Obtaining the NIE is an essential criterion for certain transactions is Spain and is an approach that, in the case of Barcelona, can limit and affect the terms of such transactions.
- Imagine that a foreign company decides to create a subsidiary in a particular city and contacts a tax advisor of that city to construct the company.
- Imagine the adviser exposes all the documentation needed to incorporate the company and the foreign company starts to prepare it.
- Imagine that everything is ready to sign the incorporation mentioned before, we have the notary and the person abroad who will be the administrator of the company, who has already reserved to come to sign the deed of incorporation flight.
- Imagine that in order to form the company it is essential for the Administrator to have a NIE (Foreigner Identification Number) as well as specifies the law of the country where the subsidiary is established.
Now we turn to REALITY knows what will happen if this city is BARCELONA?
It turns out that the construction of the company can’t be inscribed in the commercial register and therefore the society won’t be created because it is actually impossible to obtain the transaction of the NIE from the Spanish National Police in Barcelona.
It is impossible to get personal attention from that police office without having asked a prior appointment, so you can not process this document, in any case, without having obtained the prior appointment online (we have tried to obtain it repeatedly and there is no way you can be attend).
It is actually quite impossible to get an appointment online when you click the province of Barcelona in the web page it does not allow you the access to the site to ask for the appointment.
To make the matters worse, the same police (because we have expressly went there to ask) tells you to try it on Monday at 8 am and if you do not succeed at that time you should wait until the following Monday.
Well, we tried it at 8 in the morning, and also we tried it for more than 10 days, morning, afternoon and night, trying to connect to that page for appointment and it was quite impossible to achieve, since the page is always hanging.
One of those times the page didn’t hanged, but then it appeared the following message “At the moment there are no appointments available. In brief, the Office shall make new appointments.”…
This, ladies and gentlemen is the reality with which we live, daily advisors and, of course, in which all citizens are in need. Someone thinks we’re in a normal country?
Can you imagine the face of our English when he came to sign to the notary and we had to tell him we didn’t know when the constitution of society could be process because at that time we had not yet got the appointment to process the NIE after 10 days trying? “This is Spain, you know?” We had to say … We feel no need for further comment, apart from expressing our absolute indignation about it.
Therefore, the week following the signature at the notary, a Monday at 8 am, we got the appointment to process the NIE. But do you know for when? It gave us time to 15 days later !!!!!! Finally the day of the appointment arrived and we got the NIE.
And we wonder: is it just incompetence, worthlessness and administrative sloppiness all, or there is some other darker purpose by the Spanish National Police to hinder the economic development of Barcelona?
Silvia Gabarró i Font. GM TAX CONSULTANCY, S.L.