# FINALLY SUCCESS with Tarjeta de residencia solicitud!!!



## director1 (Dec 28, 2013)

Hi all,

Thought I’d let you know that today the extranjería accepted all my documentation for my tarjeta de residencia. It has been something of a grueling process to negotiate all the various sources of information, some of which are reliable, others of which aren’t. I think if anything, my experience today taught me that there is NO source of completely reliable information because, indeed, what documents end up being needed are often determined by the person behind the desk. I'll recount my experience today to show that something, anything (certainly not my charm!) might sway the person sitting behind the desk.

At the extranjeria, I arrived for my appointment on time, and was swiftly ushered back to a room. Here I waited for all of about one minute before I was called over to sit down in front of a friendly looking woman who was sat at a simulated wood grain desk.. On the recommendation of one of the kind members on this forum, I smiled at her, held out my hand and shook her hand to greet her. She smiled. This was good, I thought. “Show me the documents you have,” she said after I told her I was there to put in a solicitud for a tarjeta. We went through each piece of documentation, and everything went fine – I had ample (4+) copies of each document, though she only asked for one of each. All was going swimmingly until we came to the marriage certificate. I pulled out our Gibraltar marriage certificate and its copies, as well as the translation of the document (and copies of this). “And the registration of the marriage in the Spanish civil registry?” she said. “Um, no, I, uh, I was told that I didn’t need this. OR the libro de familia.” Expletive, I thought. Expletive Expletive Expletive Expletive Expletive! I KNEW this was going to happen. 

“Who told you that you didn’t need it?” she asked me. “The guy on the phone. When I made the cita” .“And what was his name?” Always, I mean always ask for the name of someone you speak to on the phone who gives you information that you will use at some point later on. I had forgotten to until I’d hung up the phone. I shook my head. She shook her head. “You know, Gibraltar is NOT Spain,” she scolded me. “Yes, I have learned that for certain,” I said, laughing. "I'm sorry," she said with droopy puppy dog eyes, "but we can't process this application without that document. It is essential."

I'm sure I looked downtrodden and defeated. 

All of a sudden she sat up, excused herself and went into the back room, where I could see functionaries busying themselves away at computer terminals. I cursed myself for getting it all wrong, angry that I had gotten so far only to fail at the last hurdle. I was only in town for the day before heading off abroad for work again, so it had to be today or otherwise it would be sometime in 2015.

The woman at the extranjería emerged a few minutes later. “No, I’m sorry. Either you were informed wrong or the person on the phone misunderstood what you were asking.” I was sure it was probably both, even though I had explained in very clear simple Spanish over the phone that the wedding took place in Gibraltar and that I wanted to be sure no libro de familia was necessary. Perhaps it had been a confusion over the “certificado literal de matrimonio”, which means something different if the marriage took place in Spain or abroad. In any case, I had lost, failed.

Or so I thought. I began apologising to the woman, tail between my legs, showing that I was angry at myself – but NOT AT ALL ANGRY at her or the guy who had given me the misinformation or the legendary Spanish bureaucracy. I asked her if she knew how long it would take for the libro de familia to be issued from La Linea. I asked her if she knew whether it would be difficult to reapply for the tarjeta in January or if things get particularly busy then. I asked her whether I would be able to look for a job in Spain without the tarjeta. I asked her if it meant I would have to have all the documents reissued and retranslated as the present ones would surely have exceeed the three-month validity limit by the time I could reapply for the tarjeta. I suppose what I was doing was asking questions that would subtly show her that it would be a colossal hassle for me if I had to come back just because of this one little document that I was without.

She looked at me, looked at the chaos of documents on her desk, then excused herself again to head back into the back office to talk with her colleagues. 

Two minutes later something unconscionable happened. The kind woman came out of the door and began apologising – for having scared me, for having given me the wrong information, for misleading me, for making me upset. “I was wrong," she told me "No, in fact you do not need a libro de familia if the wedding took place in Gibraltar since the libro is issued by La Linea anyway and not by the Registro Central in Madrid“. 

So that was it. I was done. We laughed about the misunderstanding, I apologised for not knowing the name of the guy on the phone. Dare I say we almost became friends in that moment. She collated and stamped the translations of all my documents, gave me back the originals (!) and printed me out a document that confirmed that my application was now in process, and that in 40 odd days I would receive a letter telling me the outcome of the solicitud.

And so that’s it. It’s in process, and hopefully come January I will be able to pick up the tarjeta and get on with living in Spain. Just wanted to thank all of you for your generous help and time on the forum over the past months, which have given me both help, hope and an outlet for my frustrations. I FINALLY feel like now I'm getting somewhere with this whole thing.

I guess the moral of the story though is that: the documents eventually required at one extranjería might in fact be different from those at another extranjería. And that you never know who might be sitting behind that desk, or what side of the bed they woke up on, or whether they're in a generous mood, or whether they've just eaten a great lunch, or whether they're in the middle of a breakup. So you just can't predict how they'll be on the day. And remember: they DO have all the power. So, as another member suggested, it is probably not a bad idea to win them over to your side from early on in the cita as best you can. I recommend handshakes, smiles and laughter.

Best,
Director


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## larryzx (Jul 2, 2014)

A few years ago an American (USA) came into the police station several times, eventually he got his Residencia. It was dated as expiring a day or two before the day he got it. When I asked on his behalf what he should do, they said a start new application now.


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## Pesky Wesky (May 10, 2009)

Good news!

So you have found out fairly quickly what a lot of people never seem to learn in their native country. As a general rule being polite and pleasant will get you a lot further than being rude and off hand. You'll also leave with a better taste in your mouth and having used less energy than when you lose your temper.

I'm not saying getting angry is never useful/ a good idea because an incompentent worker mucking up your papers is often going to put your life on hold, but often the fault lies with the applicant and getting angry about a missing paper just isn't going to solve the issue. It's needed and that's that - even if yesterday it wasn't.

BTW I've never got the name of any official. They politely refuse to give it, but it's still a good idea to ask for it, or remember when you were in the office and what the person looked like.


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## director1 (Dec 28, 2013)

Indeed. I think the bad press the bureaucracy gets means that people might not always enter such citas with a positive outlook.

That said, there are horror stories of incompetence –*perhaps not with individuals themselves, but with the way the system is structured. This is a particularly good one: http:// www. parainmigrantes. info/ nacionalidad-espanola-mi-experiencia-834. Hopefully days like these are gone though now that extranjería and registro trámites are going more and more online...


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## baldilocks (Mar 7, 2010)

director1 said:


> Indeed. I think the bad press the bureaucracy gets means that people might not always enter such citas with a positive outlook.
> 
> That said, there are horror stories of incompetence –*perhaps not with individuals themselves, but with the way the system is structured. This is a particularly good one: http:// www. parainmigrantes. info/ nacionalidad-espanola-mi-experiencia-834. Hopefully days like these are gone though now that extranjería and registro trámites are going more and more online...


I told you that approaching things with a warm, open and positive friendly attitude always gets you at least half-way there. By being nice you are giving them the opportunity to treat you as a friend rather than as an enemy. Two weeks ago, we took the suegra (US citizen) for her renewal and again, by adopting the right approach, everything went smoothly with an unprecedented level of help and assistance from the other side of the desk.

Well done.


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## director1 (Dec 28, 2013)

Yes...it was you! Thank you Baldilocks!!!


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## 213979 (Apr 11, 2013)

baldilocks said:


> I told you that approaching things with a warm, open and positive friendly attitude always gets you at least half-way there. By being nice you are giving them the opportunity to treat you as a friend rather than as an enemy. Two weeks ago, we took the suegra (US citizen) for her renewal and again, by adopting the right approach, everything went smoothly with an unprecedented level of help and assistance from the other side of the desk.
> 
> Well done.


This is why I always take my husband with me. As a native, he's a pro at using his "jeta" to get things done, even if we don't have everything we need. I'm still learning. :usa2:

Congrats and successfully playing the system, director1!


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## Sangrialover (Jan 3, 2015)

baldilocks said:


> I told you that approaching things with a warm, open and positive friendly attitude always gets you at least half-way there. By being nice you are giving them the opportunity to treat you as a friend rather than as an enemy. Two weeks ago, we took the suegra (US citizen) for her renewal and again, by adopting the right approach, everything went smoothly with an unprecedented level of help and assistance from the other side of the desk.
> 
> Well done.


Not always the case, we came over there on holiday for the second time to our house and both times they would not switch on our electricity while we were there. We signed the contract and had endless calls from Uk to there and when we went over the electricity still wasn't on. We went to their offices and they said the next day they would be out and a week later when we had to come home it still wasn't on. We were really nice and polite to them and they just didn't give a damn. We spent our holidays with no electricity!


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