I’m from the USA, living in Spain, and waiting for a pareja de hecho to get through processing.  I was originally here on a student visa, but my NIE expired at the end of December (shortly after I applied for the pareja de hecho).

The local office for parejas de hecho has made me order a new birth certificate from the US, so right now that’s what we’re waiting on.  All the other documents are already submitted/approved. 

In the meantime, I have a trip to Italy booked at the end of this month (during Semana Santa).  I want to go, but I’m a bit worried about getting deported/fined crazy amounts of money if for some reason they do check our passports at the airport in either Spain or Italy, since technically I’m “between visas” at the moment.

I tried requesting an autorizaci?n de regreso from the local immigration office, but they told me that 1) they couldn’t issue one when I don’t have a NIE application processing (just the pareja de hecho), and 2) they wouldn’t issue an autorizaci?n de regreso for travel between Schengen countries anyway—just for travel outside the EU.

So far, the options I’ve thought of are the following:

1.  Skip the trip—easier to lose a fun holiday and a few hundred Euros than to get shut out of the country
2.  Email every immigration authority I can find to try to get it in writing that I should be able to come back—though I’m having trouble finding contact information for those authorities, of course
3.  Pack the documents that say the pareja de hecho is processing when I go to Italy, and hope for the best

If you know of immigration authorities that can be contacted by email—or you’ve traveled extensively between MAD and Milan or Venice and know they never check passports—please leave a comment!

Thanks for your help.