It’s official. We are now residents of Spain.

The trip to Almeria went much smoother than I had anticipated. We arrived at the shopping centre to meet Charlotte who was going to be our interpreter for the day, and after a cup of coffee we headed for the bank to pay our €10 each for the paperwork to be receipted prior to going to the Office for Foreigners, ‘La Oficina de Extranjeros’ .

We had been to the office once before when we were applying for our NIE numbers, which is a number attached to you as an individual in the same way as the National Insurance numbers are in the UK. Normally anything we want to do, buy or transfer in Spain needs our NIE number which identifies us individually.

Our appointment was for 1.30pm and we duly arrived at the office at 1.20pm, paperwork receipted and completed in our hands.

Having gone through the security screening we moved to stand in line to get our allocation number because, even though we had an appointment, we still needed allocating to a specific desk. There are 2 desks to deal with the allocation and we were fortunate that there were only a couple of people ahead of us. As we were waiting we became aware that a couple at one of the desks were English and didn’t speak much Spanish but hadn’t taken anyone who could help them. They were wanting the paperwork so that they could buy a car. Car hire has got very expensive here in Spain, as indeed it has in the UK which we found out on our recent trip and so many Brits that travel to Spain often are now buying cars to use while they are here. Unfortunately, they didn’t have the right paperwork with them but they didn’t understand what the lady behind the desk was telling them. Charlotte tried to help while we were waiting our turn, and was still helping them when we got to the desk and received our number. By now a long queue was starting to form and we needed to go through to the next waiting room so we left them still trying to work out how to get the paperwork they needed. I was glad we had taken someone with us who was fluent in both English and Spanish just incase there were any problems.

Over recent years there has been an influx of Brits to Spain but during the recent recession and the poor exchange rate for the pound there are a lot of Brits returning to the UK. A massive indication of this was the number of Brits in the waiting room – there was only us. There must have been at least 100 people waiting and they all looked to be from North Africa. This was a big change from when we were there 3 years to get our NIE’s, how things have changed.

Right on time, our numbers appeared on the screen to go through to our desk. There were a couple of problems that needed explanation but Charlotte handled these easily for us and 10 minutes later we exited the building clutching our new green resident forms.

So, it’s official. We can legally stay in Spain. Job done!