Brexit: Spanish authorities’ brutal response to expats of 15 years waiting for residency

The rate British expats in Spain have been applying for residency post-Brexit has slowed down over the last six months, according to a new report published this week. A total of 180,000 British nationals in Spain have now received their non-EU TIE residency cards a year and a half after they began to issue the documents. The figure is less than half of the 430,000 British expats estimated to be living in Spain, according to the Specialised Committee on Citizens’ Rights, which published the report.

The data shows a drop-off in the number of successful residency applications, with only 30,000 granted between June and December last year.

This is compared to the more than 150,000 Britons who had applied for residency by last June, the UK Embassy in Madrid said.

As British expats apply for residency, some have faced a brutal response from the Spanish authorities, according to Darren Parmenter, a British councillor in Spain.

The Londoner has lived in Spain for 32 years and is a councillor for the PSOE party in the town of San Fulgencio on the Costa Blanca, an area with a high proportion of British expats.

He told Express.co.uk: “My understanding is that the Spanish authorities have actually been quite surprised at the number of people that have waited until 2021 to apply for residency.

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“They have actually been living here and are proving they are living here for sometimes, five, 10, 15 years.

“And they’re questioning, ‘well, why have you left in so long?’

“Because the rules have always been, since 2007, anyone of any non-Spanish nationality that wants to live in Spain for more than three months was required to apply for a Spanish residency.”

Mr Parmenter was speaking after a meeting with the British consul, vice-consul and residency advisers from Association Babelia about the situation.

The councillor said the meeting covered the two different types of TIE residency cards issued to British applicants.

“The longer it goes on, the harder it might be to actually be accepted for residency.”

The TIE (Tarjeta de Identidad de Extranjero) is a small biometric ID card for foreign residents from outside the EU.

Britons who already had residency were strongly encouraged to exchange their old certificates for the newer TIE cards.

Making the switch is not compulsory but it does make life easier for Britons when crossing borders and in other situations.

Mr Parmenter said the Spanish authorities are now enforcing the rules limiting Britons to stays of up to three months in Spain before they must apply for residency.

He said: “People can say that it wasn’t monitored or it wasn’t controlled before Brexit.

“Now it is being controlled because of a passport being stamped or not stamped.

“That’s when people now are sticking to the limits of the three months that they’re allowed, whereas beforehand, the laws weren’t being enforced for whatever reason.”