REPORTING LOSS OF VEHICLE IN SPAIN - WARNING

Yikes!

Thought it would be normal. You filed the denuncia it is for you to remove the denuncia. Every country expects you to know their laws. The only difference in Spain is no offical will tell you if you go wrong. Be it to do with filing for taxes, building permissions etc. I have had a friend who did not register a change of address correctly. Got into a fair bit of trouble for that. But no fine thankfully.

Ribiera   Thought it would be normal. You filed the denuncia it is for you to remove the denuncia. Every country expects you to know their laws.


Yes,  you demonstrate well how so often people, who might know (police, town hall etc) that things are not the same everywhere (as  they are in Spain for example) do not know;  believing incorrectly that their country's laws etc. are replicated in every other country.

I made the post because I am aware things are often very different in each country. I quite often ask people from other countries how something is done in their country so that I can be in a position to inform those who may need know when things are different in Spain.

A little empathy from say the police and 'officialdom' in general, to understand others, especially visitors, would seem not only common courtesy but professional too.

One of the things that makes expat useful is information like what you have provided. Every country functions differently, and in the absence of knowledge one often assumes that things work in the same manner as in one's home country.

An up-date

For several weeks I have been assisting a person, Mort, who came to the police station where I work, to report that he had either lost his car or that it had been stolen.

I had assisted him a couple of months ago when he forgot where he had left his car.  Eventually he was informed by police where it was and he recovered it.

A couple pf weeks ago Mort's car again 'went missing' and I assisted him to make the police report.

Yesterday Mort received a call from the police but apart from understanding that it was something to do with his car, he could not understand the caller.  The call was received on his landline  which does not have caller ID, thus he cannot discover where the call came from.

This morning I went to the police station. They checked the stolen car list on the police computer and confirmed the car is still shown as stolen.  However, on the system there is no facility to flag it up when a police officer has an interest in the vehicle.  Thus, apart from calling the Guardia and the local car pounds, without a positive result, they were unable to help.

That means Mort must now wait, and hope the police try to call him again, and hopefully this time they will be able to speak English, French or Flemish.