On health care

With P. at the school I can concentrate in the million things that I have to do.
We're already registered with the local council as residents in Sabadell and our numero de extrangero card (the local ID for foreigners) is already started and we have to wait for the police or whoever to actually do it.
Every little bureaucratic thing takes at least two trips. The first one to make sure of the documents you need (the council's web pages are hopelessly out of date. always) and the second one to actually do whatever you need to do. Sometimes it even takes three visits because there's something missing from the list in visit two or you've been misinformed. A pain in the neck.

First on my list was to register us all with a local GP.
Here, as Europeans, we only have to register with a local GP in order to get health care as any local law abiding, tax payer Spaniard. In principle, in any European country everybody has the right to receive emergency health care and everybody actually living in the country can (and should) register with the local GP. Basic health care is a sort of human right, I think.
However, if you're an EC citizen traveling abroad you have to have an EC blue card proving that you're entitled to that care and even then, you have to pay for certain things that are not consider to be basic enough. If you're not an EC citizen you'd have the very basic and you'd better have a good private health insurance if you're sick or injured.

Every newspaper and loads of people here (and in the UK as well), keep complaining about how the local health services are over strained and failing due to the pressure of having to deal with illegal migrants, false asylum seekers and such "second class" people. I really doubt that that can be actually true. It took me a week to collect all the documents proving that we're entitled to health care and to register with the local GP and for the life of me I cannot figure out how an illegal immigrant can fool the system.
As it stand, there's a sub-class of people who have naught and here you can see them more clearly than in the UK. They're cleverly called "sin papeles" (without documents) and everyday you can see them in national TV arriving to the Canarie Islands in "cayucos" or "pateras" , run down boats overcrowded with people with nothing but hope and lucky to have survived the trip. There was some striking images of tourist in the island helping the poorest of the survivors. I can't help to think: there but for the grace of God, go I.

Personally, I think that is hypocritical of the European nations to talk about open markets and free trade while heavily subsidising its own products and not allowing the free movement of workers and people. Europe is fortifying its borders to stop the free movement of people and goods but it's a sort of lost cause, because for how long can they stop the desperately poor people of the world from entering the union?