Cédula de inscripción in Spain: papers when your country will not issue them

Official fee

The legally applicable fees must be paid before the cédula is issued

Official name

Documentación de personas extranjeras indocumentadas: cédula de inscripción

Forms

—

Steps

13

Documents required

6

Source: Boletín Oficial del Estado — Real Decreto 1155/2024, por el que se aprueba el Reglamento de la Ley Orgánica 4/2000 (texto consolidado). Checked 27 August 2026.

Every immigration fee, with the official Spanish wording

Step by step

1. 1

   Apply as soon as you are undocumented

   The application must be made as soon as the situation of being undocumented arises, in person and in writing, at the corresponding police station. There is no waiting period to serve first.

   Where: Comisaría de Policía

2. 2

   Bring anything that points to who you are, expired or not

   You must produce documents of any kind — expired ones included — that could constitute evidence or indications of your identity, origin and, where applicable, nationality, so they can be added to the checks being carried out. Expired papers are expressly useful here, which is the opposite of how they work in every other procedure.

3. 3

   Prove your consulate will not document you

   The ordinary way to prove this is a notarial act recording all the indications and evidence of identity, origin and nationality, and evidencing the request made to the consulate and left unanswered. In practice this is the step that stops people, so the two exemptions below matter.

4. 4

   Exemption one: exceptional-circumstances applicants who cannot safely attend

   Applicants for temporary residence on exceptional circumstances are exempted from producing the notarial act where they allege serious reasons preventing them from appearing at their consulate. For that purpose a report may be obtained from the Asylum and Refuge Office. Someone who cannot approach their own country's authorities without risk is not required to prove it by approaching them.

5. 5

   Exemption two: young people who were in care

   The notarial act is also not required for the permits granted to unaccompanied minors and to young people reaching majority after being in care. In those cases what has to be produced instead is a report from the public entity that holds, or held, their guardianship or protection measure.

6. 6

   Show why Spain should document you

   You must also provide documents, statements or any other appropriate evidence of the exceptional humanitarian reasons, public interest, or fulfilment of Spain's commitments that justify being documented by the Spanish authorities.

7. 7

   A provisional document for three months, while they check

   Once the initial checks are done, if you wish to stay in Spain the Government Delegate or Sub-delegate, on a proposal from the police station of the province you are in, grants a provisional identification document valid for three months, which entitles you to remain in Spain for that period while the information about your background is completed. It is not granted if you fall within a ground for prohibition of entry or if an expulsion order has been issued against you.

8. 8

   The cédula itself, and the annual renewal

   When the procedure ends — unless you fall within a prohibition of entry or an expulsion order has been issued — and once the legally applicable fees are paid, the immigration police register you in a special section of the Central Register of Foreign Nationals and issue you a cédula de inscripción as a printed document. It must be renewed annually. The police will issue certificates or reports on what appears in that special section for you to present to any other Spanish authority.

9. 9

   You can apply for residence at the same time

   A holder of the cédula may apply for residence on exceptional circumstances if they meet the requirements — and that application can be filed and decided at the same time as the cédula application itself. The two do not have to be done one after the other.

10. 10

    It ends by itself when another country documents you

    The cédula loses its validity, with no express decision needed, when you are documented by some country or acquire Spanish or another nationality. You are then obliged to report that at the police station of the province where you live, within one month of it losing validity.

11. 11

    If you need to leave Spain: the travel title

    Where you can show an exceptional need to leave Spanish territory and cannot obtain your own passport, the police may issue a travel title valid for the countries specified, providing for return to Spain. Where its sole purpose is to allow you to return to your country of nationality or residence, the document will not contain authorisation to return to Spain. The maximum validity and any limitations on its use are stated on it.

12. 12

    Where a whole nationality cannot renew

    By ministerial order, and on the conditions it sets, the administrative procedures in the Regulation may be allowed to be carried out with expired identity or travel documents of particular nationalities, where a generalised impossibility of renewing them before the issuing country's authorities is established. This is the mechanism used when a country's consular service collapses.

13. 13

    If it is refused

    Where the application is refused and the refusal has been notified, return to the country of origin or expulsion from Spanish territory follows, in the form provided for in the immigration statute and the Regulation. That is the plain consequence and it is stated in the text.

Common questions