Snippets 13

Dr and Mrs Bengry had a villa near Benisa in Spain and needed a car with a Spanish registration number, so that he could leave the car there for his use on holidays, to save him bringing a car down every visit. He eventually bought a second hand Mercedes and decided to take a week’s holidays with his wife and drive to Benisa and fly back. The trip was uneventful until they arrived at the Spanish border, where there was a short queue for customs. The car in front of them was found to have guns hidden under the upholstery, probably Etta separatists, which caused a great delay. When it eventually came to their turn, their car and papers were scrutinised thoroughly, but they were allowed to proceed about four hours later than they had planned. A few hours later, near Teruel in central Spain, they were stopped at a road- block and told to pull over to the verge. The car was now searched from top to bottom. The upholstery was taken up, as was the lining of doors etc. The tyres were taken off, but of course nothing was found. However they were told that no import duty had ever been paid on their car and that they had a week to pay this, and failing this to take the car out of the country. The police took them to town where they found a garage willing to put the car together again. When this was completed they had to stay in a hotel in Teruel overnight. Next day they arrived at their villa and settled in. The following day they went to Alicante, having made an appointment to be seen in the Ayuntamienta to pay the import duty. They were told that it wasn’t handled in their office and that they had to go to Valencia next day before 4pm. Arriving in Valencia at midday they had a good lunch and made their way leisurely to the office, where they were again told that the duty could only be paid in Madrid. Three days had been wasted to no avail, so they decided to fly to Madrid and duly presented themselves at the appropriate office, where they found that their passports were needed before the car could be registered. They hadn’t their passports and assumed they had left them in Valencia, but after a difficult telephone conversation found no luck, similarly in Alicante the passports were not found, and now they had to assume they were lost. On making enquiries they found they could get temporary passports at the embassy next day, so there was no alternative but to stay the night in a hotel. Next morning, the fifth day of their week’s holiday, they got both temporary passports and duty paid and flew back to Alicante, and made their way to their villa. The following day was the last of their short holiday and after a pleasant day at the beach they went out for a meal and discussed the whole trip. It struck both of them at the same time that the passports were probably in the hotel in Teruel where they had spent the first night. On phoning the hotel they found they were correct, so even though it was quite late they drove to Teruel, collected the passports and returned, a round trip of over four hundred miles. They left the car at the villa next day and returned to England.
A month later, needing a holiday badly, they flew to Spain and made their way to the villa to find that the four wheels had been taken off the car and stolen. They then had to have four new wheels flown out from England, which took two weeks, during which time Dr Bengry had a garage built to house the car. All this had cost a lot of money, but they felt that it might still be worth all the trouble. Six months later, thinking that the car was safely housed in the new garage, they went on holiday again to find that the garage door had been forced and two wheels stolen from the car and the chassis supported on blocks. This meant getting more new tyres flown out and getting more substantial locks on the garage doors.
The car gave reasonable satisfaction for the next seven years but then started to give trouble. As it was now getting old and causing a lot of expense the doctor decided to sell it, but found it was practically worthless. As it happened there was a young Englishman working at a nearby house and he had been helpful in many ways to the family so Dr Bengry asked him if he would like a present of the car. The offer was accepted and soon afterwards he and the car left the area and were never seen again.
Six years later Dr Bengry got a very big bill from the licensing authority, saying that he was being fined a larger sum each year for the past six years. His explanation that he was no longer the owner was not accepted and he was told that it was his responsibility to inform the authority or to officially declare the car as scrap. The tax plus fine cost almost £1500! Dr Bengry sat down one day to work out the total cost of the car etc from the beginning and found that it would have cost him very much less to have hired a car for all trips.