Registration at the town hall

Officially you should do this but, once more, I know many foreign residents in Spain have not registered. When you first arrive you should go to the town hall with a copy of the escritura – the copia simple – for your property and complete the form which registers you on the census of the local population. This is another example of Spanish bureaucracy but it potentially has some very positive benefits. Local authority services including police, post office, availability of school places and many others are based on the official census figures. If people do not register the services may not be as good as you might want but the town hall will say in its defence that they are catering for the number of people who officially live in the local community.

In addition, under new EU legislation, EU citizens registered on this census can not only vote in local elections but they can also stand for election. If this happened more often it could have a dramatic effect on local politics since in many areas of the Costa del Sol the non-Spanish population might actually outnumber the locals. Voting power could have major effects on your potential life in Spain in the longer term. There is also the fact that foreign residents here could put themselves forward as potential local councillors. They would probably have to be able to speak Spanish but if there were more councillors from the expatriate community, representing the interests of that community, local government might work in a very different way.