The NIE nightmare - foreigners forced towards dodgy dealings to get ID cards
Durada: 24 min
08/01/2022
Residency red tape is all too familiar for foreigners moving to Catalonia, but an increasingly broken system is forcing many to pay over the odds to obtain the requisite documentation. Cristina Tomàs White and Cillian Shields join Lorcan Doherty to investigate what is going on with NIE (Foreigner Identity Number) and TIE (Foreigner Identity Card) appointments. Skye, Zach, Antonia, Daria, Rupert and Leslie share their Kafkaesque attempts to navigate Spanish bureaucracy. We ask Carlos Prieto Gómez, a representative of the Spanish government in Barcelona, why getting appointments is so difficult and what is being done to improve things. This week's Catalan phrase, or rather, word, is pocavergonya, which means shameless.