Just follow my instructions. Got it?

Question; what happens if you take a bunch of half-wits and surround them with senseless bureaucracy?

The answer appears to be that they create the Spanish postal service which I try to have as little contact as possible as lost post and delays of a month or more are so common it’s just not true.

Once I asked how long a certified delivery to the UK would take – “depends on the destination post office” was the asnwer, which is taking the piss; I only send overseas mail by certified post these days and so track it online. It is often a couple of days before it even leaves the post office; well over a week until it leaves Spain; and then a day or so in the UK, typically 2-3 weeks in total!

So my problem with the Spanish postal service today is this; my Puerto Rican friends landed in Madrid from San Juan this morning and while queuing for tickets for the train at Atocha station they had a bag with credit cards and money stolen. Great start.

They phoned me and so I went to the post office to send money via Western Union. I completed the form, told the guy at the post office to send it Western Union and…

He sent my money by Giro.

My friends were just outside the Western Union office in Madrid, they didn’t want a bloody post office giro. Having never used Western Union before I didn’t know what my receipt should look like, but after the code number didn’t work and I took a look at the postal service website I realised what the problem was.

Well thanks a lot.

Categorised in: barcelona, life

This post was written by David