Your first month in Granada, week by week
Arriving in the autumn for the University or a school placement? What to do in which week, so that the padrón, the fee and the fingerprints fall into line.
The autumn arrival has a rhythm of its own. Lectures begin, schools open their doors to their language assistants, and the cita previa for the province grows busy with people who all landed in the same few weeks. Nothing about it is complicated; most of the trouble comes from doing the right steps in the wrong order.
The first week belongs to the address. Find the room you will actually live in, and register it on the padrón: book on citaprevia.granada.org, or at the town hall of your town if you live in Armilla, Maracena or elsewhere around the city. Ask for the certificado de empadronamiento as you leave.
The second week belongs to the fee and the booking. A European pays the 790-012 for the EX-18 and looks for a registration appointment; a student or assistant from outside the Union pays it under the TIE option and looks for the toma de huellas. Assemble the file as though the date were tomorrow: once a slot shows, it often is.
After that, the appointment decides the pace. Read the office printed on your confirmation, since Granada has two extranjería addresses, and take every original with a copy. If a trip home for Christmas is on the horizon and your card will not be ready, the return authorisation is the paper to think about in November, not in December.
Written for NIE Granada. General information, not advice on a particular case; the official sources prevail.