Buying/selling a property in Spain – Granting a Power of Attorney for a representative to do it on your behalf

Buying/selling a property in Spain involves several steps, amongst which signing the deed of conveyance with a Spanish Notary and registering the ownership with the Spanish Land Register.

If it is more convenient for you to appoint a representative (known as “attorney”) to act on your behalf in Spain, we can assist you. 

If you have got in contact with Spanish lawyers already, they might have a draft of the power of attorney that you need to sign. In this case, the draft will need to be sent over for our perusal, as we still might need to make a few adjustments to make sure it complies not only with the Spanish but also the English formalities to be signed as a deed.

We can always draft deed of power of attorney for you.

Requirements of a power of attorney for Spain to be signed before a Notary of England and Wales

The deed must include particular details such as: the date and place where the power of attorney is signed, the full name of the Notary before whom the deed was executed, a statement by the Notary confirmining that s/he is satisfied that the grantor/s has mental capacity to grant the power of attorney, personal details of the grantor/s and personal details about the attorney/s and a list of clauses that the attorney/s will be allowed to do on behalf of the grantor.

The deed will be drawn up in Spanish but will need to be accompanied by an English translation in a dual column format if the person granting the power of attorney does not understand Spanish.

I have been told I need to obtain a N.I.E. (…)

Whenever you are buying or selling a property, the same as if you are opening a bank account in Spain, you will need a “N.I.E.”. N.I.E. stands for “Número de Identidad de Extranjero”, being a Foreign Nationals’ Identity Number in Spain. It is a unique and permanent identification number issued by the Spanish authorities. A clause granting power of attorney to your representative to obtain your N.I.E is normally included in a power of attorney to buy and sell property in Spain.

Apostille of The Hague (legalisation)

After the power of attorney has been signed in front of the Notary by the grantor and the Notary has notarised it as well, it still needs to contain the Hague Apostille. The Hague Apostille is a stamp issued by the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office pursuant to an international treaty known as the Hague Convention of 1961, to which both the UK and Spain are a party. The function of the Apostille is to confirm that it has been the authority of a country who has signed the document and so that the document can have effects abroad, in Spain in our case. In any case, our team can obtain the Apostille for you.

How long would it take to have all of it ready?

Regarding the drafting or the supervision of the draft, it usually takes a maximum of 2 working days to have the document ready to be signed in front of our Notary.

In case it is us who draft the power of attorney, we always like your lawyer in Spain to confirm it covers all the steps necessary for the specific transaction, in which case you need to allow for their time to check the draft.

 As soon as the draft is approved by all of us, we will book an appointment for you either for you to attend our offices or for our Notary to attend your place.

Once it has been signed by all the required parties, Notary and grantor/s, we will arrange the Apostille at the FCO for you. There are 2 type of services, standard and premium. The standard takes around 4-6 working days and the premium can be done same working day or the next working day depending the time when it is signed. 

After it has been notarised and apostilled, you can collect it in our office, or we can either post it to your address in the UK or have it delivered to Spain.

Fees

Our standard fee for an individual power of attorney for Spain drafted by us is £345 plus vat. This is assuming that we draft the document from scratch. If you already have an editable bilingual draft in place our fee could potentially be reduced, but you will have to send your draft to us for evaluation. Additionally, if you have been provided with a Spanish draft only, we can assist with the translation of the powers into English and fees may vary. If you enquire with the particularities of your case, we will provide you with an exact fee.