In with the new

The title of this col­umn is a phrase nor­mally re­served for New Year’s cel­e­bra­tions, but it came to me this month while I was at­tempt­ing to change the names on a con­tract to sup­ply elec­tric­ity to a new flat I have rented in Barcelona. Ba­si­cally, the old in this case is rep­re­sented by the di­nosaur com­pa­nies that have al­ways mo­nop­o­lised the Span­ish mar­ket with their turgid money-grab­bing ways, and the new are the wave of start-ups of­fer­ing green en­ergy with a smil­ing face. The most im­por­tant el­e­ment of this, how­ever, is the rel­a­tive ease of deal­ing with the two - the giant be­he­moth com­pany stuck with its out­dated pro­ce­dures and the slick new in­ter­net-based out­fit of­fer­ing the same ser­vice cheaper and with greater con­ve­nience. For me, the for­mer is rep­re­sen­ta­tive of a PP-led Spain that is now in its death throes - thrash­ing about like a bloated whale on the beach of moder­nity - while the lat­ter glides through the water like a newly born whale cub ready to break out into the open sea. Let me ex­plain.

As I said, all I wanted to do was change the name on the elec­tric­ity con­tract. I make the call to the ex­ist­ing com­pany in charge of pro­vid­ing said ser­vice to my new flat to be greeted with a ridicu­lously over-for­mal op­er­a­tor con­stantly telling me “You are very kind to wait Don Barn­aby” - for that is how I’m known in this stuffy an­cient Span­ish bu­reau­cratic world of full names and end­less pieces of paper with stamps from var­i­ous au­thor­i­ties; heaven for­bid any­one call me by my ac­tual name that isn’t printed on some piece of paper - as I spend a whole 45 min­utes pro­vid­ing the last minu­tiae of in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing the pre­vi­ous con­tract holder’s name and ID num­ber, my name, my old ad­dress, my new ad­dress, my NIE, my pass­port num­ber, the con­tract num­ber, my full bank ac­count num­ber with IBAN and BIC, my thoughts on a Corte Inglés mo­bile phone offer, my favourite colour... all of course re­quir­ing me to spell so many un­fa­mil­iar words in ei­ther Eng­lish or Cata­lan to a Span­ish speaker who has no knowl­edge of ei­ther lan­guage. If I hear “Don Barn­aby, ¿es T de Tar­rag­ona o D de Di­na­marca?” one more time I swear my head’s going to ex­plode. Any­way, after the end­less dawdling of the op­er­a­tor not­ing down all my info and more, I ar­rive at the holy grail of chang­ing the name... if I can pro­vide the de­tails of the lat­est in­spec­tion cer­tifi­cate. “Yes I have the cer­tifi­cate”, I reply, ever pre­pared. And so we spend an­other ten min­utes spelling out the name, DNI, li­cence num­ber etc. of the tech­ni­cian who cer­ti­fied the flat’s elec­tri­cal in­stal­la­tions two years ago. Then comes the coup de grace - “We don’t recog­nise that cer­tifi­cate so we need to send a tech­ni­cian round to cer­tify the in­stal­la­tions”. “Whoa, whoa, hold up,” I say, “What’s wrong with it?” “We don’t ac­cept it, you need a new one”. “Let me check with the owner,” I plead. “OK then you’ll need to call us back”. “OK, but you have all this info on file right? I don’t have to go through all this again?” “No, if you call back you’ll have to start a new ap­pli­ca­tion, the al­ter­na­tive is to send round a tech­ni­cian and we can keep your ap­pli­ca­tion open”. “Why not keep it open any­way?” “We can’t.” “Be­cause you’re a bunch of thiev­ing ma­nip­u­lat­ing good for noth­ing ****, that’s why!” is my part­ing shot.

I hang up, fum­ing, and click on the web­site of the sup­plier I had in a pre­vi­ous flat. One of those new com­pa­nies. A five-minute writ­ten chat ex­chang­ing pleas­ant mes­sages and pho­tos of the re­quired pa­per­work later and I have changed sup­plier in my new flat at no cost and a bet­ter rate. It’s going to be a long painful death En­desa.