Registering Mateo in the "Registro Civil de Madrid"

I am telling you today the story of how Mateo was registered. It was much less straight forward than what you may have thought.

We were told by our midwife that we would be able to register the baby at the hospital, during the two days that we would typically stay there after giving birth. So I was surprised when at the office in the hospital where the register is done, with the paperwork at hand, the lady there attending told me that we had to go to the Civil Register to do it because Mariel’s civil status is divorced (from a previous marriage to a Norwegian man). As you may know Mariel and I are not married. So things start to complicate a little, the woman tells us there that we will need to show in the register the legal proof of the divorce. There is a 30 day time, from the day of birth to register a newborn in Spain, after that time frame the process to register the baby is more laborious since it is considered an out-of-time-inscription.

At this point things still look like the inscription will be simple we just need to go to the register, Mariel has documents from her divorce in the original Norwegian and translated to Spanish so everything seems in order to proceed. Since the registration of the baby is required for every paperwork there after, we got an appointment for the inscription of the newborn at the Civil Register at the earliest date available, the 27th of May at 11:00 am. Not to bad, but remember Mateo was born on May the 20th, so already a week has gone by.

First visit to the Register

At the register they are interested by the peculiarities of our case. A Spanish man having a child with a woman from the Philippines, not married, the woman is divorced. Eh, … wait a minute, divorce is not possible in the Philippines. No, no she divorced in Norway, she lived in Norway for many years and got married and divorced there. Ah, …. phew, OK then. Show me the paperwork.

After looking through the paper he says that the documents provided by Mariel of the divorce are not valid because they are not final, and he was right, looking carefully they were a notification that the divorce had been filled correctly and if no allegations were filed, by any party, in the following 3 months the process would be closed with a final divorce. The document even had a line saying something of the sort: “This document cannot be used as proof of divorce”. The man in the register tells us we need to ask in the Norwegian embassy for a current document with the sentence from a judge of the divorce.

Since it is still early we decide to go directly to the embassy and see what can be done. Funny thing Google thinks the embassy is in calle la Castellana, in plaza de Colón, we go there and is an office building of some company, nothing to do with he embassy, checking online on the embassy page we get an address in Serrano, not far, walking distance, basically just across Colón square, in front of the archeological museum. By the time we get there is past noon and they are closed for lunch… very European time schedule, only one hour from 12:00 to 13:00, so we decide to make time in a cafeteria and have something to eat.

Mateo in the car seat.

A little while after, back at the embassy we encounter a very helpful and friendly woman attending. She tells us that they can’t give us the document we are asking for, that we have to get into contact with the Norwegian governmental agency, and finds for us their contact information. They have to send the documents from Norway.

By these point we are starting to get a little concerned, there should be plenty of time to obtain the document and translate it to Spanish, but there is no room for error, the document must be the correct one.

Back at home we decide to have some clams for diner, to help cope with the failure of the days project to register Mateo.

Clams with tomato and paprica.

Getting the document from Norway

The next day we are able to contact the Norwegian government and after explaining repeatedly in English, until we were convinced that the woman in the law department of the government agency had understood the intent of the document we were interested in and the content it had to include, the woman could find, the required document and send it to our address in Madrid.

The document arrives in the mail on June the 5th, on the 16th day from the birth of Mateo, hurray!, things seem to be moving along. Now the next problem is to translate the document from Norwegian to Spanish. The problem is that searching online there doesn’t seem to be official translators in Madrid from Norse. So we decide to go back to the embassy to ask if the know of any translators. Making things short, the same woman from our previous visit is there at the desk and is able to give us a list of both the official translators from the Spanish and the Norwegian governments, with their contact information.

Surprisingly, or maybe not, there are only 10-12 translators between the two of them and of these most are located in Norway, in fact a grand total of 3 translators are in Spain, only one in the Spanish list, in Valencia. The other two, in the Norwegian list one in Madrid and an other in Vitoria.

Without any other criteria, Sara from Madrid seems like the best option since we could potentially meet to exchange the documents if necessary.

Sara worked from her home in Tres Cantos, she was a busy woman taking care of small kids, and this was obvious in the phone. Still she seemed efficient and capable of doing the job. She shared her concern that since she is licensed in Norway maybe her translation is not accepted in Spain. In her experience only the official translators of the nation are accepted, otherwise the translation needs to be certified in Norway.

Not wanting to spend the money on a useless translation I went back to the registry to ask about this issue… Once there talking to the same man that remembered our case he said that any translation with a seal of official translation would be valid, one from the consulate or embassy or similar.

By now it is Friday, June the 7th and we give the green light to the translator to proceed. Since it is a very short document we agree that she can have it prepared by Monday afternoon, and that I could go to her house to pick it up around 20:00 to speed up the process and save the money of a certified mail.

On an other note, since May the 27th, the first visit to the Register and the embassy, which we did with the car, we had an adventure with the car that ended with it in the workshop being fixed. This parallel story deserves a separate post, for now let us note that the car was not available at this time of the story for it was being worked on.

This meant that I took the metro to get to Tres Cantos and back, obtaining in the process a very official looking translation with stamps and seals. During the early afternoon we had in Aluche an appointment for the renewal of Mariel’s TIE, which is very much part of the story with the car. Having dthone, all three of us, is long metro trip to Aluche, earlier; I went by my self to retrieve the translation in Tres Cantos.

We are now getting towards the end of the story, but a couple of twists still remain.

Getting Mateo Finally registered

The next day, the 11th of June we go to the Civil Register again, with all of the papers, hoping that it would go smoothly this time around, spoilers, … it didn’t.

As we are arriving the man that attended us the previous times and was aware of our case, was leaving to have a coffee break, as he was leaving we cough him and briefly made him recall our case, he immediately went to his colleague and told her to attend us.

Going through the papers she noticed some irregularities, the name of Mariel was not the same on the different papers. This is not uncommon in foreign people that came from countries with a different naming convention.

The main problem was that the doctor in the delivery had written the name that appeared in the Mariel’s NIE: Mariel Espina. But the complete name in the passport is Mariel Tumale Espina, those had to coincide otherwise they couldn’t register the newborn.

The solution: To go back to the hospital Gregorio Marañon and find a doctor in the delivery section that would amend the document. It was getting to be late and I wanted to finish this paperwork today so I left Mariel and Mateo there in the register and took a taxi to the hospital. The taxi driver was quite friendly and upon knowing we were going to the delivery Hospital and that I had a newborn child we started to talk about how difficult is to meet women in the traditional way nowadays, it seems like the only viable way is through online platforms. As the conversation continued he mentioned that a good friend of him had told him that the best girls around are the Filipino, very friendly, pretty and caring, the funny thing is this happened before I had said anything about my fiancee being from the Philippines, amazing coincidence.

Once in the hospital finding a doctor to make the changes in the document and stamping it again to show the authenticity, was actually not very difficult, I did have to ask a couple of people and finally was told to go to the section of the Hospital where the facilities to give birth are and ask the doctors in duty there, which was the correct call. Getting out of the hospital I though I would tell Mariel I got the document fixed and was on my way back, … but found out I was missing my phone! I had had it back at the register, noticing my pockets were quite loose I concluded the phone must have fell from them on the taxi. I couldn’t think of anything to do about it right there, decided the best course of action was to get back to the register, finish the inscription of Mateo and use Mariel’s phone to try and call my phone to see if the taxi driver, or the current client would answer it.

After an uneventful taxi trip to the register and delivering the amended document, filling in the additional form for birth statistic purpose, Mateo is register the only implication is that in Spain he is not Mateo Magee Espina as would be normal he is Mateo Magee Tumale, taking the name of the grandmother from the Philippines instead of that of his grandfather. Curiously in the Philippines, and in his Philippine passport he maintains the surnames as originally intended Mateo Espina Magee in the Filipino naming convention.

While we were waiting to the register to be completed I confess to Mariel the stupidity of having lost my phone and start trying to call it, but no one answers it. We try to access the track my phone option from Mariel’s phone and after some configuration we manage to activate it and see its moving in a compatible way for it still being on the taxi. We see the option of making the phone ring from the app, which we think may be useful in the case the phone was in silence or in low volume, which I was not sure if it was the case.
While this is happening we leave the Register and since Mateo is hungry and I also was feeling like having a coffee, we found a coffee shop in the neighborhood and stayed there trying to call the phone every so often. After the many tries finally the taxi driver answered and reminding him of our talk about Filipino girls he remembered who I was, told me he had a passenger right now but he could call me back when he had reached the destination and bring me the phone to any address, but he would need to charge me the fair. Which is not only reasonable but expected, in fact I left him a good tip for the effort.

So concluding the story we weighted in the cafe since Mateo was still eating and we were in no hurry until the driver finished his current fair, called back, obtained the address of the coffee shop and made his way there to return the phone.

All’s well that ends well.

Mariel and Mateo back at home in the sofa.