It was a warm spring day, Easter Monday 2002. We were gardening and decided to stop for a while and have a drink. We’d been talking a lot to friends who had become legal couples and were thinking about doing it ourselves, but wanted to know more. Seeing as Easter Monday isn’t a public holiday in Spain the Town Hall would be open, and seeing as we both had the day off we decided to go and ask some questions. Thinking we’d only be talking to somebody at the front desk we didn’t change, we did however take a file with copies of all our paperwork because it’s guaranteed you need it for everything here.

The Town Hall is huge, very Andaluz in design with a big central patio. The patio was packed with people shouting and waving their arms around, nobody was queuing so we pushed forward and finally got to the information desk. “Have you got any information on becoming a legal couple?” I shouted at the woman calmly smoking a cigarette.  “What?” “Have you got any information on becoming a legal couple?” I shouted louder. She stood up, and with ear splitting volume shouted into the middle distance “MARIA, THESE TWO MEN WANT TO GET MARRIED” The whole room fell silent and we looked on as they all turned as one, mouths open. From the far corner of the patio a voice shouted back “send them over here”. It was like the parting of the waves. The only sound to be heard was Gucci loafers on marble floor as they made way for us to cross the room.

“You’re in the wrong place” said Maria, “you need to go to this address”, and gave us a slip of paper with an address written on it. Off we went to find the address. The department we were looking for was “community services”, which we thought was a bit odd. We found it in a really dodgy part of town and thought there must have been some mistake. Outside the building were lots of Moroccan men in various states of consciousness. Paul was getting worried and I wasn’t helping matters because I was beginning to see the funny side of it. “This is a big mistake” he said, “come on, let’s go home”. “No, I’ve always wanted to see inside a drug rehabilitation centre!”

We rang the bell and the door opened automatically. A shutter opened and a woman’s eyes were visible. “I think we’ve been sent here by mistake, we’d like some information on becoming a legal couple”. The eyes lit up. “Really! Oh, erm, just a minute.” The shutter slammed closed and moments later a door was opened by a woman with the biggest smile I’d ever seen. “Follow me” she said as she unlocked another door. We were in a long corridor and the floor was littered with semi-conscious Moroccans. “Sorry about the mess” she said kicking bodies out of our way, “you see you are our first, er, ones.” By this point Paul was having apoplexies, but I was really starting to enjoy myself.

We sat in an office and waited. After a few minutes a very officious woman came in and said “I want copies of passports, residence permits and empadronamientos.” (I don’t know what that is in English.) As she was going through our papers I started to say “we’d like some information…..”, but she cut me off and asked “have you got any special requirements?” “Oh, well I don’t think so.” I looked at Paul and he was slowly shaking his head in that “I hope you know what you’re doing” way. “No, we don’t have any special requirements” I said. “Good, that makes it all straight forward. Please fill in this form.” I wrote both our names, address, date of birth and parent’s names. We both signed the bottom of the page.

“Congratulations” she said, “come back in a week and collect your certificate.” She left the room, I burst out laughing and Paul’s chin hit the floor. “Have we just done what I think we’ve just done?” – he managed to whisper. “Well” I said, ”either that or we’ve just signed up for a drug rehabilitation course.”

We went for a coffee to try and make sense of what had just happened. It was then we realised we were still in our gardening clothes, Paul’s shirt was missing buttons and I had muddy knees. Hey, when we do something we do it in style. There was only one thing left to do, organise a party.