Was dial tone on the line on demand or did you have to make an appointment to get it?
There was no dial tone, it was an apartment building so someone had to come to the building and patch in the line for us in whatever junction box was there. When a tech finally came over we had phone in like 5 minutes. He came in, checked the line in the apartment, went to the basement or something, came back and told us our number. Very fast. But that was after waiting approximately, I’d say, 4 to 6 months for it. Spaniards told us that nobody bothers with land lines anymore (even at that time) for three reasons: the phone company service was atrociously slow, calls were expensive on the land lines, and when you got a cell you could tell them what area code you wanted it to be in and all calls to/from that area code were considered local calls. I was in Cadiz in the extreme south. Everyone had a Madrid number on the cell phones. It was that way in the north too. Loophole!