Telling Girona’s three police addresses apart

Newcomers to Girona often arrive with one address in mind, picked up from a forum or a friend, then find another on their cita previa confirmation. Neither need be wrong. The police unit for foreigners in the province (in Spanish, Brigada Provincial de Extranjería y Fronteras) simply appears on policia.es at three different streets.

The first is C/ Cristobal Grober 12, and its list is the longest: NIE certificates and assignment, return authorisations, letters of invitation, students, nationality reports, non-lucrative residence, asylum and refugee applications. Anyone who needs the number by itself, a buyer, an heir, a worker here for a few weeks, is pointed to this street, the only one in the province that lists NIE assignment.

The second is C/ Rajolers 7, listed for the régimen comunitario. That is the Spanish name for the rules covering nationals of EU countries, of the EEA and of Switzerland, so it is the address that matches a French teacher, a Dutch retiree or an Italian researcher registering as a resident.

The third is C/ Santa Eugènia 145, listed for a single thing: “expedición TIE”, issuing the card that non-EU residents carry. Students on a visa, workers with a permit, British residents under the Withdrawal Agreement and families joining someone here all have such a card to apply for. Outside the city, the same card is also listed at comisarías in Figueres, Lloret de Mar and Sant Feliu de Guíxols and at four smaller units, from La Jonquera to Camprodon.

Then comes a fourth building, which is not the police at all. The Oficina de Extranjería on Gran Via de Jaume I 17 belongs to the Delegación del Gobierno en Cataluña and deals with residence authorisations. Its own page sends the NIE, the TIE, the EU certificate, short-stay extensions and return authorisations to the police.

So how do you know which street is yours? Not by guessing. On the booking pages, once Girona is chosen as the province, you pick the trámite, and the trámite carries the address with it. Read the street on the confirmation before accepting the date; if it is not the one you expected, look again at the trámite rather than at the map.

One last point for the day itself: policia.es publishes no opening hours for any of the three, and we found no official page that gives a bus route to Grober or Rajolers. Look the address up the evening before, and allow time to find the entrance.