Sunday, August 10, 2025

Bureaucracy! Damn Bureaucracy!

Spain is infamous for its bureaucracy. There are a myriad of registrations one must apply for in order to establish residency in the country and none of the processes are straightforward. On top of this, the government websites of the various agencies are difficult to navigate, especially if you are not a native Spanish speaker.

After our arrival in Spain, our first order of business was to find a long-term residence (defined as at least 6 months) in order to be able to start our registration process.

We were able to find a very nice two-bedroom apartment in the San Juan Playa area of Alicante. The complex has five buildings and includes amenities such as indoor and outdoor pools, a gymnasium, padel courts (similar to pickleball, but they use a slightly smaller tennis ball), and a multi-use court (basketball, tennis, soccer). The rent is very reasonable, and we are quite comfortable in our new abode.

To complete the lease we needed to open a Spanish bank account as the payment of utilities - gas, electric, water - are automatically deducted from the account. Once we had our apartment, we needed to register our address with the City of Alicante.  This required a pre-scheduled in-person visit (cita previa) at the town hall with the appropriate documentation.

We had retained the services of a lawyer to help us with the process, and she was able to set up the appointment and provide the application and list of documents we needed. The appointment went quite smoothly and efficiently, and we completed our registration within half an hour, receiving the necessary documentation.

Now we were ready to apply for our national ID cards (known as the TIE).  Full speed ahead!

Well, not so much. Getting appointments for the TIE proved to be a challenge.

You need to apply for an appointment with a local office of the National Police (who administer the national ID’s). Our lawyer was checking on-line daily for appointment slots with no luck. Each time it would respond that no appointments were available at that time.

Technically, we were supposed to get our appointments within the first three months of our arrival in Spain, but that date came and went.

We checked in with the lawyer several times and were always told that they "have not been able to book appointments in the province of Alicante for weeks". We were becoming quite discouraged by the process and looked into checking for appointments ourselves online. No luck. We noticed that there were two options for making appointments; with or without a CLAVE (?).

What the hell is a CLAVE? It is a digital registration obtained through the local government. We asked our lawyer about it and she said they had a CLAVE and were using it to apply with no luck.

We did Google searches for tips on getting an appointment and found a variety of suggestions (ideal time of day to submit request, contacting someone using bots/algorithms who then sold appointments, etc.).  For one week Maureen began obsessively checking for appointment availability multiple times a day to no avail. 

Finally, we decided to apply for a CLAVE ourselves in order to improve your chances of getting an appointment.

Dutifully we made an appointment with the city agency that issues the certificates and were told by the very nice lady helping us “Sorry, you cannot get a CLAVE because you don't have a TIE or national identity card”. Catch 22! Arrrrrrrgh! 

"... however what you need is a digital certificate". She helped us with that and we went home to try again.

Could this be the magic bullet? We could only hope. Alas, we checked and checked to no avail.

Maureen started obsessively checking again, this time clicking the box for "with CLAVE or digital certificate" and in just over 24 hours succeeded. Saturday at about 3 pm was the golden hour. Hallelujah!

We quickly made her appointment, then got one for me as well. Of course they were not on the same date, but at least we got appointments!

We notified our lawyer of our success, and she provided us with the list of necessary documents to bring.

But, one more snag. Checking the various web sites, it seemed our city registration form had to be issued within the previous three months. Ours was five months old. (Blood pressure rising)

We tried to get an appointment to renew the document, but were unable to do this in time for Maureen’s appointment. We decided to cross our fingers and hope that they would be lenient.

On August 6, Maureen emerged from the National Police facility with her approval in hand. Her actual ID card will take another month to get, but that is actually fast in Spain.

My appointment is not until the 27th of August, so a bit more of a wait, but at least we know what to expect now.

The lesson here is that while Spanish bureaucracy is complex and frustrating, the people who we have dealt with seem to acknowledge it and not be too hard-assed about it.

Salud.

 



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