Empadronamiento Torrevieja: your name on the town’s register

Spanish rules expect everyone, of any nationality, to appear on the padrón of the municipality where they actually live. La Mata, Los Balcones, Aguas Nuevas, Torreblanca and El Chaparral belong to Torrevieja. Orihuela Costa belongs to Orihuela. Rojales, Los Montesinos, Benijófar, Guardamar del Segura and San Miguel de Salinas each keep their own. In Torrevieja, the Ayuntamiento’s census and statistics section, the Negociado de Censo y Estadística, keeps the register.

Since March 2025, the Concejalía de Censo y Estadística gives appointments, cita previa, for new registrations (altas) and for moving house within the town. You book them on the sede electrónica, the town hall’s website for procedures, under “Cita previa”. A QR code on the door of the Censo office leads to the same booking page. No official page we found gives that office’s own address, phone or hours; the Ayuntamiento itself is at Plaza de la Constitución 5, switchboard 96 571 02 50.

Some visits need no appointment: anyone holding the town hall’s letter about renewing or confirming an entry, the registration of a newborn baby, and urgent cases that can be justified.

With an electronic ID you can also apply online: the sede has a procedure, EST03, for people arriving from another municipality or another country, with the form and the documents uploaded as PDF files. If you have no digital certificate yet, the town hall’s Registro/PROP office issues one free of charge, by appointment, and registers you for Cl@ve, the State’s online login.

In our words, from the Ayuntamiento’s own list. The sede accepts copies but may ask to see the originals later.

• The registration form, MOD. T00020 (“Solicitud alta municipio”), signed by every adult, naming everyone to be registered and where they come from
• An identity document for each person: passport, residence card, EU registration certificate or NIE
• Owners: the escritura (deed), an up-to-date nota simple (the Land Registry extract) or the latest receipt of the IBI, the municipal property tax
• Tenants: the whole rental contract in force, the latest rent receipt, a copy of the owner’s ID, the IBI receipt or the deed, and a recent electricity or water bill
• Moving in with someone already registered there: that person’s written authorisation and ID
• For each child: the libro de familia, Spain’s family record book, or else the birth certificate, with both parents’ consent and IDs; after a separation, the custody ruling or the other parent’s consent

Through the sede you can request an individual certificate, one for the whole household, or a historical certificate showing every address you have had in the town; the automated ones arrive in your electronic mailbox. Only the person concerned can use that route, and a request through a representative goes through a slower manual procedure. A household certificate shows everyone’s names only if each member has signed the data-release form. In the entrance hall of the town hall, a Ciber Kiosco prints certificates too.

For the green certificate or the toma de huellas, offices tend to want the certificado, the formal version, rather than the simpler volante. British residents proving their years here under the Withdrawal Agreement may find the historical certificate the most useful of all.

According to the town hall, non-EU nationals without permanent residence renew their entry every two years, and EU nationals confirm their residence every five. The Ayuntamiento writes to you at home, and with that letter you are seen without an appointment. No Torrevieja page we read says what happens if the date passes, so answer the letter promptly.

The Concejalía de Residentes Internacionales, the town hall’s department for international residents, helps foreigners with the empadronamiento in Spanish, English, German, French and the Scandinavian languages. It works by appointment, booked on torrevieja.es or by email to eu@torrevieja.eu, on weekday mornings from 9:00 to 13:00, at three addresses: the Ayuntamiento de La Mata on Plaza Gaspar Perelló, the hall of the Ayuntamiento on Plaza de la Constitución, and the Policía Local office in La Siesta, Calle Paganini, next to Age Concern.

Once you are on the padrón, the same department runs practical Spanish courses for international residents whose papers are in order. PANGEA, the municipal office for migrants, at Calle Torrevejenses Ausentes 39 (966 706 666, Monday to Thursday, 9:00 to 13:00), gives information on immigration procedures and prepares the town hall’s reports for arraigo applications.