# Oddness with the Spanish Embassy in London re Libro de Familia?



## director1 (Dec 28, 2013)

Hi all,

My wife and I had a rather odd experience just now which I wanted to share with you all and find out if anyone else here has gone through anything similar.

We sent in our documents a few weeks ago to the Spanish embassy in London in order to register our marriage and be issued a Libro de Familia. The embassy called my (Spanish citizen) wife yesterday and said that, because I am American, they would have to interview us before they could send our documents to Spain to be registered. They also told us that they would not be sending the documents to the Registro Civil in Madrid, but rather to the Registro in La Linea de la Concepcion as we were married in Gibraltar and apparently it is the La Linea office that deals with marriage papers when the marriage has taken place in Gibraltar (an exception to the rule, apparently – I suppose this is because there isn’t really a Spanish embassy per se in Gibraltar). The London embassy then gave us an interview date that was 5 or so weeks into the future. But it was a date that neither I nor my wife would be unable to make as we’d both be travelling for work at that point. They said fine, they would ring back the next day to update us on the availability of other dates.

They phoned us back the next morning, saying that now the interview would have to be at some point in late November as there were no more free interview dates until then. My wife got a bit upset with them on the phone, as this would mean it would be at least three months before we could ‘officially’ move to Spain and before I could even begin to register for my tarjeta de residencia.

Then the embassy officer on the phone with her paused for a moment and said that well, if we did not want to wait that long for the interview, we could just post the documents ourselves to the La Linea Registro Civil office from our address in the UK! 

Is this even possible? I thought that you had to file to register your marriage and be issued the Libro de Familia via the place you currently live (e.g. local Registro Civil if you live in Spain, Bangkok embassy if you live in Thailand, London embassy if live in the UK). The La Linea office even said as much when I rang them a month or two ago.

Does anyone have any ideas on this? It seems odd to me in the first place that the embassy would say that an interview is required and then suddenly change their mind and say that actually no it isn’t and that we can do the paperwork ourselves. I’m happy to not have to deal with an interview – especially if it’s months in the future – but what if La Linea sends back our documents and says that they can’t do the marriage registration and Libro because our documents did not arrive to them through the right channel as we don’t have a Spanish address (yet). Or if the embassy really won’t agree to do them, does this mean that we have to wait until we move to Spain and file the registration in the town we move to (we’re not sure where this will be but it will almost definitely NOT be La Linea). 

Has anyone been through anything like this at all, or have any advice on what to do? I’ve read some other posts about the London embassy being a bit flaky on things or haven given out misinformation or contradictory instructions on various trámites. I’m just trying to make sense of things and figure out what exactly is the right/best thing for us to do.

I also need to act fast as in a few weeks my apostilled birth certificate will have been issued more than 6 months ago (and it took AGES to get in the first place)!

Thanks to you all in advance for any ideas you might have.


PS One final question. Just checking here: does one DEFINITELY need to have a Libro de Familia in order apply for a tarjeta de residencia? Or in some cases will an (apostilled) marriage certificate, albeit one from a foreign country (well, Gibraltar), do the trick? Just thought I’d check, as I know some extranjería offices are more lax than others…


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## kimuyen (Aug 8, 2013)

director1 said:


> Hi all,
> 
> ...
> 
> PS One final question. Just checking here: does one DEFINITELY need to have a Libro de Familia in order apply for a tarjeta de residencia? Or in some cases will an (apostilled) marriage certificate, albeit one from a foreign country (well, Gibraltar), do the trick? Just thought I’d check, as I know some extranjería offices are more lax than others…


My husband and I were married in the US. He has an Irish passport. We only had our marriage certificate apostiled by the state (Maryland) and then translated by a sworn translator (we chose to use a local Spanish translator). The legalized marriage certificate is less than 3 months old at the time of residencia. The Oficina de Extranjeros accepted it without questions.


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## director1 (Dec 28, 2013)

kimuyen said:


> My husband and I were married in the US. He has an Irish passport. We only had our marriage certificate apostiled by the state (Maryland) and then translated by a sworn translator (we chose to use a local Spanish translator). The legalized marriage certificate is less than 3 months old at the time of residencia. The Oficina de Extranjeros accepted it without questions.


Hi Kimuyen, that's brilliant, thanks! Which city's extranjeria was this in that you submitted your residencia paperwork?


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## director1 (Dec 28, 2013)

kimuyen said:


> My husband and I were married in the US. He has an Irish passport. We only had our marriage certificate apostiled by the state (Maryland) and then translated by a sworn translator (we chose to use a local Spanish translator). The legalized marriage certificate is less than 3 months old at the time of residencia. The Oficina de Extranjeros accepted it without questions.


Thinking about it now though, this was most likely accepted because neither of you are Spanish –*you wouldn't ever be required (or even able, for that matter) to have a Libro de Familia…an apostilled marriage certificate would be all that you would need.


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## director1 (Dec 28, 2013)

director1 said:


> Thinking about it now though, this was most likely accepted because neither of you are Spanish –*you wouldn't ever be required (or even able, for that matter) to have a Libro de Familia…an apostilled marriage certificate would be all that you would need.


mmm, i may stand corrected:

http://www.expatforum.com/expats/sp...de-familia-two-non-eu-citizens-residents.html


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## kimuyen (Aug 8, 2013)

director1 said:


> Hi Kimuyen, that's brilliant, thanks! Which city's extranjeria was this in that you submitted your residencia paperwork?


If I am not mistaken, others on here who were married in a "foreign" country also only had their marriage certificate legalized. I don't know if being married to a Spaniard requires different paperwork and process.

For what it is worth, we are in Barcelona and the office we went to is at Murcia 42, 08027, Barcelona. 

Good luck!


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## 213979 (Apr 11, 2013)

director1 said:


> Hi all,
> 
> My wife and I had a rather odd experience just now which I wanted to share with you all and find out if anyone else here has gone through anything similar.
> 
> ...


I don't think this will affect your residency at all. You will just need to present your Gib. marriage license when you apply for your TIE. I would forget the London embassy and deal with it when you are living in Spain.


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## director1 (Dec 28, 2013)

elenetxu said:


> I don't think this will affect your residency at all. You will just need to present your Gib. marriage license when you apply for your TIE. I would forget the London embassy and deal with it when you are living in Spain.



Thanks for your response Elenetxu. What is the advantage of getting a TIE instead of a Tarjeta de Residencia if I'm married to a Spaniard? Don't I need a TDR in order to work in Spain?


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## liliana80 (Sep 6, 2014)

I am Canadian and I married my Spanish partner in Gibraltar. What the London embassy told you is correct. You MUST first have a Spanish marriage certificate and libro de familia if you are married to a Spaniard before you can register as a foreign resident and get your tarjeta de residencia. We confirmed that with the foreigners office. You can do the paperwork yourself by sending it to the civil registry office in La Linea de la Conception. We had ours forwarded there through the Barcelona civil registry. An interview is not immediately required, they told us that the judge would look at our documents and decide if it was necessary or not.

By the way, we filed our papers in June and we're still waiting.


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## director1 (Dec 28, 2013)

Hi Liliana,

So you CAN do the La Linea paperwork yourself - that's great to know. Is that the case even if you live somewhere outside of Spain?

So you mean you filed your papers for a marriage registration certificate in June and still have not received your libro de familia?! Yikes, that's a serious amount of time! We got married in Gibraltar instead of Spain in order to save time, but it seems like that idea might have been something of a fallacy. 

Cheers!


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## 213979 (Apr 11, 2013)

director1 said:


> Thanks for your response Elenetxu. What is the advantage of getting a TIE instead of a Tarjeta de Residencia if I'm married to a Spaniard? Don't I need a TDR in order to work in Spain?


It is the same exact thing.


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## 213979 (Apr 11, 2013)

liliana80 said:


> I am Canadian and I married my Spanish partner in Gibraltar. What the London embassy told you is correct. You MUST first have a Spanish marriage certificate and libro de familia if you are married to a Spaniard before you can register as a foreign resident and get your tarjeta de residencia. We confirmed that with the foreigners office. You can do the paperwork yourself by sending it to the civil registry office in La Linea de la Conception. We had ours forwarded there through the Barcelona civil registry. An interview is not immediately required, they told us that the judge would look at our documents and decide if it was necessary or not.
> 
> By the way, we filed our papers in June and we're still waiting.


What a headache. Sorry to have give you false information, director!


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## liliana80 (Sep 6, 2014)

director1 said:


> Hi Liliana,
> 
> So you CAN do the La Linea paperwork yourself - that's great to know. Is that the case even if you live somewhere outside of Spain?


I can only tell you what we did in our case. Your best bet is to call La Linea and ask them that.


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