Anyone who spends more than three months in Spain is required by law to sign up to the Registro Central de Extranjeros. If you did this three years ago or more and are an EU citizen, you would have been issued a wallet-sized laminated photocard that you could handily whip out whenever photo ID was required (eg every time you pay with a debit or credit card here), but as of March 2007 this tarjeta de residencia was scrapped for European Union nationals and replaced with the Certificado de Registro de Ciudadano de la Unión that details your name, nationality, address and personal Número de Identidad de Extranjeros (NIE)—this is just a sheet of green paper and cannot be used as a form of identification.
STEPS TO FOLLOW:
1. Only one visit to your local Oficina de Extranjeros (in Barcelona this is now located at Balmes 192, open from 9am to 2pm, Monday to Fridays) should be necessary to gain residence status, although you are likely to encounter the inevitable queue. However, if you download the required form, the EX14, from the Ministerio del Interior website (www.mir.es) beforehand and have the required paperwork (see below) with you, it should be a fairly straightforward process.
2. You need your passport along with two photocopies of it, along with two copies of the completed EX14 form, if you have downloaded it in advance.
3. At the Oficina de Extranjeros you will be handed a payslip, which you must take straight away to the bank and pay the processing fee (around €7); once paid, you have to take the proof of payment back to the oficina. At that point, you will be issued your certificado.
NB. If you’ve been here since before March 2007 and have a residency card, you can’t apply for the certificate until the card needs renewal.
This is the process for residents from EU member countries. If you are from outside the EU, residency tends to be a more complicated affair and you should contact the Spanish Embassy in your home country for information.
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