Criminal record certificate for Spain: apostille explained (2026)

Almost every Spanish residence application — arraigo, a non-lucrative visa, a work permit, a digital nomad visa — asks for a criminal record certificate, and almost every applicant gets the same detail wrong: it is not a certificate from Spain, and it is not a certificate from your nationality. It has to come from every country where you have actually lived for six months or more in the last five years, apostilled or legalised, and translated into Spanish. Get that wrong and the file comes back.

This guide covers which certificate each procedure actually wants, how the Hague apostille works against consular legalisation, how long the certificate stays valid, and the two cases that generate the most support tickets in Palma: US citizens with an FBI report, and UK citizens with an ACRO certificate.

Which certificate does Extranjería actually want

The rule is the same across almost every residence procedure covered by the current Reglamento de Extranjería (RD 1155/2024): you must be free of criminal record in Spain and in every country where you have resided during the five years before entering Spain, for conduct that is also an offence under Spanish law.

In practice that means:

• A certificate from your country of nationality, if you lived there in the last five years.
• A certificate from every other country where you lived six months or more in that same period — a second passport, a prior work visa elsewhere, a long stay as a student, all count.
• Spain checks its own records directly. You do not need to request a Spanish certificate yourself for most residence procedures; the Administration consults the Registro Central de Penados internally.

Important exception: if you have already lived continuously in Spain for more than five years and can prove it with historic padrón records, Extranjería often does not ask for foreign certificates at all, since your last five years were spent here and the Spanish check already covers them. This depends on the specific procedure, so confirm it before assuming you are exempt.

If a country will not respond. RD 1155/2024 includes a safety valve: if you prove you requested the certificate from your country of residence and a month has passed with no answer, the Administration can try to obtain the information itself; if that also fails within a further month, you can submit a sworn declaration (declaración responsable) stating you have no criminal record in that country, and it will be treated as such for that procedure.

Apostille or consular legalisation: which one applies

Spain, like most countries, distinguishes between two ways of making a foreign public document valid abroad, and the one that applies to you depends entirely on whether the issuing country signed the 1961 Hague Apostille Convention.

Issuing country	Route	What it means
Party to the Hague Convention (US, UK, most of the EU, and 130 countries in total)	Apostille	A single stamp/certificate from the competent authority in the issuing country. No involvement of the Spanish consulate needed.
Not party to the Convention	Consular legalisation	The document is authenticated by the foreign ministry of the issuing country and then by the Spanish embassy or consulate there. Slower, more steps.

The apostille (or legalisation) must always be obtained in the country that issued the certificate. A Spanish consulate cannot apostille a US or UK document, and Spain’s Ministry of Justice cannot apostille a document it did not issue. This single point causes more delays than any other step in the process, because applicants often try to solve it from Spain when the only office that can help is abroad.

Spain’s own electronic apostille service (Ministerio de Justicia, sede.mjusticia.gob.es) works the same way in reverse: it only covers certain certificates issued by the Spanish Ministry of Justice itself — such as a Spanish criminal record certificate — not foreign documents. If you ever need to apostille a Spanish document for use abroad, that is the service to use; it is not relevant to a foreign certificate you are bringing into Spain.

Sworn translation

Any certificate not issued in Spanish must be translated by a sworn translator (traductor jurado) authorised by the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The standard order of operations, in this sequence:

1. Obtain the certificate.
2. Apostille or legalise it in the issuing country.
3. Translate the whole document into Spanish, including the apostille stamp itself — a translation that skips the apostille annotation is routinely rejected.

Translating before the apostille is a common mistake: the apostille is then missing from the translated document, and the file is returned for a redo of step 3.

How long is the certificate valid

There is no single article of the Reglamento de Extranjería that fixes a blanket validity period for every procedure. In practice, and across the guidance published by immigration lawyers and by the offices themselves, Extranjería in Palma and elsewhere does not accept a foreign criminal record certificate older than three months from its date of issue at the moment you submit it — not from the date of the apostille or the translation, from the date the certificate itself was issued.

What this means for planning: the certificate should usually be the last document you request, not the first. If you request it early and then spend six weeks getting it apostilled and translated, it can expire before you ever submit the file.

US citizens: the FBI route

For US nationals, Spain generally wants the FBI Identity History Summary — the federal, nationwide background check — rather than a state-level police certificate, because it is the version consulates and Extranjería offices list explicitly.

• Requesting it. $18 processing fee. By mail to the FBI CJIS Division in Clarksburg, WV, or electronically through an FBI-approved channeler (edo.cjis.gov). Mail processing typically takes two to six weeks.
• Apostilling it. Only one office can apostille a federal US document: the US Department of State’s Office of Authentications in Washington, D.C. State-level Secretaries of State cannot do it, and this is the single most common mistake among US applicants — sending the FBI report to their home state for an apostille that the state has no authority to issue. The request goes in with Form DS-4194; by mail it takes roughly two to three weeks, in person around a week.
• A frequent pitfall. Many FBI reports now arrive as a digital PDF. Not every version can be apostilled as-is — the safest route is to request a signed, printed original suitable for physical apostille, rather than assuming the PDF will be accepted.

Given the mail times on both steps, US applicants who wait until the last moment routinely see their certificate expire before the apostille comes back. Start the FBI request as early as your timeline allows, and apostille it immediately on receipt.

UK citizens: the ACRO route (and why the paper original matters)

Since Brexit, UK nationals follow the same non-EU rules as everyone else covered in this guide, with one certificate-specific detail that trips up a lot of British applicants.

• Which certificate. The ACRO Police Certificate, issued specifically for use outside the UK — this is what Spanish authorities expect, rather than a standard DBS check, which is designed for UK employers.
• Apostilling it. The FCDO Legalisation Office (gov.uk) handles it. The detail that catches people out: there is no e-Apostille for ACRO certificates from England and Wales — only the standard paper service is available. Fee: £45 per document, up to 25 working days, plus return postage to Spain (£32 per 1.5 kg).
• What this means in practice. If you only have a PDF copy of your ACRO certificate, it cannot be apostilled as it stands; you need the physical original with a wet signature. Ordering the ACRO certificate itself already takes time, so add the FCDO’s own turnaround on top, and plan for well over a month between requesting the ACRO certificate and having an apostilled paper original in hand.

What Extranjería actually checks

• That the certificate covers every country you lived in for six-plus months in the last five years — not just your country of nationality.
• That the apostille or legalisation was done in the issuing country, not attempted from Spain.
• That the translation includes the apostille stamp, not just the body of the certificate.
• That the certificate’s issue date, not the apostille or translation date, is within the accepted window at the time of filing.
• That the certificate matches the applicant’s full legal name exactly as it appears in the passport — a common source of rejection for double surnames or transliterated names.

Common mistakes

1. Requesting a Spanish criminal record certificate when what is missing is the certificate from a country you previously lived in.
2. Sending a US federal document to a state authority for apostille — only the State Department’s Office of Authentications can do it.
3. Trying to apostille a PDF ACRO certificate — the FCDO requires the physical original.
4. Translating the certificate before it is apostilled, leaving the stamp untranslated.
5. Requesting the certificate too early and letting it expire during the apostille and translation steps.

FAQ

Do I need a Spanish criminal record certificate if I already have foreign ones? Usually not. Spain checks its own records internally for most residence procedures; what you need to provide is the certificate from any country outside Spain where you lived six months or more in the last five years.

Can a Spanish consulate apostille my FBI or ACRO certificate? No. The apostille has to be issued in the country where the document was produced — the US Department of State for a US federal document, the FCDO for a UK one. A Spanish consulate cannot substitute for that.

How old can the certificate be when I submit it? No more than three months from its date of issue at the moment you file. If it expires, you need a new certificate and a new apostille.

What if my country of residence won’t issue the certificate in time? RD 1155/2024 allows, as a last resort, a sworn declaration of no criminal record in that country once you can prove you requested it and a reasonable period passed without a response.

Does the translation need to include the apostille stamp? Yes. A sworn translation that only covers the body of the certificate and omits the apostille annotation is routinely returned.

I lived in more than one country in the last five years. Do I need a certificate from each? Yes, from each country where you resided six months or more, not only your country of nationality.

Sources

• Hoja 28 — Arraigo social, Ministerio de Inclusión, Seguridad Social y Migraciones
• Real Decreto 1155/2024, de 19 de noviembre (Reglamento de Extranjería)
• HCCH — Status table, 1961 Apostille Convention
• Ministerio de Justicia — Apostilla electrónica
• Ministerio de Justicia — Certificado de antecedentes
• FBI — Identity History Summary Checks
• US Department of State — Authenticate your document
• ACRO — Police Certificates
• gov.uk — Get your document legalised

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Chasing an apostille from another country while a Spanish deadline runs is exactly the kind of timing problem a professional catches before it becomes a rejected file. Tell us about your case and we will map out which certificates you need and in what order to request them. You may also want our criminal records and apostille service, our sworn translation service, and our guide to immigration appointments in Palma.