Pesky driving licences

I count myself lucky that just before I had to switch my British driving license for a Spanish one – which would have necessitated taking another driving test, conducted in Spanish – the British and Spanish authorities reached an agreement in which one licensed could simply be converted from one to the other.

This is the good part.

What is less good is that it has proven absolutely impossible to obtain an appointment at the DGT, the local traffic police.

I have tried and tried and tried. Endlessly.

Most of the time the website says that no appointments are available. Occasionally it will let me through to a form that I dutifully fill in, before the website reports that, once more, there are no appointments available.

It’s very frustrating.

What is actually going on, as the recent arrest of 69 people show, is that an organised criminal gang have written a piece of software to book up all the appointment slots, and then sell this appointments to the woebegone foreigner.

I’m quite baffled as to why the Spanish authorities don’t put a proper anti-bot system in place. I’m sure that it would be quite easy to do.

As for me, time is running out. I have six months from March 16 to convert my license, otherwise I will have to retake my test here.

I briefly toyed with the idea of writing a Python script to automatically book an appointment – it really doesn’t look too hard, and if criminals can do it I’m sure I can too – but in the end opted for phoning the DGT instead, and hitting buttons in response to their automated system.

I now have an appointment tomorrow morning at 8.45. Although it’s far from clear for what I’ve booked the appointment.