I'm not sure what colour jacket you need

As well as the post box, the bodega, and Jason and Patricia's B&B, Culebrón has a restaurant. The restaurant is called Casa Eduardo because it's run by Eduardo with his wife, Maria Luisa, and nowadays, their son Sergio. To be honest the business used to be pretty moribund but it appears to have bounced back from the number of motors I see parked outside. The usual explanation is that the son added a bit of sparkle. I've always liked Eduardo's but Maggie is less of a fan. That said there's absolutely nothing to stop me from popping over for elevenses or even getting an odd beer when Maggie's out working but I don't, at least not frequently enough.

Eduardo was talking to me quite a while ago now about Sunday mornings. He told me the restaurant had to be open at some ungodly hour for the hunters to get their breakfasts. Hunting is big in Spain. In season you can hear the shotguns going off from dawn to dusk and the abandonment of the hunting dogs when the season is over is a Spanish scandal.

This morning, on a local Facebook community page, someone was asking about hunting. I thought they wanted to do some but when I re-read the post they were asking if the hunters would be a problem if they bought a rural house. Pet dogs slaughtered in error, hunters walking across their land - that sort of thing. Anyway it piqued my interest because I guessed that going hunting in Spain might be a paper heavy undertaking. 

First of all you have to be over 14, over 16 in Galicia, and, if you're under 18 you'll normally need permission from your parents, guardians or carers. Then you have to pass the hunting exam which is set by each Autonomous Community. Once it's passed it's passed though. It's not a recurring test.

Next, each season you have to get a hunting licence for the region or regions where you intend to hunt. The licence is for a named person so it's non-transferable. There is a multi community licence available. If you intend to go armed you need a firearms certificate. There are different certificates and presumably different procedures for getting licenced for the guns suitable for small game hunting (rabbits, hares, partridge and the like) or for larger animals (deer, boar etc.) Crossbows also need a licence though apparently longbows don't. It looks as though the licencing for those is a state licence administered by the Guardia Civil. It's the firearms certificate that requires a health test which has to be done every so often dependant on your age. If you commit an offence or you break the rules your hunting licence or your firearms licence can be taken away. There are different procedures, and different licences, for hunting with birds of prey! Hunters need civil liability Insurance and without insurance all the other licences lose their validity. 

With the exam passed, the licences bought, your guns (or raptors) licenced and everything insured you then need somewhere to hunt. All over Spain you see the little square signs divided by a diagonal line into two triangles, one black and one white. They delimit the coto - I suppose the English word would be hunting reserve though that sounds like an oxymoron to me. Anyway, to hunt you need to get authorisation from the owner of the coto. I'm pretty sure that I've heard that farmers often sell the hunting rights on their land to clubs and associations.

The article I used as the basis for this post from the Royal Spanish Hunting Federation reminds hunters that they should always use legal methods for hunting which I presume rules out AK47s and hand grenades. Only animals listed as fair game in each region can be hunted. Hopefully then our cats are safe so long as the hunter's eyesight test is reasonably recent. There was also a general reminder that there are safety rules that have to be respected - for instance someone on the Facebook page that I mentioned above said that hunting within 500 metres of a house is not allowed and I presume there are other comparable rules and regulations. (This is apparently duff information; see the footnote). Then the hunting seasons have to be respected. I just had a look to see when that was but it's far more complicated than I expected. For instance, this year you can hunt rabbits with dogs from 19 July to 25 December but only on Thursdays, Saturdays, Sundays and on regional and national holidays. On the other hand if you want to blow song thrushes out of the sky from a fixed position you'll have to hold your murderous instincts in check a little longer as the season doesn't start till 12 October and goes on till 6 December. You can't do that on Thursdays either - just Saturday, Sunday and regional and national holidays. Its the same start and finish dates and the same days for the lone hunter banging away at anything they find or a line of guns flushing out everything in front of them though hare and partridge have to be left alone after 8 November. No wonder they need to pass an exam! I suspect there will be a large section on noting the difference between rabbits, hares and chihuahuas and an even larger section on calendar use.

Oh, and I forgot all about hunting with dogs but without guns. And fishing. Pah!

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It's a couple of weeks after the original post. It's Sunday morning and there are hunters near our house. There is a comment on this piece which says that the commentator didn't know about the 500 metre rule. As I said I read that on the answers to the Facebook question that prompted me to write this post. Apparently it's wrong. It may have been 500 metres at some time but there is an entry about Hunting in the Official State Bulletin signed Francisco Franco in 1970 which sets the limits at 100 metres from villages and the like and 50 metres from individual houses. There is a more recent entry in that same Official Bulletin relating to Valencia which sets those limits at 200 metres from the edges of villages and 50 metres from isolated houses with prohibitions too on shooting close to roads and tracks. Sorry about that misinformation.

Dogs, bulletins and cats homes

I was reading the news from the local town hall. There was information about the new hunting season. I read, for instance, that from 19 July until 25 December rabbits can be hunted with dogs. No more than eight hunting dogs though and, even if you bring a gang of pals with you to hunt, you can't have more than fifteen dogs all together. Certain breeds of dogs are prohibited and greyhounds can only be used between July and October. Oh, and hunting is only possible from Thursday to Sunday and on Public Holidays. This is pretty detailed stuff. Falconry, firearms and bows come in from the 12th October. There were lots more details about exactly what can be hunted, when and how. The piece ended though with a web address for the Diari Oficial of the Comunitat Valenciana - the official bulletin of the Valencian Community.

All of the regional governments have something similar; a publication where local ordinances, byelaws and official reports are recorded. It's the place where contracts can be put out to tender, where details of bankruptcy are recorded and where all sorts of announcements can be officially made. There is a national equivalent - the Official State Bulletin - where  "parliamentary bills", royal decrees and lots more is published. Once upon a time they were printed on paper now they are published on the Internet. I've read parts of the bulletins from time to time when I've being trying to find something out but, as you may imagine, they make dull and heavy reading.

I occasionally go onto expat forums often looking for a more human, and English language, version of the same sort of information. The information on the forums is unrelaible in the sense that people pass on what they have heard and what they have surmised as well as what they know. It's done with the best of intentions but it can cause confusion.

The thing is you see that although we live in Spain we all, well all of us older people, continue to be Norwegian or Moroccan or, in our case, British. And it's the Norwegian or Morrocan or British experience that we use as the yardstick (yes, it's a pun). Take something like a driving licence or a will (both of which I have had conversations about today). Spanish inheritance legislation is quite different to the British version. We might not know the ins and outs of the British system but we know the broad detail. You can leave what you want to whom you want. In Spain, though, inheritance law generally gives precedence to the children of the deceased. This system seems so, well, foreign, to us and obviously, wrong. I've never asked a Spaniard about it but I suspect that they would think a British will that disinherited sons and daughters was equally bizarre.

Now Maggie needs to change her British driving licence for a Spanish one. Bar room conversations about driving licences are commonplace. It doesn't seem odd to we Britons that, despite living 2000 kms from the UK, we should continue to hold a British driving licence. Anyway Maggie was trying to find out what she needs to do to exchange her licence. She asked Google but Google just pointed her indiscriminately to out of date and wrong web pages as well as to accurate and up to date stuff. She was confused by the contradictory information.

The information on the  DGT or "Ministry of Transport" website was perfectly clear and seemed straightforward but it would also involve at least one trip to Alicante. She decided, for ease, to let an intermediary, the local driving school, handle the process. The chap there told her what paperwork she would need. His list differed from the one on the DGT website but I rather suspect that the intermediary is taking the belt and braces approach. He's working on the assumption that if he has every conceivable piece of paper when he goes to the traffic office then he can't be caught out

One document he asked Maggie to get hold of is something that nearly everyone calls a residencia; residence permit. Of course Europeans don't need a residence permit because we have right of abode, well provided we have sufficient medical cover and money to ensure that we are not going to be a burden on the state, we have right of abode. The document is more accurately something that records or register the fact that an EU citizen is living in Spain. We registered years ago and, anyway, once an EU citizen has lived here continuosly for five years we apparently gain the right to permanent residence (something I learned in my search). But this chap told Maggie she needed a newer version of this certificate in order to exchange her licence.

This didn't sound right to me and I thought I'd check it out. What I think I found was that we British expats are talking about three different systems that have existed in the last ten years and all of which are called residencia by their British holders. The document format has varied from plastic cards to bits of paper and back to plastic cards with a different purpose and design. The renewal period for this documentation has varied from every five years to never. The changes to these "residencia" rules have also affected another document called the NIE - the Foreigners' Identification Number.

Someone recently told me that their NIE had a three month sell by date. I was sure they were wrong. My NIE certificate certainly has no expiry date. They were right though, at least about their documentation. The short lifespan is to ensure that, at the end of the three months, the EU citizen who is going to live in Spain has to tell the authorities. Unless the person swaps their NIE for a "residencia" when the three months are up they will find it difficult to transact lots of everyday business from getting a phone line to picking up a parcel from the post office. It's at that point too that the authorities can check that the person wanting to live here has the financial wherewithall to do so. Consequently whereas I have a white A4 bit of paper for my NIE and a green bit of paper for my registration newer arrivals start with a white bit of A4 paper which they soon have to trade in for a green plastic card.

So my experience, my information, about a key process for we foreigners is now wrong. What we immigrants need is some sort of definitive version of all the rules and regs easily accessible on the Internet. Oh, hang on a minute,. Now if only it were written in English but then we are, as I said, 2000 kms from the UK.