Opening a Spanish bank account

I notice you mentioned in a separate topic that you have bought a property and now want to get over to Spain to get through the residencia process.  So a few things spring to mind:

• You must already have an NIE if you have bought your property.  That's good, because you will need it for the bank account.
• A little surprising that your solicitor didn't arrange for you to have a bank account when you bought the property.  Ours escorted us directly from the formal purchase signing straight to the bank to do all of the (extensive) signing for a non-resident account, as then we were in a position to have all of our property costs (IBI, basura etc) charged to our bank account.   Do you still have a relationship with the solicitor, and can they help you open an account?
• You don't need to have anything to physically pay into your account as soon as you open it.  Open it first, then transfer money in to it.
• You almost certainly will need to be physically present in Spain to sign documents in person to open the account.  If you are in UK that's a problem until they start letting non-residents back in to Spain.
• As soon as you have your bank account, make sure you start paying regular sums into it, because as part of your residencia application you will need to show at least 3 months' worth of income (pension or whatever) at the required level before you can apply, which is a very important lead time.  Get someone (e.g. CAT Services) to help with your application and make sure that whatever transfer/payment in to your account is made, it is sent with the correct concepto/description to pass the test.      

Hope that helps!

Just a correction - you don’t need NIE to open an account and you don’t need to be in Spain.

I opened my Sabadell account with a passport, from overseas, via email.

Hi

We’re literally in process of buying a property and gave our solicitor power of attorney. They have opened a bank account for us and I have been able to use the account (transferring money from my UK account via one of the currency exchanges) to my Spanish account. 
So I suppose in my experience, when not in the country my deposits have been in Euros as have gone through currency exchange. 

We are in the process of  buying a property, our solicitor with poa was not able to get our NIE before lockdown. A lot of the banks brought in new rules January 2020, that you must have NIE to open an account, la caixa and sabadell are two of these. So we are waiting with fingers crossed that the police stations will open for appointments soon. 😊

Hi Gill

We do have NIE numbers even though our old address is on them so as soon as we can get back to Spain we will. Wondering if it’s ever going to happen xx

I am optimistic on it happening this year. The present situation is sad, but it wont change our long term plans 😊😊

Must be euros, and if the amount is over 10k,they will need to see proof of source,under the Money laundering, and proceeds of Crimes Act. 

Don't try and pass monies over that you can't show source. They are very strict. 

Get advice from a local Spanish solicitor. 

You will of course need passport ID, and a Spanish NIE. number. 

Hope this helps. 

I'm aware of these regs, as I dealt with money laundering at my last practice 

Thank you so much for your reply. No money laundering here thank goodness. 

Of course, that isn't what I was suggesting, but there's a great deal of it about, and the authorities are clamping down, as they have for years. Wish you good luck, and I'm sure you'll be sorted very soon. It's such an easy process