#nospanishcontract

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How to get a NIE card if you don’t have a Spanish work contract?

It took me a lot of time and nerves to get my NIE/Certificado UE as a person who is not working in a Spanish company. You see, I own a company in another EU country and I don’t intend to change this situation any time soon.

Why do you even need a NIE card? I’m not expecting many people here to ask this question, but in case you need this explanation, here it goes. First of all, you need it to legally live in Spain. You are obligated to get it within 3 months from the moment you start living in Spain, so there may be some legal consequences if you don’t have it. But there is also a very practical reason for getting your NIE card: you won’t be able to sign service contracts (eg. for the internet) nor purchase things online from many Spanish shops (not everything you need is available on Amazon) without providing your NIE number. So if you plan on living a comfortable life in Spain, you definitely need to get the residency aka NIE card.

In my journey to NIE card, I had a lot of help since day one, but unfortunately all of the people who wanted to help me had work contracts or were registered as autonomo (self-employed) here in Spain. Some of them had been the residents for so many years, they no longer knew how the process looks these days. Of course, there are also companies who can help you to get your NIE, but I wasn’t feeling like paying €200-€300 for getting registered as a resident, which as an EU citizen I’m entitled to get for free (well, almost, but I’ll get to that).

My process of getting a NIE card (mind that NIE CARD is equal to Spanish residency and NIE number is just a fiscal number) was long and bumpy, also because COVID-19 came to Spain right when I decided I finally needed to get it done. So right after I printed everything out and got a cita previa in a town almost a 100 km from where I lived, the lockdown was upon us and they cancelled all of the appointments. But that actually saved me some time and helped me get everything more or less right.

It is extremely hard to get a cita previa (at least in Barcelona) mostly because of the companies that charge people for helping with the process. They have employees clicking through the website all day and I have some conspiracy theories on how they are able to take over all of the available appointments, but let’s leave them be. As long as there are people willing to pay them and it’s not illegal, they will be there.

So, the first thing that you should do is getting all of the necessary documents. Only when you have them all printed out, copied and packed in a folder, you can get to the mindless clicking festival.

So what do you need to apply for a NIE card, when you are earning your money outside of Spain and don’t plan to change this:

1. EX-18 form filled and signed - original and copy. In part 4, pick the option No activo con recursos suficientes y seguro de enfermedad. You might want to print it out when you already know when your cita previa is, so you can fill in the right dates. I had filled my form in on June 21, but had my appointment on June 30 and they asked me to cross out the incorrect date and write the current one on top.

2. A passport and its copy (not the whole thing, just the part where all of your data is, for me it was the first page).

3. TASA 012. Remember when I mentioned that NIE cards are almost free? Well it costs you €12. Fill it in, make sure to check the box next to Certificado de registro de residente comunitario o Tarjeta de residencia de familiar de un ciudadano de la Unión. Then print it out, sign it and go to the nearest bank office to pay for it. You can make them charge your account or pay with cash, it’s up to you. The bank assistant will print a bunch of strange numbers in the middle of the document and you’ll get back 3 out of 4 pages that you brought to them. Don’t make any copies of this document.

4. Health insurance. If you’re paying for the public insurance in your country of origin (in the EU), you would need a document (S1, E106, E109, E121 or other) that’s not older than 3 months and says you are fully covered by the public insurance. A proof of the most recent payment can help too.If you don’t have public insurance, you would need to get a private one in Spain. It has to have the adnotation sin limites ni copagos, which means that it covers everything including hospitalizations without additional payments. I got mine when I was opening my bank account. I told the bank assistant that I’m going to apply for a NIE card and he offered to get me the proper insurance too. So I took it. But you can get one from any of the insurance companies in Spain accredited by the government. Now, I copied my health insurance card (both sides) and they took it along with my application, but that wasn’t enough. You need a document with condiciones particulares, that has all your details and mentions the sin copagos part. You will also need a proof of the last payment or your bank statement printout that shows it (I had the latter).

5. €5.538,40 on your bank account, confirmed with Certificado de Banco. The official recommendation says that it can be any European bank, but I’m not sure if banks in other EU countries issue such documents. I have an account in one of a few banks that allow you to open an account with your passport (Banc Sabadell). I’m sure you can find another one, but most of the banks would ask for your NIE to open an account (that’s what I call a paradox!). Keep in mind that issuing Certificado de Banco can take time. In my case, 48h. Apart from the certificado, I also had my bank statement printout ready and it became handy, when they asked for a proof of health insurance payment.

6. Printed confirmation of your cita previa. Of course you will get this one later, but I’m including it in this list to make sure that you won’t forget to print it out and bring it with you. It’s not enough to have it on your smartphone!

So now, when you have all of the documents ready, play some nice music or an audiobook, go to SEDE website and start clicking. First screen asks you for the province that you live in. Then you need to click on the second drop-down TRÁMITES CUERPO NACIONAL DE POLICÍA and pick POLICÍA-CERTIFICADOS UE. The third screen is just the information, so scroll it down and click Entrar. The next one asks you about your personal data. Pick Pasaporte/Documento de identidad and fill it in with your passport number. Make sure that in Nombre y apellidos section you provide all of the names that are listed in your passport. If you have a second name in the passport, you should include it in this field too. Then pick your country of origin and teach the captcha. LIFE HACK: you can use the autofill (most browsers have this option built-in). It saved me a lot of time. Make sure the autofill option has your full name, phone number and email address. It should learn your passport number after a few tries. Next screen gives you four options, but you just need to click Solicitar Cita.

If you are lucky and/or live in a place where there are not that many foreigners, you might get a cita in the next screen. If so, just fill everything in (autofill helps). In the last section I just wrote Certificado UE. The last screen gives you the date and time and you’re good to go. Print it and show up for your cita with all the documents you already collected. Congratulations!

If you are like me, living in Barcelona or one of the other popular provinces, in the next screen you will most likely get the information that there are no appointments available at this time (I don’t remember the exact wording in Spanish, sorry). Then you have to repeat this process many times, at different hours of day and night (yes, they are sometimes getting available during the night!). At some point you will be successful, but you just need to keep trying, as often as possible. Don’t give up!

Remember that you can get your cita previa nearby, but more often than not, you’ll get it in another city in your province. Book it anyway.

Also, a few times, I was ecstatic when the website showed me the information that there is a cita previa available. Then I filled all of the information in and on the next screen it said that there are no citas that I could book. I don’t know why this happens. Is it a glitch of the system? No way of knowing this. But keep trying, eventually you will be rewarded.

I saved you a few dead ends I came by while trying to get my NIE card. The process I described should help you get yours as soon as possible. If you come across any problems that I didn’t mention, make sure to describe it in the comments section and I will look into it.

Good luck!

EDIT:

After we did the procedure for my husband, we learned that sometimes they would ask for the documents from the bank and insurance company to be stamped. It didn’t matter that both of them had little captions saying that they don’t need a stamp to be legit. Yeah, Spaniards... We got lucky, because both the bank and the insurance company’s office were a walking distance from the police station, so we were able to make it in half an hour. But if you want to be extra safe, just go to these places in advance and ask them to put a stamp on your documents. You can always have two copies, in case your official wants one without a stamp.

Photo by sydney Rae on Unsplash