TIE Appointment Oficinas de Extranjería de Murcia- Documents Required - Any Recent Experience? - Page 2

My husband applied in person last November. We were missing documents such as private Health insurance which were not stated in the "list" so the application was "desestimada" i.e rejected. We sent the missing documents within 3 months as requested. We sent a few follow up emails as we were expecting the TIE to be expedited by 30th June. This morning 1st July, we received a letter from the Immigration office dated 11th May 2021, requesting more proof that my husband was physically in Spain before 31/12/2020. They require receipts of payments of things like utility bills or any justification!! But this had to be sent within 10 days of the letter!!??? 

So when I read how "easy" it is according to some people here, it makes me laugh!

It is very easy for those who moved here, as pensioners with S1 to get health care, having no property outside Spain, and having got tax sorted, Spanish driving licence etc.

Anyone not fitting the above will now have barriers to overcome.

I am aware that we are ready now (after nearly twenty years here) to sell up and return to the UK and will just have to accept the hefty costs to sell, and the ever-increasing costs of housing in the UK.

Glad we did it when we did, no way we would think of it now.

So sorry to hear of your experiences.  We have heard other people have also fallen foul of the “sufficient health care” requirements - understand that Murcia region changed what was required but don’t have any details as we submitted our application last year on line with a full copy of our passport, padron, bank statements certified by our bank and had an S1 so attached that as well.   Because we had used a gestor the only documents we were asked to produce when our application was finally reviewed after nearly 8 months was a Power of attorney allowing the gestor to make applications and act on our behalf and also an EX 20 which frankly the gestor should have known to include in our initial pack that was sent.  These had to be loaded online within 10 days of their request.  Once these were submitted we had a favourable notification on our Cl@ave within 24 hours so might have been lucky!  Although it took them nearly 8 months to process our application we had 4 weeks to make the appointment at the Foreigners Office in Murcia for our fingerprints and submission of EX23 and confirmation that we had paid the application fee.

We have posted our experience at the Murcia office in another post in this conversation which might help others. 

Good luck with your application and hope it works out in the end - the system is infuriating and stressful but sadly we have little option but to jump through the hoops and give them what they want.    

Many thanks to everyone for your help and advice.  We have been to the Murcia Foreigners Office for our appointment today and were very impressed how quickly we were seen and everything sorted including fingerprints.  We were in and out in less than 15 minutes.  Quite extraordinary as all we seem to have done is queue for ages whether it was for the padron or getting bank statements or paying for the Modelo 790 at the bank!  

Someone told us it was ok to park at the petrol station just by the coffee place .  There was one space so we parked it there. All told we were parked for no more than 25 minutes

If travelling by car we would allow plenty of time as the traffic going into Murcia gets quite heavy the closer you get to the turnoff for the Foreigner’s Office,  

From our experience the process was very smooth.  As you enter the building the policeman will put any personal belongings through a scanner.  You walk through a detector like you find at airports and to your left there is a machine in which you type in your NIE number.  Your appointment will be confirmed on screen and a ticket will be printed.  Take the ticket and to your right is the waiting area with screens on the wall which will show ticket number and desk to go to.  The screen will show the ticket number, Zone number (which is basically the room you need to go to) and Mesa (which is the desk number in the room you have been allocated).  If there are two of you you must make individual appointments which could be different times as each will be given a different desk to go to.  You will sit in front of a official with a glass screen between you to whom you hand over all the documents they need.  Although we went armed with everything from recent certified bank statements to our birth and marriage certificates and recent updated padron we only needed the following documents:

- Appointment confirmation with your NIE. and unique reference (to show the policeman as you enter the building)

- Your Resolution letter which confirms your Residence application has been approved which you should be able to download if you have a Cl@ve account or your lawyer or gestor should give you a copy.

-  one copy of completed Form EX 23

-  Completed form Modelo 790 (there are 3 sheets - one the bank keeps, one the foreigners office keep and one you keep) and stamped by the bank to show you have paid the €12.00 fee 

- one copy of photograph for the TIE - IMPORTANT THAT IT IS IN THE SIZE STIPULATED - it has to be Spanish DNI size which is 32mm x 26mm, colour and against a plain white background .  We were recommended a place which was a shop in Los Alcazares that we were told took the required size photos but were unimpressed as it was a shot taken with a smartphone, cost 16 euros for 4 images (8 euros per set of 4) and not only was the quality questionable but the sizes almost matched U.K. passport size which is too big and printed on poor quality paper.  Also for the TIE your head image needs to fill around 80% of the photo and the photos from the smartphone had too much white space and the head image did not fill the frame.  Our best advice is go to a professional photography studio. Tell them you need photos for a TIE card.  They will produce high quality prints on good quality photo paper to the required size on the spot in less than 15 minutes.  We got a new set done at a studio and it cost us €12 for far superior images and to the correct size.  We had some high quality U.K. passport size photos (same size as the terrible smartphone images we had done at Los Alcazares) and offered this and the studio shot.  The smaller studio shot images was picked.  They scan the photo and return it to you.

Your passport which they will look at and give it straight back.  They didn’t look at mine but they did for my wife so best to hand it over with the other documents. 

Once the paperwork was processed we had to give fingerprints of both right and left index finger only.  There is no ink involved - it’s a fingerprint scanner which sits at the desk. Fingerprints are taken twice. Once with static finger pressed into the scanner and again with finger rolled left to right on the scanner on both hands.

Finally you will be given a receipt with the Lote number and asked to check online when your Lote number comes up - this is the time to go back to collect your TIE.  

That’s it all done and took less than 10 mins and because our number flashed up pretty quickly after we got our ticket we were in and out in no more than 15 minutes!  We might just have been lucky!  The process to get this far was frustrating and stressful but thankfully the last hurdle was, for us, stress and frustration free!

We found the staff from the policeman at the entrance to the officials behind the screen very friendly and efficient.

Top tip we that worked for us is have all the documents they require ready in a folder or poly pocket with your photo and hand it all over to the official.  He/she will take what they need and return the rest to you.  Also have in separate folder copies of other things you think they might need just in case they ask for it but if you submitted everything when you initially applied like the padron, bank statements, health certificate, passport, photos etc it should not be necessary - but this is Spain and sometimes best to be over prepared than under prepared - saves a lot of frustration and aggro!

Hope you find this useful...sorry for the long note but we could not find similar information anywhere on the www for the Murcia region so hope it helps someone. Please note this was our experience and you may have similar experience or it could be different or very different.  We may, as I said before, have been lucky!  

Thank you for sharing. It sounds like the Foreign office/Police is more efficient than the immigration office

One point - the photo must be "recent" (best within three months) so those old ones left over from your last passport renewal/library card should be binned.

Agree we wouldn’t suggest anyone uses 10 year old photos but if there has been minimal change in your features over the last couple of years it should be OK .  We had our passport photos taken in the U.K. at Asda early last year but the size is too big for the TIE but ok for a passport. 😂

Where in Murcia is it as I need to update my residency

We were there yesterday to update our TIEs and to get the correct ones issued, as when we applied for our TIEs last August in Lanzarote, we were issued with the wrong cards. We took the same photos that we used last year but they weren't required as the photo was already in the system. We just repeated the index fingerprints and were told that our new TIEs would be ready in about 40 days. We were in and out within 5 minutes of our appointments and everyone was very efficient and pleasant. This is the location. 

https://goo.gl/maps/H9gdEVrAE5HNMsjR9 

There is a small car park at the rear and also a fairly scruffy café/bar by the car park.