Foreign residents in Spain may finally see the end of the frantic midnight battle for a TIE (Tarjeta de Identidad de Extranjero) slot. On 9 October the National Police quietly expanded its pilot project that pre-allocates fingerprint appointments to successful residence-permit applicants. Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Alicante, Málaga and Murcia now join Girona, Tarragona and Lleida in the scheme, bringing the total coverage to nine provinces and roughly 10 % of all approved files. Under the new workflow, the police IT system assigns a day, time and station automatically once an approval is uploaded. The applicant receives an SMS and e-mail with the details and a QR code, eliminating the need to refresh the notoriously scarce "+Info Cita Previa" website. Appointments are matched to the place of residence, decision date and actual capacity at each police station, according to an internal circular seen by Euro Weekly News. The change tackles Spain’s long-running “cita previa” bottleneck, which has frustrated multinationals relocating staff and British post-Brexit residents alike. In popular expatriate hubs such as the Costa del Sol a single slot can disappear in seconds, forcing companies to pay consultants or delay payroll enrolment until the employee secures fingerprints. HR managers interviewed by EWN say the automatic system could cut onboarding times by two to four weeks and reduce non-compliance risks with Social Security registrations linked to the TIE card. For now the relief is partial. Only favourable resolutions dated after 8 October are eligible, and cases that require extra steps—such as entry-stamp verification or Social-Security inscription—remain on the old self-booking route. Applicants who do not receive an automatic slot within 20 days must still hunt manually. The Interior Ministry will review data in December before deciding whether to scale the programme nationwide in 2027. Practical tip: companies should double-check the employee’s contact details on the application; the automatic notice is sent only once. Representatives (gestores or lawyers) will receive the same message, but applicants must cancel online if they cannot attend, otherwise they drop out of the automated queue and have to start from scratch.
Source: Euro Weekly News
