In this week’s Inside Spain, The Local’s Alex Dunham warns others about what can happen if you don’t make sure your address is changed with all the official bodies in Spain when you move home.
Around a year and a half ago, my family and I changed regions within Spain, from the Canaries to Asturias.
Initially, we gave it a go living in the countryside with our two-year-old son, renting a place where the views and nature were fantastic but you needed a car for practically everything.
We knew it was temporary, but still changed our address at all the important public and private bodies, from the town hall padrón registration to our banks.
We quickly realised that life with a toddler was easier in the city, and after a couple of months started our house hunt in town.
After seven months in Asturias, we’d bought an apartment, and we again went through the whole rigmarole of cambio de domicilio (change of address).
Almost a year later, we heard from the landlord we’d rented from initially, telling us he had received a notice meant for us from the post office, urging us to pick up a letter.
When my wife went to pick it up, she found that it was a €600 fine from local police.
It was initially a €200 fine but as lots of time had elapsed and we hadn’t paid it, the sanction had tripled. Had we known about it from the start, and paid quickly, it would have been €100. It’s standard practice in Spain for early birds.
We called our former landlord back to find out if he’d received an initial fine meant for us, he said he hadn’t and that the same thing had happened to him: a traffic fine that had tripled because he hadn’t received the initial notification.
READ ALSO: Five essential reads if you need to do official processes in Spain
Regardless or not of whether we had actually received any post initially about the €200 fine, the truth is that we forgot to change our address with the DGT a second time; and we paid the price for it.
It turns out that this kind of gaffe is pretty common. The manager of our child’s nursery forgot to share our number plate with the town hall, meaning that we were also fined for entering a pedestrianised zone for resident drivers only, on the occasions we picked up our son by car.
Luckily we received the fine in our postbox this time, and the nursery owner deducted it from our monthly fee.
So remember – don’t be like us and make sure you always (and quickly!) update your address on the padrón town hall, the DGT, Spain’s social security, the Agencia Tributaria tax system, your banks etc if you change home in Spain, even if it’s in the same municipality.
In many cases, these official bodies won’t contact you via SMS or email, but rather by post.
Luckily, there is a platform called RED Sara which allows you to make most of these changes all in one place.
You may also want to consider adding the MiDGT app to your phone (if you have the Cl@ve system or similar), it could save you some headaches.
READ ALSO: Everything you need to update when you change address in Spain
