My woeful tale of trying to open a bank account in Spain (so far, unsuccessfully)
I have been trying to open a bank account in Spain, so that Fulbright can pay me my stipend, and I can in turn pay my landlord here (who has very kindly told me not to worry about the fees for international transfers, and that he can wait a few days for the rent).
I was never one of the absurd number of undergrads at Columbia who wanted to work in finance, and I've always found money too boring to study banking and finance closely, but my naive grade-school understanding of how modern consumer banks work is that they make money from having people open accounts, because they then invest their clients' deposits, as well as any commissions or maintenance costs they may charge. I have lots of friends (particularly here in Spain) who would add a lot more expletives about exactly how much money they make and the ethically dubious methods they use, but leaving aside these opinions (whether reasoned or otherwise), my nutshell understanding of what is euphemistically called the "financial services industry" is that it is a SERVICE industry. Everyone in Spain has seen the dramatic ways banks can go under, but they also fail if they have no clients. So you'd think that banks would be very glad to have a new person walk in and say "I want to open an account." After all, new clients are - if you'll forgive the phrase - money in the bank for them. My limited experience in the US has certainly been that banks are happy for new customers. So you would think it would be easy to open an account.
You would be wrong.
The Fulbright orientation session buzzed with people giving tips about which branch of which bank had a helpful or sympathetic person, and I understand the Facebook group (which I am not a part of) is filled with helpful tips and tricks about which bank to approach. Even attempting to take these tips into consideration I have so far been unsuccessful in opening a simple checking account here, in spite of having now visited five branches (four of Banco Santander and one of Banco Bilbao Vizcaya) and having received different objections from each of them. (Yes, the various branches of the same bank seem to have differing policies. Yes, they all say that it's a bank-wide policy.) Banks close at 2:30 here, so I gave up after running out of time, having seen three Santander branches today. I got closest in the last one, which would have opened the account had the computers not been down system-wide, and promised to do so on Monday. (I believe that, since the previous branch had also said the same thing.) "¿y qué hace Ud. aquí en España?" demanded one suspicious clerk, seeming barely appeased when I not only explained the Fulbright but provided the letter they have thoughtfully given me (in Spanish) stating my sources of income and the amount. I had made the mistake of telling him that I needed to open a cuenta no-residente since the previous branches (plural) had assured me that even though I now have proof of income, proof of residence, a valid long-stay visa with an already assigned número de identidad de extranjero, and proof of an appointment to receive an identity card at the local police station, since I lacked the card itself it would be impossible to open a regular resident's account. Since my appointment is in October (and will no doubt provide food for another blog entry), existing without a bank account until then would be a little difficult. I didn't bother to argue with those who insisted that it would be impossible to open the account that I had seen the paperwork of fellow Fulbrighters who haven't even found an apartment yet who had successfully opened accounts at the same bank (but a different branch). I just marched out and headed for another branch. But alas, by the time I got to a sympathetic assistant, the system was down bank-wide. I was also startled by the request (in light of my nationality) for my "Tax ID number," which I was assured was a requirement of the US government, who are pursuing possible foreign income to make sure it is taxed. This sounds plausible (in light of my tax software that always asks if you have accounts abroad), and I know that banks in the US have your social security number, but as I hadn't been asked for it before by any of the previous branches I was a bit taken aback, since I tend to be wary about requests for my social security number. On the other hand, this was further in the process than I had gotten anywhere else, so perhaps I would have gotten that request eventually elsewhere. The entire thing is a bit like the old computer game Adventure, where you have to keep playing again and again until you finally hit the exact sequence of actions that lead to the correct outcome. I'm still waiting on the "drop bear" moment when I can finally make a deposit, and pass my info to the Fulbright committee. As banks are of course closed on the weekends, I will have to try again on Monday. I may return to the branch where I was close to a breakthrough, or I may try Banco Sabadell, which I have heard good things about, and which has a branch conveniently close to home.
Someone mentioned this morning (or yesterday? it all blurs) during the Fulbright orientation that perhaps it was better to go to the Banco Santander right by the Instituto Internacional and the Commission headquarters, because they are familiar with Fulbrighters, and with foreign students generally there. That may be true, but it's a tremendously inconvenient neighborhood for me, and I somewhat resent what I (perhaps totally unjustly) suspect is a subtle form of discrimination based on barrio. Foreigners in the pijo barrio Salamanca can open bank accounts without headaches, but foreigners in what are assumed to be neighborhoods of (poor) immigrants like Carabanchel get hassled like crazy. Now that I write it out, it's not such a subtle form of discrimination. Red-lining actually has a long and dishonorable history around mortgages and such. No reason why the same tactics shouldn't be extended to even things like checking and savings accounts, so that the most vulnerable people are forced into a cash economy, and can then be demonized as not paying taxes and so on. And I'll admit (in the full consciousness of the pettiness of my own wealth and privilege) that it annoys me to feel caught in a drag net aimed at the poor and downtrodden. Of course I'm sure it's technically illegal, and may well be purely unconscious, since I don't attribute the various documentation I've been asked for to malice as much as confusion, but unconscious structural injustice is still structural injustice.
It also occurs to me that the other Fulbrighters that I know of who have successfully opened accounts in the last few days have largely been the TAs, not the research fellows. The TAs are much younger (mostly 21 or 22), and many of them have relatively rudimentary Spanish. I suspect that when they go in looking appealing and helpless and say they are students they raise no red flags. Whereas I sound too fluent and look too old to be a university student, and a single person who suddenly appears in Spain perhaps seems more suspicious, to the extent that the bank's concerns about money-laundering and so on are real. I seem like a person out of place (the wrong age, the wrong neighborhood, the wrong language skills for a becaria), so perhaps I raise red flags.
In any case, while my banking quest has thus far been unsuccessful, it is GOOD to be home in my beautiful apartment again, and smiling at me like a good omen from the radiator in the hallway when I got home from the hotel at around noon today was an envelope from Madrid Transportes, with my "multi" card, ready for a charging for a month's worth of unlimited subway and bus rides. In between my banking adventures I successfully charged it (just under 55 euros for "Zona A" for a month, which makes it about half the price of an unlimited monthly metrocard in New York) at one of the machines in the metro, and it is now riding in my wallet, along with my polideportivo membership (but not yet, alas, my useful TIE and investigadora card for the Biblioteca Nacional...all things in due course). I also found under my door a note from the post office saying that the fat envelope I shipped the day I left (nine days ago) had safely arrived, but that as I had not been home it was being returned to the local post office and I could pick it up there! Hurray for safe arrival of (very small) "packages." After my banking adventures I eagerly went to the post office, where I picked up a ticket "para recoger" (the tickets are nicely divided with numbers that say "E" for envío and "R" for recogida, and waited my turn, only to discover from the (perfectly pleasant) man behind the counter that the package wasn't ready yet because the delivery had been today (at 10:43 AM according to the slip), and it would be available tomorrow. (I hadn't looked at the date, but the slip does say that it's for pick up starting the following day from the initial delivery, which makes sense, since it was presumably still out on the rounds in someone's post bag. The postal bags here look like the cloth shopping carts everyone uses, except for being in the stylishly autumnal brown and gold colors of the correos, so they stand out much less than the similar push things postal workers use in New York.) It's weird to have pleasanter and more efficient customer service in a post office than a bank. I know Spaniards are incredibly suspicious of privatization, and aside from more or less agreeing with their ideas about the social welfare state on an ideological level, I have to say that the private services here seem to be far less service oriented than the public ones. In a way it's great that the public ones are so useful and pleasant. In a way, I have exactly the same annoyance now about private banks that I do at home about things like certain (not all) public institutions. It really shouldn't cost anyone anything more to be pleasant and as helpful as possible, even if they're not able to completely fulfill your request. But somehow an ethos pervades, one way or the other. Like the DMV, Spanish banks have been given the reputation of being inefficient, officious, and hostile, and they live up to it, while Spanish public polideportivos (bless their lovely pools) are kind, friendly, and anxious to give a good service. (Shout to the nice new Polideportivo Gallur, which deserves its own "Why Madrid in General and Carabanchel in Particular is Awesome" blog entry.)
Seriously, I wonder how much banks here have been burned by la crisis. Most (though not all) of the branches I've entered have little one person double glass doors, which you push one button to open, which then slides shut behind you, and then you're scanned by a metal detector, and then (if you're lucky) the second one slides open. That's aside from having to do the same process to leave, and sometimes having to press a button to enter the waiting room where there are lockers with keys, where a recorded voice will tell you to leave your belongings if they think you have too much metal. (Fortunately that didn't happen to me, as my new cheapie phone is apparently mostly plastic, and the trace amounts of keys and belt didn't seem to trigger the alarm, but I heard the electronic voice warning other people, who had to turn around and go back and put things in the lockers in the vestibule.) For a place where people literally enter to give them money, they certainly act fortified against intruders. The joke being that the tens of millions of euros that disappeared as if by magic from the vaults of late lamented banks like Popular here leached gently away as ones and zeros in the computers of the wealthy, not by being hijacked by force by people with masks and weapons. (Or in the case of one young man I saw, what was apparently a deadly laptop.) As the song says, "some will rob you with a six-gun, and some with a fountain-pen." Having had the fountain-pen experience (generally as wielded by their own executives), the surviving Spanish banks are obviously taking no chances with either kind of threat, hence their suspicions of legitimate clients at both the literal entrance and the paperwork stage.
So I had a slightly wasted journey into the city center (where I had been told the banks were more tourist oriented and cooperative), but not really, as the post sub-station was the one by the Marqués de Vadillo metro stop, and I stopped afterward there at a take-out place I had noticed on the Avenida General Ricardos (the main drag that goes up the hill from Madrid Río toward me) with the picturesque name of "Mr. Potato." I was hungry, and it was 3:00 PM by this time, so I didn't want to spend time shopping and cooking when I got home, but on the other hand delicious as everything has been (last night's feast in the gardens of the Instituto Internacional, with all the embassy people there, was truly worthy of an espicha a la Semana Negra - I can give no higher praise), I have been looking forward to making dinner. So I decided on takeout as the best option, and shamelessly picked up junk food in the form of chicken nuggets, which I got with a honey mustard sauce, after due consultation with the young man behind the counter. There was a row of sauces in inverted squeeze tubes behind a gleaming counter, with a series of names generally of places (americano, andaluz, etc.) and the tell-tale twists of paper designed to hold french fries that I associate with Belgian frites. The name of a sauce as "andaluz" also rang a bell for me, so while the nuggets were frying I commented that it seemed like a Belgian concept to the young man behind the counter, who said "Sí, nuestra jefa es Belga." So if I want Belgian frites now I know where to go.
After picking up lunch I took the bus home, as the walk is somewhat uphill and I was tired (and willing to use up my ten trip ticket so I can start using my cute newly charged bono), where I peacefully ate, and then took a nap on my sofa, in blessed silence. I am now feeling that I have more or less accomplished many things; found the post office and figured out how package delivery works (if I'm lucky), received and charged my monthly bono de transportes, and happily unpacked back into my beloved apartment. This evening will be a little local shopping for dinner, and possibly the few items the kitchen doesn't have. (I got used to the caffeinated coffee at the hotel, and had a few cokes over the last few days too, so I may have to get a new molinillo de café so I can use the caffeinated beans I bought instead of decaf, and it may be time to buy some other stuff as well.) Then a peaceful dinner with tv (brainless, but something I've missed among the intensity of the Fulbright orientation days), and then conking out and catching up on sleep. I can take care of a couple of university related emails and maybe start the online process for a card for the Biblioteca Nacional tomorrow. So all is well in hand.
Let's hope on Monday I can finally open a blessed bank account.
