Getting a Spanish visa at a consulate is a documented process with a clear list. What happens after you land is a sequence of three appointments in a fixed order, and the difficulty is not the paperwork but getting the appointments at all.
The order
1. NIE — the foreigner identification number. If you arrived on a long-stay visa this is usually assigned as part of the visa, but you need the physical certificate.
2. Empadronamiento — registering your address at the town hall, producing the padrón certificate.
3. TIE — the residency card itself, applied for within 30 days of entering Spain, with fingerprints taken at a police station or foreigner's office.
Each step needs the output of the previous one, and the TIE deadline is real.
The empadronamiento
This is the easiest of the three and the one that unlocks the most.
You need a lease or property deed and your passport, at the ayuntamiento of your municipality. It is free.
The padrón is then required for: healthcare registration, school enrolment, the TIE application, residency renewals, and later for citizenship applications where continuous registration is evidence of residence.
Register as soon as you have an address, and keep every certificate you are ever issued — the dates matter later.
The cita previa problem
Spanish administrative appointments run on the cita previa system, and in Madrid and Barcelona getting one is genuinely difficult.
Slots are released irregularly, in limited numbers, and are taken within minutes. People refresh the site for days. There is a small industry of appointment-finding services precisely because the bottleneck is so consistent.
What works:
Try smaller offices. Appointments in outlying districts or nearby towns are frequently available when the central ones are not, and you can generally use any office in your province.
Check at odd hours. Slots are often released early morning.
Use a gestor. This is what most foreign residents do. A gestor is a local administrative agent who monitors the system, secures the appointment, prepares the paperwork and often attends with you. A few hundred euros, and near-universally described as worth it.
The TIE appointment itself
Bring: the completed EX-17 form, proof of the fee paid (the modelo 790 código 012, paid at a bank beforehand), passport and copies, your visa, the padrón certificate, and passport photographs to Spanish specification.
Fingerprints are taken and the card is collected a few weeks later, usually in person.
Bring originals and photocopies of everything. Spanish administration runs on paper and copies are kept.
What comes after
Healthcare. With the TIE and padrón you can register for a health card, though the route differs by autonomous community and by visa type. Non-lucrative visa holders arrive with mandatory private insurance and often keep it.
Banking. A resident account requires the NIE and usually the TIE.
Renewals. The non-lucrative visa is one year then two plus two, each renewal requiring proof that the financial conditions are still met. After five years of legal residence you can apply for long-term EU residence, which removes the work restriction.
The thing to plan around
Budget considerably more elapsed time than the official process suggests. The steps themselves take an hour each; getting to them can take weeks. Arriving with a month of flexible accommodation and no hard deadlines makes the difference between an irritating fortnight and a stressful one.