Man, time flies! Tempus fugit, my Grannie always said. It may be a cliché, but clichés are usually rooted in truth, right?
Today I celebrate the anniversary of 96 hours that changed our lives.
December 1st, 2020, when the world was in the throes of a pandemic, I boarded a plane bound for Spain. I had a very specific mission to accomplish: using my Irish passport to register myself as a resident in Spain.
Brian had accepted a job offer in Barcelona and needed authorization to work in Spain. As his employer kicked off what would have been a long and tedious process of sponsoring his Highly Qualified Worker visa, the recruiter in the HR department remembered a tiny detail Brian had dropped in one of their conversations: “My husband has an Irish passport.” After confirming his recollection with Brian, he said, “oh, that’s WAY easier than an HQW visa. We’ll help you leverage that, instead.”
Side note: not only was it easier, but a much better situation for Brian because his residency status is not tied to his work status. He has, in fact, changed jobs since we arrived and he did not have to worry about losing his right to work in Spain in the process, nor did he need his next employer to agree to take over sponsorship of a work visa.
So the global mobility team swung into action and before I knew it, I was taking a few days off from my job to head to Spain with the objective of getting my all-important NIE, the identification number all foreigners living in Spain must have. (Spanish citizens have a similar number, called a DNI.)
The process for an EU citizen to obtain their NIE is straightforward and relatively simple, especially as his employer contracted an immigration attorney to facilitate the process. This was helpful for a number of reasons: my Spanish was nowhere near ready for prime time; “straightforward” and “simple” are misnomers when it comes to Spanish bureaucracy; and it was the middle of a freakin’ global pandemic!
So, leaving aside the details of the mountain of paperwork I pulled together under the supervision of the attorney on our case, the upshot is that I was required to present myself in person at a police department to submit my paperwork to receive a card with my brand new NIE on it.
I left San Antonio on December 1st and landed in Barcelona on December 2nd. On December 3rd, I took a 40-minute train ride to a police station in Sant Cugat to meet my attorney at the police station. She accompanied me inside where it took all of five minutes of chit-chat between her and the police officer she knew personally to get my card. She handed over the sheaf of papers we’d assembled and he barely looked at them, just enough to get my name off of them to enter into the system. Such is the value of being personally known and trusted by the police department. On December 4th, I left Barcelona and arrived in San Antonio the same day.
A 96-hour door-to-door trip of 11, 000 miles for a five-minute meeting, albeit a very important five minutes.
Worth it, as it was the number Brian needed to be able to arrive in Spain and begin working.
Oh, and let’s not forget that I needed to show negative results of a PCR test (remember those?) taken within 24 hours of departure in order to board the plan, and bring masks to wear on the flight and everywhere else, and a letter justifying my need to enter Spain as a foreigner during lockdown. This meant, among other things, that during my short stay in Barcelona, I had to find a lab where I could get that test done in short order for my return trip.
Still worth every minute.