buying a secondhand car in Spain

I'm sure I read last year that you now have to have Spanish residency to own a car, am I seeing things?

I dont think so, how would property owners using their property for less than 183 days a year be able to buy a car?

Hi

I bought a car earlier this year and not a resident. Was told I needed padron - which I didn't. But you do need an upto date NIE or you did a few months ago - when we bought house last July our NIE was only for 3 months so had to renew. Heard this might have changed again not sure you need to check.

Requiring Padron just to buy a car would be outside EU regulations . . . although it doesn't mean they wouldn't try it - the UK seems to be the only Country that slavishly sticks to regulations . . .
Anyhoo . . . we bought our villa in early May this year and our NIE's do not have any expiry date like they used to, our Solicitor said that this was normal now.
Check your NIE certificate, if there is no expiry date, then you are in the clear, hope this helps.

You used to need a padron to buy a car some years ago. That was when everyone, resident or not, went on to the padron.
Now you just need your NIE which is up to date because of the address on it. Oh, and you need money as well - well, not money because they aren't allowed to take it for more than 3000 euro anymore so you need a bank card or similar. Like the reason they put an expiry date on the NIE so you had to either get residency or a certificate of non-residency within that 3 months but they've reverted to no date again.
Great how things change here so regularly, ain't it?

Out of interest, what is a certificate of non-residency? I havent heard of that.

Exactly what it says. If you look at the bottom of the EX15 application for the NIE it asks what type of documentation you want.

Certificado (then tick a box)
de residente
de no residente

The non resident certificate is valid for 2 years and can be shown in exactly the same way as the resident certificate.

thanks marcliff.

I bought a car 6 months ago. Had no particular problems. Was told I needed an up to date (within 3 months of Issue) NIE and house deeds or contract for long term rental. (and passport etc of Course) That all worked with trafico. Didn't need to give any bank details.
. Had to shell out for new NIE certificate for the date. Have never yet seen a non resident certificate and was never given the option to get such a thing so am curious about it. It was interesting though that buying a car needed more paperwork than buying a house. NIE didn't have to be up to date for house purchase, just car purchase...