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“Transacción no autorizada. Acuda a su sucursal.”
Perhaps that wasn’t the exact message on the pantalla táctil, but it was clear that this cajero automático wasn’t going to give me any money. I tried a machine outside a different bank, hoping to fool the system. “Permiso denegado.” Surely the small amount of “efectivo” I wanted didn’t put my account in números rojos?
I borrowed from a friend and later checked on the internet only to find that la cuenta was indeed suffering “un problema de liquidez”. There was money due in at any time, however, so, pasados unos días, I tried again. Esta vez the message said, “Tarjeta con banda magnética dañada.” La limpié on the seat of my jeans and tried again. The machine se la tragó.
Slow on the uptake though I am, I began to think there might actually be a problem and went into the bank to try and sort things out.
Although it wasn’t my sucursal, and I had no idea of my account number, my tarjeta de residencia identified me. Actually, not only was it not my branch, but I wasn’t even in Madrid. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they couldn’t tell me why the card had been swallowed. But they did tell me there was a new one waiting for me at my branch.
Así que - por fin - acudí a mi sucursal.
Sadly, estamos en verano. (I should have realised: after all, the whole of línea 3 del metro is closed and so is half of line 8 - the main airport line. With the efecto invernadero, you can’t judge the season from the weather anymore, but major metro closures tend to coincide with the tourist season.)
El horario de verano meant that la Caixa wasn’t open on Thursday afternoon which is usually their quiet time. There is, I suppose, a slight difference between un banco and una caja de ahorros: the former open los sábados por la mañana, the latter, los jueves por la tarde. But during the summer, when both take away these useful schedule deviations, there’s not much to choose between them.
Some say that the cajas are slightly more likely to have the personal touch. Certainly, when I finally got to my own branch the staff greeted me by name. As I stood in line I was hailed by the subdirectora: “Head Office cancelled your card.”
“¿Por qué?”
“Intentaron falsificarla.”
“¿Qué?”
“Ya te pedí otra.”
I guess that’s service for you. She’d arranged a replacement before I even knew I had a problem.
It being summer, I had una larga espera in the queue. Meanwhile, I looked at the folletos showing the products on offer. Personally, I think all those catálogos de regalos make it more like Argos than a bank and I get a bit sick of being offered crockery, a duvet, or a set of suitcases in exchange for investing my money. Admittedly, I do own an extensive juego de copas, courtesy of the Caixa, but I’d really rather get a decent interest rate.
Of course different banks have different condiciones y ofertas. Lately el Santander Central Hispano has been making a lot of fuss about charging cero comisiones. I suspect they’re financing this from the profits they made out of me when I was a client.
Dead to Rights
Then there’s the BBVA. A friend of mine tells me they have a “cuentas claras” policy whereby they charge a 12€ flat rate per month for all normal banking. This tarifa plana entitles you to some additional servicios like an advance of your nómina, or special loan terms. Except that my friend is self-employed and doesn’t have a nómina, so the fact that he’s been paying in a regular monthly amount for a year or so - and paying out these enormous monthly charges mientras tanto - doesn’t seem to qualify him for any of the benefits. Apparently the small print reads: “a la discreción del director”. And his bank manager is particularly discreet.
One product on offer from the Caixa which caught my eye is the seguro de repatriación. For a small cuota mensual you can insure yourself so that, en caso de fallecimiento, your body will be shipped home for burial. This is probably very important to some people, but I find it slightly macabre. My family know that my cenizas - or whoever else’s ashes are labelled as mine, if Jocelyn is right - can be used to enrich the soil of wherever I happen to be living at the time. Certainly the idea of shipping a corpse half way round the globe strikes me as nothing short of unecological and of no real use to anyone except script writers who produce películas de suspense so Jodie Foster can demonstrate how violently maternal she is.
One of the things about this insurance which confused me was the slogan: “regresarás y ayudarás a los tuyos.” I had to read the pamphlet a couple of times to work out how I was expected to be of help to los míos if I was dead. I’ll admit it: my first mental image was of zombie labourers. Then I visualised el cadaver being used as compost on the family farm. Eventually I realised that a lump sum must also be involved.
The same insurance offers a slightly surreal free gift: “una práctica mochila bandolera” - a real neat backpack. Some readers will know that the words “extranjero” and “mochila” trigger certain associations for me: it doesn’t seem the most appropriate gift, unless perhaps the insured party is hoping to get gunned down by an over zealous guardia and so go home and help his family.
Over the years, I’ve dealt with a vast number of banks and cajas in Spain and I don’t think there’s very much to choose between them. They all seem more willing to take money than pay it out, though the staff at each particular sucursal can at least make the process slightly less painful. I was pleased, therefore, when recently I came across what may be the first honest bank advert. Banco Castilla have brought out an account called Cuenta Con. “The Con Account”. Just about sums it up, doesn’t it?
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