The note
Inês lives in Valença, on the Portuguese bank of the Miño, and has just been offered a job in a warehouse in O Porriño. She is invented, but her question reaches us often: does a Portuguese citizen who will work in Spain, and go home every evening, need the same papers as one who moves to Vigo?
She does not, and the difference is where she lives. An EU citizen who settles in Spain for more than three months must register, on the EX-18, and is issued the green certificate. Inês will not be living in Spain: her home, her family and her days off stay in Valença. She does not register. What she needs is the number on its own, the NIE, requested on form EX-15 by a non-resident.
Her new employer explains why it matters to them: without the number they can neither draw up her contract nor register her with Spanish Social Security before her first day. The EX-15 asks for a reason, so Inês attaches the signed job offer the company sent her, and gives her address in Valença for official notices.
Then the booking. On the State’s cita previa service she selects Pontevedra, the province O Porriño belongs to, and the procedure for NIE certificates and assignment. policia.es lists that procedure at four units of the province, among them the Centro de Cooperación Policial y Aduanera in Tui, the border town facing Valença. Whether Tui is on offer depends on the system; Inês takes the office her confirmation gives her.
Before the day she prepares the police fee on the 790-012 on the police website, with the NIE box ticked, pays it, and builds her folder: the EX-15 signed, her Cartão de Cidadão with a photocopy, the job offer, the stamped fee form and the printed booking. She leaves the appointment with a certificate showing her NIE.
Social Security comes next. Under the EU rules that coordinate it, people who work in one country and live in another are generally insured where they work, so the company registers her with the TGSS and she receives a Social Security number. Healthcare and income tax for cross-border workers follow rules of their own between Spain and Portugal; for those, Inês books an hour with an adviser who knows both systems.
And if, a year from now, she decides to move to Vigo? She keeps the same NIE. She registers as a resident on the EX-18, goes onto the padrón at the Concello, and the number on her green certificate is the one already printed on her payslips.
