“The collection or sequence of forms and procedures required to gain bureaucratic approval for something, especially when oppressively complex and time-consuming.” The key phrase here being oppressively complex. We have been used to Portuguese bureaucracy since our arrival, and one thing we have learnt is that whenever you go anywhere to get anything done you take all the documents you own about everything. Whether it was getting married, obtaining Portuguese citizenship, renewing our driving licence, updating the size of our land, getting planning approval, building permission etc etc it was never plain sailing. I don’t particularly mind gathering the necessary papers, the annoying thing is the hurdles which are placed along the way to get them. It doesn’t matter if you speak to people who have done the same thing, if you check online on what you need, or even speak face to face with the person behind the desk because when you then start a procedure it will not go as expected. It’s not just time-consuming it’s energy-draining and disheartening. And if there’s a time limit on what needs to be done then it becomes exceedingly stressful.

It has taken over a year for us to get a habitation licence to sell Casa Azul. Every step of the way was fraught, mainly I think because a lot of the time documents just sat in someone’s in-tray for weeks on end. Months have been spent phoning (in Portuguese!), visiting offices, writing emails… we were almost there when it seemed we were missing a telephone bill to show we were connected. Yes, we have a landline but we have not used it for years. Come and see the house: there’s the box and there’s the line. But no they wanted a phone bill. And then, bizarrely, they said a mobile phone bill would be acceptable! Not a great help for us as we use the pay as you go system which has no address linked… Richard eventually found a phone bill from when we first moved in. Ah, so now the house is habitable… the council architect signed off the licence, then the chief of works and finally the vice-president. You can imagine the time it took to go from one in-tray to the next.

Anyway, the good news (somehow the sheer relief overshadowing any celebrations) is we have the licence, we have a buyer, we have booked the notary and on Monday we sell the house. Oxalá.