jdr

On page 12 of the town crier today is a notice from the British Embassy saying roughly;

From March 28th EU citizens will no longer be issued with residence cards.
However the new decree requires all EU citizens planning to reside in Spain for more than 3 months to register in person at the foreigners office in their province of residence.
They will be given a certificate stating their name,nationalty, identity number and date of registration. Errrm same as NIE form ?

Although cant find any info on Embassy or mira.es sites.

Rosemary

We would be grateful for any info that you find regarding residents cards as we still have to carry our passports around with us for ID. We do have NIE numbers but have not gone for residencia as things were changing.

Rosemary and Graham

Fred James

The problem with the new scheme is that anyone who needed to apply for a card still has to apply for a certificate.

The process will be quicker and easier as you don't have to go back for prints but the certificate will not be classed as an identity document so you will have to carry your passport again!

Progress????

helen17

Let me get this straight in my head - so all the places where we have to produce our residence card, like the bank to access our account, we will have to use our passport? If so, definately going backwards!

gallerie9

I use my driving licence with no problems in the Bank in the shops.

Lionda

Oh Noooo - yet another thing to keep me awake at night

Big Pete

Lionda

And we thought life in Spain was going to be easy, loads of stuff to worry over isnt it

Think i will have to set asside a month just to get paperwork and stuff sorted before even consider the beach and sunbathing and fun stuff !!

brisca

In light of this information, does anyone have any idea what happens if you're in the process of applying for Residencia at the moment!?

We took our applications to a Gestor in October last year.
Unfortunately, he didn't submit them when he said he would (!) so they weren't submitted until the middle of December (allegedly!)

Despite several phone calls to him, he just keeps saying there's no news
He says that applications normally take 2 months to get to the finger printing stage, but that there are a lot of applications currently being processed

Is it worth me trying to phone the foreigners office directly, and attempting to untangle this mess!?

Thanks in advance for any words of wisdom!
Sam.

jdr

If they come through before the date then they will suffice until they run out then you will have to get the (new ?) certificate. lol

What I cant make out is the NIE has this same info on it as this new certificate anyway.

patsywhitehair

hi, why dont you just photocopy your passports and carry that around with you, same as your driving license, regards,pat

Lis48

http://spaincoin.net/index.php?optio...d=182&Itemid=2
That site gives more info. Note that you only need to get the new certificate when your residencia runs out and is due for renewal so it makes no difference to anyone with residencia. If you are in the middle of getting residencia, just go ahead with it. It´s only to try and catch the thousands of foreigners who don´t have their address recorded officially (not needed on NIE as you can just use a plot number from the escritura with no postal address).

EsuriJohn

Hi jdr,

This is really odd! We got our NIEs in Huelva and we tried the national police station but they sent us to the Officina De Extranjeros down on the dock road where we were issued with an NIE which as far as I can see is a tax registration number for non-residents.

This has Name, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Nationality, Identity Number (Tax Registration Number) and Place and Date of Issue.

So we will have to go again and pay €6.40 for another one called by a different name!!!

Regards,

John.

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maryann

your hopeful! One month! that would be a record, we are 7 months in with two professional spanish assistance working on our behalf and we still dont have it all sorted.

My advice to all would be to get a residency card while you can. Each town will differ on its requiremnets, however the one thing that is universal in Spain is a residency card. The locals regonise it and know what to do. If you show them a certificate instead they might panic and run.

Please remember Spain is not old England, it is a different culture, you can not compare how things are done here to how they are done in the UK.

Even my baby had his finger prints taken for his card!

It makes me feel safer because I feel he is protected as he is in the system and will have all his rights.

hope this makes sense.

love

mary x x

maryann

The process does take a long time. They do not use computers here for admin, everyhting is paper work, with a stamp and a reciept, therefore there is a paper trail for every process to go through.
I live here and as I said before I have two ladies working on my behalf from my husbands work helping me with this, I show up personally to do the paper work with them, everything stops at 10 in the morning for breakfast, then everyhting stops for siesta. Then possibly they may work a gain at 5 or wait untill the next day. So there is not that much time they give themselves to get the work done.
Dont get frustrated by this, it is the way here. Manage your expectations and be more patient then you ever thought possible.
Be over nice to any on ein admin or they will never process your forms, and I mean never. Once a piece of paper is lost, it is lost! Get a reipt for every orginal piece of paper work you hand over.

Hope this helps

mary

brisca

Thank you jdr, Lis48 and maryann for your helpful replies.

Have looked at spaincoin.net and the Spanish site mir.es
My Spanish isn't fluent (!) but I couldn't find anything that gave information about the new changes??
Maybe, as maryann says, it will take a while even for the Government website to be updated!?

Regarding the fact that this "new" certificate doesn't seem to be any different from the NIE, the following info was on the spaincoin page:

However as the new smart card DNI’s are introduced across Spain for nationals this year, it’s thought that similar cards are likely to be issued to foreign residents also in the future.
(Don't hold your breath, eh!?)

As for carrying ID, we both just carry our driving licences with us - and so far that's been fine.
We also keep a note of our NIE numbers on us, as it's surprising how often we get asked for it!

For anyone thinking of carrying photocopies of their passport.........do you think the "authorities" will accept copies, seeing as everything has to be done in triplicate here!? Maybe only originals will suffice??