For Spanish citizenship by residence you need, at a minimum, two documents from your home country with an apostille and a sworn translation: your birth certificate and your criminal record certificate. If you are married, almost always your marriage certificate too. The sworn translation of each of these certificates costs from €35 and is delivered in 24/48 hours as a digitally signed PDF, valid for the online application. I am Elena Peñaranda, sworn translator of English no. 7310 appointed by Spain's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and I prepare these files every week for British, American and Indian clients; this guide is what I tell them before we start.
A warning before we go on: the years of residence required, the fees, the Instituto Cervantes exams and the status of your application are set by the Ministry of Justice and are better known to your lawyer or the official portal. I look after the documents: what to translate, what to apostille and in what order, so your file does not come back over a piece of paper.
Which foreign documents the application asks for
The citizenship-by-residence application is filed online and combines Spanish documents (not translated) with documents from your home country (translated). The foreign ones generally requested are:
- Birth certificate from your home country, full or long-form, legalised with an apostille and with a sworn translation.
- Criminal record certificate from your home country, apostilled and translated. If you have lived in other countries in recent years, one from each of those countries as well.
- Marriage certificate, if you apply as the spouse of a Spanish citizen or if your marital status forms part of the file.
- In some cases, children's birth certificates and the spouse's documents.
Everything else (municipal registration, residence card, DELE and CCSE exams, receipts) is issued in Spain and in Spanish, so I do not need to see it.
Apostille first, translation second
The order matters, and it is the number-one reason translations get redone: the Hague apostille goes on the original document, in the country that issued it, and the sworn translation must include it. If you send me the certificate without the apostille and obtain it later, the translation already delivered will not cover it and would have to be extended. So: request the certificate, apostille it and, with both in hand, scan everything and send it to me. The UK, the US and India are all parties to the Hague Convention; none of the three needs consular legalisation.
United Kingdom
British clients give me more citizenship files than anyone else, and their documents are the most predictable:
- Birth certificate: order a recent certified copy from the General Register Office (England and Wales), National Records of Scotland or GRONI (Northern Ireland). Get the full certificate (with parents' details), not the short version.
- Criminal record: the ACRO Police Certificate, not a DBS check, which is for employers. It arrives on paper by post.
- Apostille: issued by the FCDO Legalisation Office on each document separately. Since Brexit, UK documents no longer benefit from the apostille exemption under Regulation (EU) 2016/1191.
- Marriage: GRO or local register office certificate, apostilled in the same way.
A detail that saves grief: the Spanish administration treats the ACRO as having a short practical shelf life, so order it once the rest of your file is ready. Everything specific to this profile is in the guide for British residents in Spain.
United States
The trap here is that there are two levels of apostille, and picking the wrong one means doing it again:
- Birth certificate: issued by the state (or county) vital records office and apostilled by the Secretary of State of that state. A federal apostille is no use for a state document.
- Criminal record: for citizenship the federal certificate is requested, the FBI Identity History Summary (often called an FBI background check), and it is apostilled by the U.S. Department of State (Office of Authentications) because it is a federal document. Some applicants also provide the state-level certificate for their state of residence; confirm with your lawyer.
- Marriage: county or state certificate, apostille from the corresponding Secretary of State.
US birth certificates vary enormously from state to state (layout, fields, embossed seals), and I translate them exactly as they come, including the legal text on the back. How to pay with a US card, time zones and the other details are in the guide for clients in the United States.
India
With India the tricky point is not the apostille, which is single and straightforward, but the source document:
- Birth certificate: issued by the municipal corporation or local registrar, often in the state language (Hindi, Tamil, Marathi…) or bilingual. For me to produce the sworn translation, the certificate must be in English as issued by the authority, not translated into English by a third party: a sworn translation of a translation is usually rejected. If your certificate is only in a local language, ask the municipality for an English version or find a sworn translator for that language.
- Criminal record: the Police Clearance Certificate (PCC) issued by the Regional Passport Office through Passport Seva, in English.
- Apostille: issued by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), normally after authentication by the issuing state and through the authorised outsourcing agencies. The MEA apostille is a sticker with a code, and I translate it as part of the document.
- Marriage: certificate from the state marriage registrar, in English, with the MEA apostille.
The guide for clients in India covers single-word names, dates and spellings, which in a citizenship file should match your passport and NIE to the letter.
Summary table by country
| Document | United Kingdom | United States | India | Sworn translation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Birth | GRO / NRS / GRONI, full certificate. FCDO apostille | State vital records. Secretary of State apostille | Municipality, in English. MEA apostille | From €35, 24/48 h |
| Criminal record | ACRO Police Certificate. FCDO apostille | FBI Identity History Summary. Department of State apostille | PCC from Passport Seva. MEA apostille | From €35, 24/48 h |
| Marriage (if applicable) | GRO or local register office. FCDO apostille | County or state. Secretary of State apostille | State marriage registrar. MEA apostille | From €35, 24/48 h |
How I prepare it and what you receive
- You scan each document in full, apostille included, and send it by WhatsApp or through the form. Preferably all together, even if that means three or four files.
- I confirm within 2 working hours which documents need translating, a fixed price for the batch and a single delivery date.
- I translate the whole file in one go, with names, dates and terms written identically across every document. The same surname spelt two ways on two certificates is grounds for a request for clarification.
- You receive the digitally signed PDFs, with my certification, stamp and electronic signature, ready to upload to the online platform. If the Civil Registry or your lawyer wants paper, I courier the originals.
If you want to know how to check that a sworn translation is valid before uploading it, I explain it in how to check whether a sworn translation is valid in Spain.
Send me your certificates on WhatsApp and I will tell you what to translate, what to apostille and what the full batch costs. You can also see all prices or the sworn English translator page.