The NIE number: which road leads to it, and where Girona lists it

One number, two ways of receiving it

The three letters abbreviate Número de Identidad de Extranjero, which says what it is: the State’s reference for each foreign person. Most people who make their home in Girona never request it by itself. A European is given it together with the green certificate. Someone from outside the EU receives it with the visa or the authorisation, and later finds it on the plastic card residents carry, the TIE.

The stand-alone request, on form EX-15, is for people whose life stays in another country: a couple from Lyon buying an old farmhouse in the Empordà, a Dutch heir, an engineer sent for a few weeks to a site near Figueres. You come away with the number and a paper that proves it, and that is all.

What the EX-15 wants to know

The form is brief. It asks for your identity exactly as your passport records it, an address where post can reach you, and why you need a NIE. That last box is the one officers read with care, so attach the document behind your answer: a signed reservation on a property, a notary’s letter, an offer of work, a paper from an estate.

The only door in the province for the number

Girona’s entry on policia.es places NIE assignment and NIE certificates (“certificados y asignación de NIE”) at C/ Cristobal Grober 12 (972 225 557), one of three city addresses of the same police brigade for foreigners, the Brigada Provincial de Extranjería y Fronteras. No other unit in the province lists the assignment of a NIE. Two border units, La Jonquera and Puigcerdà, list NIE certificates, which concern a number you already have.

Book the NIE procedure with Girona as the province, and follow the street printed on your confirmation.

The officers you see most in Catalan streets belong to the Mossos d’Esquadra, Catalonia’s own police. Foreigners’ documents are not their business: the NIE is a Policía Nacional procedure from start to finish.

Asking from your own country

Living abroad? Then an EX-15 can also go to the Spanish consulate responsible for where you live. Each consulate keeps its own appointments and its own list of papers. The number it obtains is the very one that will appear on any residence document you hold later.

Where the number will be asked for

• Your purchase deed at the notary’s office
• A bank account, and a mortgage if there is one
• Electricity, water and internet contracts
• Spanish tax returns and the yearly property tax letter
• An employment contract and registration with the Seguridad Social
• A car, an inheritance, a share in a business