Owner but not resident: your NIE and a home in Torrevieja

For a foreigner, the NIE is both an identity reference and a tax number. As an owner, you find it on your deed, your bank account, your utility contracts and every letter from the Agencia Tributaria, the tax office. Year after year, it ties together:

• The IBI, the municipal tax on the home
• Fees to the comunidad de propietarios, the owners’ association
• Spanish tax returns for non-resident owners, which apply whether or not you let the home; a tax adviser sets out which
• The bank account that pays the bills while you are away

No residence paper is required of you. A green certificate or a TIE is for people who live in Spain, and so is the padrón, the town’s register of residents. Spending most of the year elsewhere, you stay outside all three, and that is as it should be.

European owners come and go as they please. British and other non-EU owners without a visa keep a calendar: the Schengen rule allows at most 90 days within any rolling 180, and a deed in your name does not stretch it.

Your NIE itself never changes. If the document that shows it goes missing, you can ask for a certificate of the same number on form EX-15, by appointment in the province of Alicante or through a Spanish consulate.

If the visits grow longer until Torrevieja is where you live, the rules change. Europeans register as residents, on form EX-18, once they stay beyond three months. British and other non-EU owners need a residence visa, such as non-lucrative residence for retirees, issued by a Spanish consulate while they still live abroad; as a rule it cannot be arranged during a tourist stay. Then comes the padrón: with the Ayuntamiento de Torrevieja for a home in the town, otherwise with the town hall where the home stands.

Tax residence is a separate question, with rules of its own. Put it to a tax adviser before you decide, not after.

Letting the flat to holidaymakers brings registrations and tax rules of their own, set by the regional and local authorities and the tax office. They are outside what we do; a gestor (an administrative agent) or a lawyer is the person to ask.