Spanish Bureaucracy is Super Easy to Navigate: Reality or Myth?

 

In the past 10 years, I’ve moved at least six times to four different states. Every state has a different system for getting your driver’s license*, registering your car, paying taxes, even something as simple as setting up your garbage service. (I once lived in a very small town that had an elaborate recycling system. If you put something in recycling that wasn’t supposed to be recycled, they’d leave you a note along with the offending item.) US immigration is also an incredibly convoluted, time-consuming, and expensive process worthy of its own post. Some DMVs have an appointment system (fantastic!), others, you’re waiting outside in a line in a light rain shower during August, cursing your decision to move to this backwards state.

My only experience with Spanish bureaucracy was waiting in a rather long line at the Oficina de Extranjería in Sevilla, which is located in the beautiful Plaza de España (this was way back in time, before the Plaza de España got a make-over and appeared on Game of Thrones) was renovated, i.e. the moats were filled with garbage. Supposedly my student visa got extended, but I left Spain before receiving it. 

That's a really short line!

 

If we move to Spain, we will probably have to do so much paperwork, starting with some kind of visa for me. El Andaluz handles all of our Spanish paperwork--registering our marriage at the Spanish consulate, getting a Spanish birth certificate and passport for Don Loco, renewing his own passport, etc. 

For example, to register our US marriage with Spain, we brought a few items to the Spanish consulate:

-US marriage certificate

-my birth certificate

 -El Andaluz's birth certificate (had to be issued within the last 6 months)

-Our photo IDs 

-El Andaluz's permanent resident card

-And Spanish translations of everything that was in English, I think.

It took a few weeks (months? I don't remember) to get our Libro de Familia (which I just learned are no longer issued in paper) and official Spanish marriage certificate. We picked it up in person, but now I think everything gets mailed back to you. In fact, it seems most trámites are done by mail now, due to covid.

Another interesting paperwork note--we had to apply at the consulate for Don Loco's Spanish citizenship, even though of course, El Andaluz is Spanish. Whereas in the US, Don Loco was American as soon as he was born, not because of me, but because he was born in the US. I was kind of amazed when we went to get his US passport, all he  (well, we, he slept through the whole process at 2 months) needed to prove his citizenship was his US birth certificate.

*to me, the American equivalent of empadronamiento is definitely going to the DMV and getting a driver’s license.