In a previous article we showed how to obtain your digital certificate here in Spain. One of the benefits of having it is it will allow you to do some services here in Spain that would normally involve having to take a trip somewhere and stand in a queue for an hour or more, or make an online appointment and eventually show up somewhere.
One such service is the empadronamiento – registering with the town hall. You will need to do your first empadronamiento in person once arriving in Spain, that’s basically so they can check your documentation and your rental or ownership documents. But once that is done, and assuming you haven’t moved anywhere, it’s possible using your digital certificate to simply download a new copy of your padrón certificate from your computer. Each certificate is only valid for three months, so at some point you will likely need a new copy.
After installing your digital certificate, navigate to this link from the browser you installed the certificate on. The website is normally in Valenciano, so you may need to select Castellano to make sense of it.
Once there, click the button in the “Acceso con certificado digital” section – access with your digital certificate.
Access with your digital certificacte
Once your click the button, your browser will likely issue a dialog box asking if you want to be identified using your digital certificate – it should look something like this:
After that, you should be presented with a dropdown box for you to select the reason you want a new padrón certificate. For me, I typically use the “Permiso de Residencia” option – residency permission.
Select the reason for the padrón
Once you click that, it should generate a new certificate for you and let you save it as a PDF.
And presto:
New padrón certificate, valid for three months from this date.
As you can see, this is a very easy way to get a new certificate without having to go through the hassle of going into the ayuntamiento in person, which often requires an appointment weeks in advance. I’ve been told it’s possible to renew a non-lucrative visa this way too, so I’m going to be testing that out at the end of June when I’m allowed to renew.
