Use these guides when you need a plain-English starting point before choosing the city page, official portal, calculator, or Ask Guiri workflow that matches your situation.
Quick answer
A source-backed guide to padrón registration, certificados and volantes — and how to match the proof to the exact request from the receiving body.
Who this is for
Municipal decision guide
Documents to have ready
- If you are not registered or your address has changed, use your ayuntamiento’s alta or address-change route.
- If you are already registered and another body asks for proof, identify its exact document wording before requesting anything.
- Your municipality controls its registration route; the receiving body controls which proof it will accept.
Where to start
BOE — Technical instructions for the municipal padrón
Timing
The BOE’s technical instructions describe a certificado as the document that formally proves the padrón record. A volante is informational. A volante can be enough for many tasks, but it is not a substitute when the receiving body specifically asks for a certificado.
Common mistake
The national instructions explain what the documents are. Your ayuntamiento controls the route, access and privacy handling, while the receiving office decides whether it accepts a certificate or volante and whether it requires a particular issue date. Check both before submitting.
Before you request proof
The BOE explains what a certificado proves and what a volante communicates. The receiving body and your ayuntamiento decide which document to request, how to access it, and whether they require a particular issue date.
- Do not use padrón registration as proof of immigration status.
- Keep the request wording and the municipal proof you receive separately.
Being registered is not the same as holding the proof another office asks for
The padrón is the municipal register. Being registered means your ayuntamiento records your usual residence and address there. That municipal record is not a residence permit and does not prove your immigration status.
- If you are not registered or your address has changed, use your ayuntamiento’s alta or address-change route.
- If you are already registered and another body asks for proof, identify its exact document wording before requesting anything.
- Your municipality controls its registration route; the receiving body controls which proof it will accept.
A certificado and a volante are not interchangeable
The BOE’s technical instructions describe a certificado as the document that formally proves the padrón record. A volante is informational. A volante can be enough for many tasks, but it is not a substitute when the receiving body specifically asks for a certificado.
- Read the receiving body’s wording: certificado means request a certificate; volante means confirm that it accepts an informational record.
- There is no universal “recent certificate” rule. The BOE gives neither document a general expiry date; follow a recipient-specific issue-date requirement when one is written.
- A filing receipt or appointment confirmation is not the same as a certificado or volante.
Historical and collective wording changes the request
A historical request can concern recorded padrón dates or addresses. A collective or convivencia request can concern everyone registered at one address. Those records involve other people’s data, so the municipality may apply access, purpose, consent, or other privacy checks.
- Copy the recipient’s exact words — for example histórico, colectivo or convivencia — instead of choosing a broader document “just in case”.
- Ask your ayuntamiento how it names and issues that proof for the purpose stated in the request.
- For people registered in a collective establishment, the BOE says certificates and volantes must be individual.
Use the recipient’s request and your municipality’s current route together
The national instructions explain what the documents are. Your ayuntamiento controls the route, access and privacy handling, while the receiving office decides whether it accepts a certificate or volante and whether it requires a particular issue date. Check both before submitting.