Like every other (legal) resident in Spain, I have an identity card. And I am obliged to carry this with me at all times. This is just as well as it bears my identity number and this is something for which I am frequently asked. Sometimes this is because your identity number is also your tax reference and the recording of the number – e. g. on the invoice for a car you are buying – helps the tax authorities reduce fraud. At other times – e. g. when you are picking up a parcel at the post office – I suppose that one can construct a reasonable case for having to quote it. But in many other cases, I get the impression that you are asked for it simply because, like Everest, it is there. And because the Spanish have an ingrained love for (or at least acceptance of) formalities. To say the least, this is irritating. It seems to me to be the result of an obsession with proving identity here and I often wonder whether the situation is the same in other countries where identity cards are compulsory. If my experience is anything to go on, it is virtually impossible to pay for anything with a credit or debit card in Spain without producing photographic evidence that you are the person named on the card. This is usually done by showing your identity card. I wonder whether the Blair government, in its eagerness to introduce cards, is aware of the risk of the creeping ‘identificationism’ that is likely to stick in the craw of Brits unused to these regular flea-bites.

When I first came to Spain I didn’t yet have an identity card and my driving licence was one of the old British ones without a picture. After the first time this was rejected and I found myself unable to take away the trolley-load of groceries I had taken from the shelves, I pasted a small photograph of myself on one side of the licence and this passed muster every time from then on. Of course, it didn’t prove I was the owner of the credit card or the licence but I didn’t let this bother me. More recently an old friend of mine visited and quickly came up against the problem of proving his identity in a local supermarket. When asked to provide evidence of his identity for one credit card he simply offered another credit card with the same name on it. The checkout girl rotated the card so that she could get a good luck at the hologram thereon and accepted it. Later both us agreed that he didn’t actually bear much resemblance to Francis Drake, with or without a feathered hat.