Wednesday, June 03, 2009

The Wise Virgins; The Foolish Virgins


Marian's first translation has come out. It looks swell, reads gracefully, and Marian has been paid. Success!
Less swell, less graceful, and less successful is what happened this morning. As a result of being a published translator, Marian can now join ACEtt (the translators' section of the Asociación Colegial de Escritores). This costs 75 euros a year, and they ask you to set up a direct debit for this.
Spain has no concept of the direct debit. Instead you have two options:
1) You pass your bank details to the organisation you wish to pay, and they are free to take as much of your money as they want whenever they want. If they cheat you, you have 25 days to rescind the payment.
2) You set up a 'block all payments' option on your account, and no one apart from the account holder can take money out without your setting up a permission on your account. Even with the permission in place, we have to provide our OK every time ACEtt asks for money.
Neither of these is a direct debit, which is a set sum of money paid at set intervals to an organisation of your choice, without you having to worry your head about it. The man in the bank seemed surprised when I used the adjective 'bizantino' to describe the situation.

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