FBI Background Check Fingerprinting in Madrid
Almost everyone who needs an FBI Identity History Summary in Madrid discovers the problem in the same order: the visa file asks for a federal criminal record check with an apostille, the applicant is already living in Spain, and every instruction they can find assumes they are standing in the United States. The fingerprinting step is the part that breaks. It is also the only part of the process that has to physically happen where you are — everything after it is paperwork moving between two offices in Washington, neither of which cares which country you posted it from. This page covers the Madrid half: how prints get captured here, what the embassy on Serrano will and will not do, and where the finished, apostilled summary actually goes once it lands back in the Comunidad de Madrid.
Where fingerprints are taken in Madrid
Federal Apostille captures fingerprints in Madrid by appointment, digitally, on the same tenprint standard the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services division accepts. That matters more here than it sounds: the alternative available to someone in Spain is an inked FD-258 card mailed to West Virginia, which the FBI processes on a multi-week queue and which is rejected outright if a single impression smudges — with no correction path, no refund of the fee, and no return of the card. Digital capture removes the failure mode entirely, because a print that does not meet the standard is retaken while you are still in the room rather than discovered eleven weeks later in a letter.
Capture is by appointment. We do not keep an office, counter or walk-in address in Madrid and will not pretend otherwise — the appointment is arranged with you, and everything downstream of it is paperwork moving between two offices in Washington. That downstream half is written up in full on the FBI background check apostille page.
What the nearest American post can and cannot do
Madrid has the full U.S. Embassy, at Calle de Serrano 75, and it is the busiest American diplomatic post in Spain. It provides notarial services to US citizens by appointment. It does not take fingerprints for FBI Identity History Summary purposes — no American embassy or consulate anywhere does, a fact that costs Madrid applicants more wasted appointments than any other single misunderstanding — and it cannot issue an apostille on a US federal document. Apostilles on federal documents are issued by exactly one office on earth, the U.S. Department of State in Washington, DC. An embassy notarial appointment is a genuinely useful thing for other documents; for this one it is a detour.
Which office receives the apostilled summary
The apostilled summary is filed with your visa or residency application, and in Madrid the in-person steps land at the Oficina de Extranjería for Madrid province, with the separate biometric appointment for the TIE residence card booked through the national cita previa system at sede.administracionespublicas.gob.es. Two Madrid-specific realities: appointments in this province are the most heavily contested in Spain and routinely disappear within seconds of release, and you must be empadronado in Madrid to be seen here at all, with a padrón certificate usually no more than three months old. Neither is something a national page can warn you about.
Whether your particular application needs the check at all, which visa categories call for it, and how recent it has to be are national questions rather than Madrid ones. They are answered on the FBI background check apostille for Spain page, which is where that decision belongs. This page stays on execution.
Translation requirements in Madrid province
Spain does not accept just any translation. A document destined for a Spanish government file needs a traductor jurado appointed by the Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores through the Oficina de Interpretación de Lenguas, and the ministry publishes the register publicly, filterable by province. Madrid holds the largest concentration of English-language sworn translators in the country by a wide margin, which is why Madrid files are rarely delayed at this step while files from thinner provinces are. Two cautions: the register goes stale — retired and unreachable entries persist — and the sworn translation is made of the apostilled document, so the order is fingerprints, then FBI, then apostille, then translate.
Getting the document back into Madrid
The finished summary and its apostille come back into Madrid-Barajas by tracked international courier, and personal identity documents carry no customs duty — but they still clear customs, and a package described vaguely on its air waybill is the one that sits. We declare them for what they are. A secure scan reaches you the day the Department of State issues the apostille, which in practice is what your gestor or immigration lawyer wants to see first; the physical originals follow, and the appointment you are racing toward almost never needs the paper before the scan has already answered the question.
What is specific to Madrid
- The U.S. Embassy in Madrid is a full embassy with notarial services — but no American post in Spain takes fingerprints for FBI checks, and none can apostille a US federal document.
- Madrid province runs the most oversubscribed cita previa queue in Spain; slots are released in batches and taken within seconds.
- You must be registered on the padrón in Madrid to be attended at the Madrid Oficina de Extranjería, generally with a certificate under three months old.
- The TIE biometric appointment uses form EX-17 and the 790-012 fee — a separate capture, for the residence card, unrelated to the prints taken for the FBI check.
- The MAEC sworn-translator register can be filtered to Madrid province, which holds Spain's deepest English-language traductor jurado pool.
- Spanish consulates and Spanish government offices commonly treat a criminal record check as stale after 90 days, so sequencing the apostille close to filing matters.
Madrid questions & answers
Can I get fingerprinted for my FBI background check at the U.S. Embassy in Madrid?+
No. This is the most common wasted appointment in the whole process. American embassies and consulates do not take fingerprints for FBI Identity History Summary purposes — not in Madrid, not anywhere. The embassy on Serrano provides notarial services to US citizens, which is a different service for different documents. Fingerprints for an FBI check have to be captured by a provider that can submit them to the FBI, which is what we do in Madrid by appointment.
Can the embassy in Madrid apostille my FBI background check?+
No, and no consulate can either. An apostille authenticates the signature on a document, which means only the authority holding that signer's specimen signature can issue one. For an FBI Identity History Summary that is the U.S. Department of State in Washington, DC — a single office for the entire country, with no branch, no embassy delegation and no overseas equivalent. If a Spanish office told you to 'get an apostille', they are pointing at Washington, not at Serrano 75.
Do I have to fly back to the United States to do this?+
No. Fingerprints are captured in Madrid, submitted to the FBI, and the resulting summary is apostilled in Washington and couriered back to you here. Nothing in the sequence requires you to be physically present in the United States at any point.
What order do the apostille and the sworn translation go in?+
Apostille first, translation second. The traductor jurado translates the apostilled document — summary and apostille certificate together — because a translation produced before the apostille exists is a translation of an incomplete document, and a Spanish office receiving it will say so. Doing it in the wrong order means paying a sworn translator twice.
How current does the check have to be when I file in Madrid?+
Plan on ninety days. Spanish consulates and Spanish government offices commonly treat a criminal record check older than that as stale, though the exact window is applied inconsistently between offices and consulates. The practical consequence is about sequencing rather than speed: start the fingerprinting close enough to your filing date that the apostille is still comfortably inside the window when the file is actually submitted, not when you began assembling it.
Does living in Alcalá, Getafe or Móstoles change anything?+
Only which padrón certificate you present and which Extranjería appointment you book — both are organised by province, and all of those are Madrid province. The FBI half and the apostille half are identical no matter where in the Comunidad you live, and the courier leg is a rounding error inside the metro.
Should I be reading the Spain visa page instead of this one?+
That question belongs to the Spain visa page rather than this one, because the answer depends on which visa you are applying for and is a national rule, not a Madrid one. This page covers execution: where the prints happen and what Madrid does with the result.
How it runs from Madrid
| Fingerprints | Captured in Madrid by appointment, digitally, to the FBI tenprint standard |
| FBI summary | Submitted to the FBI and returned as an Identity History Summary |
| Apostille | Filed over the counter at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, DC |
| Return | Secure scan on the day of issue · tracked courier back to Madrid province |
Other cities we fingerprint in
- FBI fingerprinting in Barcelona, Spain
- FBI fingerprinting in Valencia, Spain
- FBI fingerprinting in Alicante, Spain
- FBI fingerprinting in Marbella, Spain
- All locations
Federal Apostille™ is a private, independent document-processing and courier service. We do not maintain an office, counter or staff in Madrid, and we are not affiliated with the U.S. Department of State, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Department of State's diplomatic posts, or any Spain government ministry, agency, university or notarial office named on this page. Fingerprint capture in Madrid is by appointment.