I’m planning to relocate to Madrid permanently from the United States. I am a Spanish citizen but have not lived in Spain for the past 20 years. I was wondering what kind of credit system is used in Spain, whether or not my bad credit will travel with me. I am concerned that my bad credit here will prevent me from finding a good rental in Madrid. I’m thinking that they’ll use my Spanish identification # to find out my credit history in Spain, unless they use a company like Experian , where they will surely have my info. If any expats have any info on this, please advise!

We rented a place here in Spain and as far as I know didn’t do a credit check, only got bank details, and a large deposit, that was via an agency.  I have also had a property which we rented out and the same, we took bank details and then a 2 month deposit.

Probably not much help, but a private rental might be better for you.  I know when I was a financial advisor in the UK and we did mortgages for people who had lived abroad it was impossible to use their foriegn addresses to credit check, and we’d go on any UK address they had.

Good luck