Village life in Andalucia

Fans of this blog will have noticed that it has been lying fallow for some time. the truth is, I haven’t been able to do anthing at all because all my time’s been taken up trying to obtain an Andalucian fishing licence.
The process of getting a licence in Andalucia (all the regions of Spain have different rules), says quite a lot about Spanish administration and the rule of law. In Andalucia, you need a licence to fish in the sea – one to fish from the shore and a different one to fish from a boat. However, it’s freshwater fishing that really gives you a headache. Aliens like myself could be forgiven for thinking that the rules were made up at the department of the environment not by fishermen or even by sportsmen but by whey faced beaurocrats with nothing to do but bugger up the tourist industry.
In the first place they make no distinction between hunting and fishing so fishing for minnows in a stream is treated exactly the same as striding through the scrub with a double barrelled shotgun blasting away at wild boar. Consequently, to go fishing you need personal liability insurance, presumably in case you maim or slaughter people with your bobble float.
A fishing licence, like a hunting licence, requires you to have passed an examination not unlike the written part of a driving test. It is in a number of sections, takes 40 days to mark, and you can pay to go on a course and to buy sample test papers to maximise your chance of passing, but don’t expect to simply pick up a licence for a weeks holiday fishing. And don’t expect to be asked sensible questions either. Questions like “how do you cleanly and safely remove a hook from a fishes mouth” or “what are the advantages of returning fish to the water” are not allowed. Instead questions like “How are the waters in the lower depths of reservoirs oxygenated?” Suggest that the they are compiled by a team hand picked from the Saturday help, non of whom have ever gone fishing. Or anywhere.
Once you have passed your examinations, been taken out by your family to a celebration dinner, hired an insurance agent to obtain your comprehensive personal liability, you are then in a position to receive your personal authorised fisherman’s number. I haven’t yet got this far so I’m not sure if it comes through the post like a congratuatory telegram from the Queen, or whether you are summoned to the offices of the department of the environment to have it bestowed personally upon you by the chief assistant to the assistant chief examiner of fishermen.
However you receive it, once you have it in your grasp you are – at last! allowed to pay for it. You take your number, your insurance, a formal means of personal indentification and the fee to one of the banks authorised by the department of the environment to receive moneys from, and disburse licences to, fishermen and hunters.
How do ordinary Spaniards deal with this? How come the Andalucian tourist fishing industry isn’t in a state of utter collapse? Well, as with all convoluted Spanish beaurocracy and petty regulation there are “ways and means” dear reader, some of which I shall expound in later missives . . . .