No residence joy

I sincerely believed that by the end of this year the Spanish authorities would have scrapped the useless green certificate which has replaced our old residence permits. But no the certificate is still alive and well and yes these days you do need to carry your passport and your certificate.

If you are travelling to the mainland or to another island you need to carry both if you want the resident discount; one for identification the other to show that you are a resident. During this year both the President of the Balearic government Francesc Antich and our local European Member of Parliament Rosa Estaras promised to look into the matter when they were questioned on the topic by the Bulletin. Unfortunately, so far little has happened.

My wish for 2010 is that the government decides to re-introduce the old residence permit which is also identification. At a time when the Spanish authorities want to encourage fellow Europeans to come and live here it would be an ideal time to scrap the green certificate, the system is just not workable. I don´t know why the Spanish authorities don´t just give us Spanish Identification Cards or DNI it would put us on a level playing field with Spanish citizens and mean that we would no longer have to carry two documents.