Good riddance to the green sheet?

[Phaedra]

I hate the green sheets.

I was talking to a Lithuanian today about the dreaded green sheets and he said you can now get the old style plastic id cards.

He said he thought you needed a contract, residencia etc. but he wasn't sure.

Does anyone know more about this and if so how can I get one.

[fifi]

Hi Phaedra, I think that Sheila mentioned having one on one of her posts so you could try PMing her.

[SheilaW]

I've got one of the "new" ones, in fact I think we were among the first to have them and had a job getting them accepted a couple of times be people who read every word. They're only given out at the end of a gruelling cross-examination at the Puerto police station, where you can do one of two things.

• You can tick the boxes to say you're never going to ask the state for anything, ever, and that you have money in the bank and private medical insurance. I imagine they then give you your "Registro" without further ado.
• Or you can say you're working here and want to be treated as a Spanish national for the purposes of health care, pension, unemployment, maternity etc. And you want the same for your dependants, as the Spanish get. Maybe if you can show an employment contract then all is straightforward, I don't know. I'd set up as an autonomo (self-employed). They wanted to know if I'd been self-employed before; how long I'd been in that line of work; how many clients I'd had in the past and were expecting in the future; how much I'd earned/expected to earn; and on, and on. And all mainly in Spanish.

When he finally gave me my "Registro", I could have wept, but I held back the tears until I was on the pavement as we still had hubby to go through the third degree. He didn't have a job, self-employed status, OR loads of dosh, and NEITHER did he sign to say he'd never call on the state to open their coffers, so I expected the worst. But they just asked him 2 questions (Are you her husband?; Do you live together at this address?) then handed him his "Registro". His problems were to come later: it took over 6 months of battling to get him into the state health system. That called for a second bottle of Cava.

These "Registro" (I believe they used to be called "Residencia") are credit-card sized, but they're just paper - punched out of the middle of a sheet of green A4 paper after you've signed it. We've put ours in little plastic sleeves - I'm not sure you're allowed to get them plasticised so we haven't done that. They'll fall to bits some time, but not before the damned passport that we still have to carry around 24/7. The "Registro" doesn't have our signature, let alone a photo. All it does is allow us to get travel reductions (in conjunction with the form from the town hall), reduced entry to some things, and a tax refund on things I buy for my business.

There's a lot of detail there, and excuse me if it's OTT, but there's so much confusion over these things that I like to give an account of how it went for me. I'd love to know how others fared.

[Phaedra]

Thanks ShielaW

So the Registro is basically just a smaller version of the Green Sheet ?

That's a disappointment.

[SheilaW]

Well, I can't say whether it is or not, because I've never seen the bigger one, but this new one isn't the answer to all ills, that's for sure.