Getting your NIE in Valencia

I suspect many people are having the same trouble as I had in getting a simple NIE in Valencia.

For some reason most officials be they police or other government personnel are masters in the art of giving the minimum amount of information when asked a question.  This just serves to lengthen an already convuluted process. 

But here is the difinitive guide to getting a NIE once you have secured a contract of work and you must do things in this order to save yourself time.

1. Go to the police station around the corner from the main adjutamiento building in plaza adjutamiento and get your empadronamiento.

2. Your company must give you a precontract with dates of contract more than 3 months.

2. Go to the social security office on General Aviles (near Hipercor) and show them your contract and they will give you a form for you to fill out and have your company sign. This is just name and address and passport number type info.

3. Bring the signed form back to the social security office and they will issue you with a social security number by text.

4. Bring this to your company representative and they will contact the relevant office to have you put up on the system. The government will issue a letter to say that this has been recieved. Get this from your company.

5. Only at this point should you go to the police station in Calle Belen with your empadronamiento, your passport, your signed contract and your letter from the social security and copies of each, no need for photos as the NIE card doesn't require a photo.   The police will log all this and issue you with a form to bring to the bank. You must fill in your address and sign it and pay €10.40 to the bank. The bank will give you a copy which you must bring back to the police and once received they will issue you then and there with your provisional card with your NIE.

The police station in calle Belen opens at 9am but you need to get there about 8.30 to get ahead of the queue as you can wait up to 2 hours to get in. They only issue a certain number of tickets so if you ain't in time you will have to wait until the evening sessions or go again the next day.

The bank that you go to to pay your €10.40 is nearby in Plaza Espangne and is the BBVA.  They only process these documents on Tuesday and Thursday between the hours of 8.30 and 10.00am so you will need to be lucky to get into the police and over to the bank and back again in time to get another ticket to get in. 

If you don't have a work contract they will ask you for evidence from your bank that you have enough money to support yourself and an S1 which is a record of your social security payments in your own country which basically says that you are entitled to health benefits because you have been paying taxes into the EU Community plus the usual other passports docs.  I didn't go through that process so there is no telling what extra information they left out when I had that initial discussion with them.

If you have any questions I have no problem answering them as someone has got to do something to stop the madness.  I went to the police 4 times, the bank 3 times and the social security office twice to get all the above information.