The note
It catches almost everyone out the first time. You live in Vigo, with its port, its university and its busy centre, you open the booking page for a NIE or a green certificate, and the first thing it wants is a province. Choose Pontevedra, and the offices on offer may be in towns you have never set foot in.
The reason lies in how the State divides the work. Foreigners’ affairs belong to two branches. The Oficina de Extranjería, which in Vigo stands on Rúa Teófilo Llorente 4, is part of the Delegación del Gobierno and decides authorisations: work and residence, family reunification, arraigo, long-term residence, the card for a European’s non-EU relatives. The papers that record who you are (the number, the green certificate, the card, the return authorisation) belong to the Policía Nacional. The Oficina’s own page says as much, under a heading for procedures done at other offices.
The police, in turn, organise those papers by province. On policia.es, today’s list of units for foreigners in the province of Pontevedra has five entries: the Brigada Provincial on C/ Joaquín Costa 17 in Pontevedra, the Centro de Cooperación Policial y Aduanera in Tui, the comisarías of Marín and Vilagarcía de Arousa, and the Unidad de Extranjería y Documentación in Salvaterra de Miño. Vigo has no entry now.
It used to have one. Until early 2024, copies of that list kept by the Internet Archive show the Comisaría de Vigo Traviesas, on C/ Álvaro Cunqueiro 6, with the full set of procedures; an archived copy of the booking system’s office list, from 2021, offered the same station; and the Universidade de Vigo’s guide for incoming staff still gives it as the address for a number, an EU certificate or a card. Today policia.es shows that building only in its general directory of stations, and no official page we read explains the change. We do not try to settle the question from outside; the booking settles it for you.
So work in the order the system does. First the province: Pontevedra. Then the procedure, matched to your form: NIE assignment for form EX-15, the EU registration certificate for form EX-18, the TIE prints for an EX-17. Only then does the screen show which offices have dates, and it may show different offices for different procedures.
When the confirmation comes, read the office line before anything else. Pontevedra lies to the north; Tui and Salvaterra de Miño to the south and east, along the Miño; Marín and Vilagarcía de Arousa further up the coast, on other rías. None of the police units publishes opening hours, so the time on the confirmation is the only one that matters. If the place is beyond your reach that day, cancel with the booking reference and try again.
One thing stays in Vigo whatever the screen says: the padrón. Registering your address is the Concello’s business, at its statistics office on Praza do Rei, and it is often worth doing before the police appointment, since a volante is one of the papers offices like to see.
