Hi all,

New poster here, my husband and I are currently living and working in the UK but plan to move to Spain in a few years time. With the BREXIT situation it has left us uncertain on how we should proceed. We do not plan to work in Spain and are currently saving and both have pensions with work that should support us. We know the area we wish to retire to but have not yet formally started to look for property.

A friend who is already resident in Spain suggested that we should apply for our residency card now. I am keen to get others opinions on whether this is even possible without a fixed address in Spain?

Your friend should know that only people who reside in Spain can apply for residency. You are resident in the UK not Spain.

Rosemary

You need to personally visit the Police Extranjeros department in the area you live to get a residence certificate . There you will be registered on the Central Register of Foreigners.provided you can prove you have enough resources to support yourselves, have health insurance valid for at least a year. This should be done within three months of arriving in Spain should you intend to live there permanently.

They would never register you without an address. In addition, many offices insist that you are registered on the Local Padron. You cannot do that without an address either - you need to own property or have a rental contract.

In addition to that some areas have stopped accepting requests to register as they have such a huge backlog.

In some areas the police actually come and visit to see that you do live where you claim, happened to us the day after we signed on our Padron which was a bit of a shock as nobody had told us such a thing might happen!

Yes, that happened to us as well.

Is this a wind up ? You want to apply for residency in somewhere you don't live.

Hmmm

I have little doubt that with sufficient lies and deception, a bit of document forgery, and likely some palm greasing thrown in for good measure, you could acquire residency cards however just on a financial level it would be a pyrrhic victory as you'd end up being taxed on your incomes in both countries.

Dual tax treaties only work when you play by the rules which you wouldn't be by any conceivable measure and with allowances in Spain being nowhere near as generous as in UK that means you'd double your tax and more.

Furthermore, as you'd of course need to be present in Spain to actually carry out such a mendacious plot I dread to think of the possible consequences of getting caught, jail time would not be out of the question...!

Sounds like it.....amazing how people think it's a brilliant idea to try and beat the system......until the cr** hits and you are on your own and the MMR (my mate reckons) will not save you. Really clever!

Seems so given fact that the poster has never responded?

I am amazed at how many apparently law abiding UK citizens, think it is acceptable to lie and cheat when they come to Spain.

But you lie, pretending to be the Fonz.

You got me there