So, my husband and I moved to Spain last February with non-lucrative visas and are getting ready to renew soon. We used an attorney here in Barcelona to initially obtain the visas after unsuccessfully trying to get all the documentation together ourselves. When we arrived, she helped us get our residence cards but turned out to be a little shady and i’m having a hard time trusting her. Basically, when we arrived, we had an address in Alicante and she insisted that we needed an address in Barcelona (where she is based) despite informing us that our visa/residence cards allow us to live anywhere in Spain. So she had us use the address of one of her “colleagues” but in order to use it, we needed to pay extra fees. I just thought the whole thing was a little unusual. Anyway, now we have these residence cards with the Barcelona address.
Fast forward to the present, we are now actually living in Barcelona but not at the address on our cards. I e-mailed the lawyer when we moved here and she said we should wait to change the address until we renew. So we didn’t do anything when we moved here. Now that it is getting close to the time we need to renew, I sent her an e-mail and she is asking for information regarding how much money we have (we had to show that initially for the non-lucrative visa) but also information we never had to provide such as credit card statements and how much money we can withdraw per day. She also wants us to show that we have private insurance (when we last spoke, she told us we didn’t need it but we did end up getting it anyway just to be safe). It just seems to me that the process for renewing a residence visa should be (1) going to the ajuntament of our neighborhood and getting the documentation showing our new address; (2) taking that information to the police station; (3) asking for a renewal and an updated address on the card. It doesn’t make sense to me that we would have to show all this financial information for a renewal when we already did that when we applied.
I guess i’m just asking if anyone has been through this process of renewing a residency visa and if anyone can shine some light on this for me? I am thinking this is something we could do ourselves without the lawyer, but if it is normal to show all of this financial information, then I guess we will just do it. Can anyone help? Thanks!
