LEARN THE RULES

I had an un­pleas­ant shock a few weeks ago upon re­turn­ing from a work trip abroad. The next morn­ing, I went to col­lect my scooter and as I ap­proached the road ad­ja­cent to where I live, where I had parked it just prior to my de­par­ture a week or so pre­vi­ously, it dawned upon me that I was sur­rounded by road­works and there were no ve­hi­cles parked there.

With this re­al­i­sa­tion came sev­eral oth­ers of course, namely: I wasn’t going to make it to my ap­point­ment that morn­ing un­less I took a taxi; my scooter would have been taken to the mu­nic­i­pal pound; this was going to cost me a wedge of cash, and based on prior ex­pe­ri­ence, prob­a­bly more with every pass­ing minute that I didn’t col­lect my scooter.

One (over­con­fi­dent) part of me was think­ing I would be able to charm my way out of this. An­other part of me was think­ing that when they tow your ve­hi­cle in Barcelona, you’re going to have to pay through the nose, no mat­ter what. And yet an­other part of me was think­ing, hang on, there was no sign in place when I parked my scooter, so how could they pos­si­bly jus­tify re­mov­ing it from a legal park­ing spot on the road? Per­haps they wouldn’t charge me after all, it was all some big mis­take on the part of the mu­nic­i­pal au­thor­i­ties, and they would apolo­get­i­cally re­place my scooter in the street and give me a 500-euro Mer­cadona voucher for my trou­bles... I’m sure you can guess which of these ac­tu­ally hap­pened with­out me hav­ing to tell you. But I’m going to any­way.

The mu­nic­i­pal pound for my neigh­bour­hood is the one in Vall d’He­bron. So I headed off on the Metro, hav­ing post­poned my ap­point­ment. I marched into the mu­nic­i­pal of­fice full of an in­dig­nant right­eous­ness that had grad­u­ally built up over the Metro ride, only to be greeted by an un­ex­pect­edly friendly desk clerk.

I ex­plained the error that the mu­nic­i­pal au­thor­i­ties had made and de­manded my scooter be re­turned to me forth­with, at­tempt­ing to muster With­nail’s de­liv­ery style in his rant: “We want the finest wines avail­able to hu­man­ity. And we want them here, and we want them now!” (if you haven’t seen it, “With­nail and I” is a cult clas­sic Eng­lish film from 1987).

The clerk’s re­sponse was to pa­tiently ex­plain that they only re­moved ve­hi­cles that had not ob­served the tow signs put up pre­vi­ously. “Ah,” I ex­claimed, “well that’s where you’re wrong, be­cause my scooter had only been there for a week and I know for a fact that they give you more no­tice than that!” To which he replied, “Yes, you’re right, the min­i­mum is eight days, so let me check that for you…”

Just as I was feel­ing I might ac­tu­ally pull this one off, in al­most Teu­tonic fash­ion the clerk ex­plained that the sign had been put up eight days pre­vi­ously and my scooter had been towed the night be­fore, i.e. the same day I had re­turned from my trip, or just 12 hours pre­vi­ously. In other words, the time be­tween leav­ing the scooter and going to pick it up again had co­in­cided al­most per­fectly with the time they had put up the sign and ex­e­cuted the tow­ing sanc­tion. “That’s very un­lucky,” he added, “es­pe­cially be­cause very often they put the signs up a cou­ple of weeks be­fore… but not this time. That will be 131 euros please… which in­cludes the dis­count for pay­ing straight away”.

“But, but, but… what if you go away for a cou­ple of weeks? Or a month? Or longer?” I pleaded. “Then you have to ask some­one to move it for you. In fact, you’re not legally al­lowed to park your scooter in the same place for more than a week in Barcelona, you have to move it more reg­u­larly than that.” In other words, “learn the rules, mate”.

Opin­ion