English. You cannot slip into the traffic from here. It’s not a slip road, it’s a Tjunction – there’s a solid white line with a “STOP” sign at the bottom. It requires a standing start and revving to the max to get into a tiny gap between cement-mixers and juggernauts thundering by at 100km/h, who seem to be playing some kind of game of chicken with each other. I’m mentally on the wrong side of the road and physically on the wrong side of the car… and I can see diddley squat!

Hey… if it don’t kill you, it can only make you stronger.

And it gets no better once you’re safely on the motorway. Did I say “safely”? No… there’s nothing here to give you a feeling of safety. Male machismo rules here. It’s no wonder that roads deaths are such a constant feature on Spanish television news – more than twice that of the UK, in fact. If you drive in the slow lane, trying to feel safe, you are hassled by a host of heavy construction vehicles vying for superiority in a game that only drivers of heavy construction vehicles in the slow lane know how to play. If you move out to the middle lane to avoid them you are attacked from both sides by speeding, swerving cars trying to stay out of the slow-lane and fast-lane games. If you move out into the fast lane then you become a player in another game. I don’t know the name of the game but the basic rule is to intimidate anyone in the fast lane by driving right up to their bumper to force them to pull across into a slower lane. But then you find yourself back in the middle-lane game, where you’re attacked from both sides by speeding swerving cars…and so it goes on ad infinitum! Is there no end?

Let me off, please.

So I got off the motorway to slower, safer roads. Did I say “safer”? No… there’s nothing here either, to give you a feeling of safety. Ignorance, impatience, idiocy and blindness rule here. Sun-blindness that is. I’ve just got off the madness-expressway and I find myself in a jungle. The trees in this jungle are represented by road signs and traffic lights. Trafficlight trees are tall. So tall that you have to look up high to see them, high into the sun. You cannot see the colour of the light… only the colour of sunblindness. The only way you know the lights have changed to green is when you hear the horns. The horns of impatience.

To appease the horns, I set off to go. As I moved forward I noticed that the traffic light was still on red… next to the yellow flashing one, that is. It suddenly dawned on me what the yellow flashing one meant. It’s a shame I had to learn it this way, I thought, but as I wanted to go straight on, the horns-of-impatience-blowing cab-driver behind me can wait. I tried to pull forward a little, to give him space to turn right, behind me, but he just kept on sounding his horn… and then his siren… and then there were these blue flashing lights… and a policeman frantically gesticulating at me.

<THOUGHT> yes, officer… of course I’ll just pull over to the right.</THOUGHT>

My Spanish was none too good at the time but when the officer with the gun on his belt politely asked me to “envenom us documentation” I figured I’d best open the boot and retrieve “all the paperwork... that is in order... in the boot”. I’d never really wondered why Dave-the-Spade was known as he was. It didn’t even dawn on me when the boot opened and the two police officers were confronted with the meanest looking axe you ever saw. They backed away from me, hands hovering over their pistols, spouting a load of frantic Spanish. I figured they wanted to know what the axe was doing in the back of the car. I was wondering the same thing myself. It was only when Dave-the-Spade called several months later, to ask if he’d left his axe in the back of the car, that it became clear he used it for his gardening business.

It wasn’t just the axe that gave the Policia cause for concern, though. Out of the list of things that you must have with you at all times when driving a foreign-registered car in Spain, the following were missing… actually, it would be quicker to tell you what wasn’t missing… one red triangle, a yellow reflective jacket and a cuddly toy (in the form of a pair of fury dice). It was at this time that I discovered that any missing official paperwork could be overlooked by the police on payment of an unofficial contribution to the policeman’s ball. This is probably how the majority of Spanish drivers get their driving licences... they cannot possibly be passing actual tests.

Since then I never got to use the motor much. After spending a month or so trying to get some paperwork together to recover it from the grúas the battery went flat - not that that discouraged someone ripping out the steering-column wiring-loom to try and hot-wire it. Then it just got parked up and washed once a month to stop the grúas from thinking it was abandoned… and one day it just disappeared into the ether, never to be seen. That suited me fine.

I just stick to pedestrian-ing now.