Our Second Car (El Coche Segundo)

After we got rid of our first car, El Flojo, we still needed a car and one day we met an Australian photojournalist who sold us his Canon® camera, lenses and bag as well as his green Volkswagen station wagon. He was gathering up some funds to finance a foray into the United Kingdom before he returned to Australia. This particular car had Dutch plates and was registered to a Brazilian.

In Spain a foreigner bought a used car for cash and didn’t bother to reregister it. So, who knows how long ago some Brazilian imported that car and registered with the government. Who knows when he sold that car for cash and left the country. Or to whom he sold the car. Or why he left the country. Maybe he wasn’t even a Brazilian, but just some guy with a stolen passport. You could write a novel about this guy. But what the hay, I had a bill of sale in case anyone asked me how I got the car. But no one ever did.

The car had a white oval decal, ringed in black, with a black “NL” on the left rear. That identified me as a Netherlander. Many, many cars sported these decals announcing their country of origin. Great Britain was fairly straightforward with their GB. But D for Germany? Well, yes, Deutschland. My favorite was CH for Switzerland. Congress of Helvetia.

It suited me to have Spaniards think I was a Netherlander. I spoke a reasonably good Spanish at the time and people would believe I was from the Netherlands. Spaniards believed that all Americans were tall, blond, blue eyed, and spoke only English. When the American Club, which Joanne and I had joined some time earlier, asked us if we would like to put an American flag decal on the car, we replied no, no, a thousand times no. I could just imagine how much the prices of things would go up if the Spanish vendor thought I was American. It was also common knowledge that Americans were all rich and dumb. So I thanked the American Club member as graciously as I could and declined her kind offer.

About the time we bought the VW we also received our international drivers licenses. Not easily come by. Required the services of our friendly gestor. We had to fill out forms and furnish our California drivers licenses as evidence of something or other.

We didn’t have to take a written test. Good thing, too. The test would have been in Spanish. In those days the Spanish government made no attempt to deal with foreigners. If you wanted to do something that involved the government, you did it in Spanish. My spoken Spanish was reasonable, but I’m not sure how well we would have done on a written drivers test.

Then we had to demonstrate our competence at the official testing area. It was a large compound involving short roads with curves, S curves, places for parallel parking, slalom courses and precision braking. And right smack in the middle was a bar. Just in case you needed a good, stiff brandy before strutting your stuff.

They really made the test difficult for their own citizens, almost as if they didn’t want them to have drivers licenses. But us, ridiculously easy. Drive forward a little ways, Stop. Back up a few feet. Congratulations, señor, you have passed the test. Vaya con Dios.

We drove until June, 1976, without mishap and when we left Spain we sold the car to Gino Hollander, a local painter with galleries in many different cities. He paid for the car with two paintings, a deal we found more than satisfactory. We just parked the car at the airport when we left and put the key under the doormat along with a bill of sale. I believe Gino’s older son used it to take some paintings to Israel. I wonder if the Brazilian was as well traveled as his car?