Los Gatos Son Aqui
posted on July 4th, 2007 by Jason
I have successfully navigated the murky shoals of the Spanish import customs system. And it was neither easy nor cheap!
My new buddy José and I headed for the airport in José’s cab and arrived around 10:00, about 20 minutes after the plane had landed. Just finding the customs area was hard – I called the shipping company and had them talk to José. That worked well, there’s no way we would have found it otherwise.
After talking with the shipping company on the phone, I was estimating I’d be about 45 minutes, so José and I contracted for him to hang around for an hour. Yeah, whoops – my first encounter with Spanish bureaucracy consisted of puzzled looks from them and claims that they had no idea what I was talking about. It finally turned out that they did know what I was talking about, but the paperwork hadn’t arrived yet. They told me to “go smoke a cigarette or drink a beer” and come back later. As an aside, the crap-ass cafeteria in the Spanish customs building has better sandwiches than most gourmet places Stateside.
So I got rid of José, and after awhile, went back to the shippers. They were rocking out to “Total Eclipse of the Heart” on YouTube, so I knew we’d get along okay. I paid them $80 ($50 extra for weighty pussy) and they sent me off to visit the veterinarian.
Well, the veterinarian had a sign on the door saying “back at 11:50″. Someone in another office told me that they’d gone “para desayunos” (breakfast, in other words). At around 12:10, they finally showed up. They threw tons of forms at me, while very quickly telling me how to fill them out, all in Spanish. Many preguntas and a bit of copy/paste from somebody else’s completed form later, and the forms were filled out. Off to the bank to get them notarized ($80 more, cash only please).
Back to the vet, and a bit of cross correlation between various forms, and then we were off to actually visit the cats for the first time. Their kennels had a nice big sticker at the top that was meant to be marked up with the times that the cats had been given water. And the sticker had not been marked up at all. They’d been traveling for 16 hours completely dry. The vet was horrified and insisted that I should file a complaint. The cats gave not the first shit about seeing me, until I gave them some water. Then they liked me again, slightly. They mostly just stared numbly out of their cages.
The cats got their microchips scanned, and it was off to customs. This was actually the easiest part. I went through security, the security guard personally escorted me to the correct office, the woman in the office went stamp-sign-stamp-stamp-stamp-sign-sign-stamp-stamp, we talked about Death on the Nile (she was reading it in English), and I was sent back to the shipping agent.
They were still rocking out to YouTube videos, but they tore themselves away long enough to do a bit more of the stamp-sign-glare-stamp-sign thing. Upstairs, stamp sign, downstairs stamp sign, loading bay, show form to official looking guy, guy tells me he’s there to pick stuff up too, whoops. Find unofficial looking guy, seconds later, he brings out the cats on a forklift. MINE!!!
Unfortunately, my buddy José isn’t answering his cellphone. And the customs area is in the middle of nowhere. So I start hoofing it. FYI – two cats in bigass kennels are pretty damned heavy. I hoofed it until I got to the waiting cab I’d seen earlier. He wasn’t willing to take me, but he helped me call Taxi T033 and explained to them where I was, which was good as I never in a billion years would have been able to, even had I been fully fluent. Approximately six years later, and los gatos and I were in a comfy cab heading back to Graçia.
Total time elapsed, five hours. Total cost, $200. And worth every penny. 