First Steps
Your First Month in Spain: The TIE Clock and What to Do Around It
The residence card deadline runs from your entry into Spain. How to sequence the TIE appointment, the padrón and your address in the first weeks.
Admin & Bureaucracy
Step-by-step guides to the Spanish administrative procedures Americans run into most often, in the order they actually happen. This section covers the NIE and how it differs from the TIE, the one-month window to apply for the residence card after entering on a visa, how police appointments are released and how to find one when none show, the EX forms and the 790 fee forms, and the fingerprint appointment itself. We cover empadronamiento at the town hall, which unlocks almost everything else, the digital certificate and Cl@ve that let you deal with the administration online, and how to read an official letter.
We also cover the habits that save weeks: which offices want originals and which accept copies, when to bring a sworn translation, how regional practice varies between Madrid, Catalonia, Andalusia and Valencia, what a gestor does and when paying one is worth it, and how to escalate when a file is stuck.
