Legal Residence

After a whole painful year plus 3 months, the application for C's Legal Residence has finished.

The final resolution was communicated to us today.

I dealt with all the application myself in behalf of C, above everything due to his impossibility of communicate in Spanish, but also did it in an attempt to make his life easier, less painful, once more letting win my obssesion to protecting him.

But at the end of the day, I have to accept it, I didn't want him to be aware of the shameful machinery behind the Civil Service in my country. I just wanted to save myself all the shame and frustration of "translating" to him how this things are done in this part of the world.

I am not going to describe here the endless wasted hours at offices, dealing with incoherent civil servants, the irrationality of procedures, a perfect example of crippling bureaucracy.

I had enough myself.

Even when I believe I am such a tolerant, patient and pacifist person, more than once during this year, while I was waiting endless hours at those offices only to hear later the absurd replies of the wasted civil servant on duty behind a desk, I could not help but remembering a violent Michael Douglas getting stuck in the traffic jam in that day of fury in Falling Down... I am sure, one day, someone will get as demented as him.