Número, identidad, extranjero: reading the NIE

Spanish administration has its own vocabulary. It is not difficult, only unfamiliar, and one word misread can send you to the wrong procedure. Here are the words that travel with the NIE, read as a translator reads them: what each one says, and what it asks of you.

Número de Identidad de Extranjero. Número is number, identidad is identity, and extranjero is foreigner: in Spanish it simply means a person from another country, with no other shade of meaning. So the NIE is the identity number of a foreigner. It begins with X, Y or Z, continues with a row of digits and ends with a control letter.

Asignación means assignment. The police do not hand you a NIE the way they hand you a card; they assign you a number, once, and record it. That is why the procedure is called POLICIA-ASIGNACIÓN DE NIE on the Delegación del Gobierno’s page for Toledo, and why the same number follows you to every later document.

Certificado and tarjeta are not the same. A certificado is a paper that states a fact: that you have a NIE, that you hold the green certificate of an EU resident, that you are or are not resident. A tarjeta is a card with your photograph, such as the TIE you collect after the toma de huellas. Europeans receive certificates; non-EU residents receive cards.

Residente and no residente sort people by where they live, not by their passport. A German who lives in Toledo is a residente; a German who owns a flat here but lives in Hamburg is a no residente. Form EX-15 lets you ask for a certificate of either status when a bank or a notary wants that fact on paper.

Concordancia means agreement, in the sense of two things that match. A certificado de concordancia states that two identity numbers belong to the same person: an old passport number on a contract, for example, and the NIE you hold now.

Domicilio a efectos de notificaciones is a long phrase for a simple thing: the address where official letters can reach you. It does not have to be your home, but it must be an address where you really receive post.

With these words in hand, the forms read differently. They stop being a page of foreign text and become a list of questions, each with a plain answer. That is the whole method of this site: to set the Spanish beside the English until both say the same thing.