Getting our mail delivered in Spain hasn’t been quite as simple as we thought it would be.  When we moved in to our long-term rental house, we knew the street address, so that is what we gave to people who needed or wanted to send us mail.  But after five or six weeks here, we had not gotten a single letter, bill, or even junk mail!  We found out in June that the birthday card that a family friend had sent to Peter in May got returned to the US, but as far as we could tell, it was addressed correctly.

Then one day, an new friend of ours who has lived here for almost ten years said to me, “hey, have you been getting your mail?” and I said, “no!  nothing!”.  He then told me that he was talking with the mail man, who had asked him if he knew of some new Americans in town with the last name Hammond.   When our friend replied in the affirmative, the mail man said “oh, I’ve been returning their mail, but now that I know they really live here, I will start delivering it”.  He even mentioned that he had sent back something from the police, as well as other letters.  What??

I asked our friend for clarification, and after several conversations, finally understood that it wasn’t so much that the mailman didn’t know us, but that our mail didn’t have the urbanization (neighborhood) name on the address, and that is required for some reason, even though he knew exactly where the mail should have been delivered using the street name and house number.  Once our friend vouched for our legitimate existence in the neighborhood, the postman was willing to deliver our mail even if it was not properly addressed. Hooray for Joaquim!  So now…

You’ve got mail!

We got the birthday card after she re-sent it (even without the urbanization name), but we never did get another letter from the police.  Hopefully it wasn’t important!