Why a Torrevieja NIE can mean Orihuela
You live in Torrevieja, you need a NIE on its own, and the booking says Orihuela or Alicante. What policia.es lists for each station, and how to read it calmly.
It surprises people often. Someone living in Torrevieja, or buying a flat there, books a cita previa for a NIE and finds the confirmation pointing inland to Orihuela, or north to Alicante. The station on Calle Arquitecto Larramendi is close by, so why not there?
A list explains much of it. The Policía Nacional publishes on policia.es the foreigners’ procedures each of its offices handles. For the Comisaría de Torrevieja, at Calle Arquitecto Larramendi 3, the list has one line: régimen comunitario y no comunitario. In plain English, residence: the green certificate for Europeans, and residence for people from outside the EU.
NIE assignment, the number on its own, is not on that line. It appears instead at the Comisaría de Orihuela, Calle El Sol 34, and in Alicante at number 6 of Calle Ebanistería, where the Brigada Provincial de Extranjería y Fronteras sits. Further afield, Elche, Alcoy and Benidorm list it too.
Who needs the number on its own? Mostly people who do not live here: a Belgian couple buying in La Mata, the heir to a bungalow in Los Balcones, an owner who has lost the paper showing an old number and wants a certificate of it. Residents usually receive their NIE inside a residence document, and residence is exactly what Torrevieja lists.
Does this mean the Torrevieja station never takes a NIE request? No official page we have read says so, and we will not guess. What we can offer is practical: book the NIE procedure for the province of Alicante, read the town on the screen before you accept, and then travel to whatever address the slip gives.
For many buyers the trip is not needed at all. A Spanish consulate in their own country can take form EX-15, and an independent firm can file it at a distance. If you do make the journey, take the whole folder: the EX-15 with your signature, the passport plus a photocopy, the paper behind your reason, and proof that the 790-012 is paid.
Clear as salt, then: residence on Calle Arquitecto Larramendi, the number alone in Orihuela or Alicante, and your confirmation as the final word.