Can you get FBI background check fingerprinting in Barcelona?

Not at a U.S. government office. The U.S. Embassy in Spain states plainly that embassies and consulates are unable to provide this service. The Embassy’s own instruction is that local police in Spain can take your fingerprints, which you then send to the FBI with the rest of your application. Washington apostilles the result afterwards.

That single fact reroutes the whole project. You are not booking an appointment with the Consulate General on Passeig de Gràcia; you are getting ink prints taken by Catalan police, mailing a paper card to the FBI in West Virginia, and then getting the returned summary apostilled by the U.S. Department of State before a Spanish office will look at it.

At a glance: what you need before you start

• A completed FBI form FD-1164, Identity History Summary Request, signed by you.
• A blank applicant fingerprint card, printed at full size on plain white card stock. Bring your own — Catalan police capture the prints, they do not supply U.S. federal forms. Confirm the accepted card format on the FBI’s Identity History Summary Checks pages; the FD-258 applicant card is the format most mail-in requestors use.
• Your passport, plus your NIE or TIE if you hold one.
• Your full name as it appears on the passport, date and place of birth, and your Social Security number if you have one — the number must be on the card at submission if you want it to appear on the summary.
• A U.S. mailing address you can use for the return, because of how the FBI ships results.
• An explicit request for authentication at the time of submission. This is the step people miss, and it cannot be fixed later.

The FBI no longer stamps results with the FBI seal. It authenticates them with an FBI watermark and the signature of a division official, applied when the request is processed — and it will not accept requests to authenticate previously processed results. If you already hold an un-authenticated summary, you cannot send it back. You start over.

Where are fingerprints actually taken in Barcelona?

At a police facility. For Catalonia, the Embassy’s criminal records guidance names the Policia de la Generalitat – Mossos d’Esquadra and lists the territorial unit that handles fingerprint capture for members of the public. Read the current unit name, address and contact details straight from the U.S. Embassy in Spain’s criminal records page before you travel across the city — police units relocate and the Embassy updates that listing rather than us.

Practical points that decide whether the visit succeeds:

• Ink, not live scan. Catalan police roll your fingers onto the card you bring. There is no electronic transmission to the FBI from a Spanish police station, so the physical card becomes your only copy. Ask for two cards to be taken where the unit allows it.
• The officer completes the identity block. The person taking the prints should sign as the official taking them and enter the date and the agency name. An unsigned card is a rejection waiting to happen.
• Call or email first. Fingerprint capture for a foreign authority is a courtesy service, not a scheduled municipal function. Some units handle it on request, some only within certain hours.
• Language. Staff in Barcelona work in Catalan and Spanish. Bring a printed copy of the Embassy page in Spanish if you need to explain why an American federal form is in front of them.

If you live in Girona, Lleida, Tarragona or anywhere else in Catalonia, the same route applies through your nearest Mossos territorial unit. Nothing about the FBI request is tied to the city of Barcelona itself.

What can the U.S. Consulate General in Barcelona do — and what can’t it do?

This is where readers get badly confused, because the Consulate General does run a fingerprint channel — just not for the FBI.

If USCIS, ICE or CBP has instructed you to be fingerprinted as part of a case with that agency, Barcelona handles it. You email BarcelonaACS@state.gov using the subject line V99: Fingerprint Request SURNAME, GIVEN NAME to arrange it. Applicants in the capital use the Madrid address instead, and you can compare the local logistics on our page about FBI background check fingerprinting in Madrid.

If you need an FBI Identity History Summary — the document Spanish authorities, employers and foreign consulates usually mean when they ask for a “federal background check” — the consulate cannot help. Different requesting agency, different channel. Emailing the consular section for an FBI check will get you pointed back to local police.

Which route applies to you

How does the process run from Barcelona, step by step?

1. Download and complete form FD-1164. The Identity History Summary Request form is the FBI’s own document. Print it, complete every field, and sign it by hand.
2. Print a blank fingerprint card at true size. Do not scale it to A4. A card printed at the wrong dimensions puts the print boxes out of tolerance for the FBI’s examiners.
3. Have the prints taken by police in Barcelona. Go to the Mossos d’Esquadra unit listed on the Embassy page with your passport and blank card. Check that all ten fingers are legible, the rolls are not smudged, and the officer has signed and dated the card.
4. Submit to the FBI and request authentication in the same breath. Send the card, the signed FD-1164 and payment of the FBI’s processing fee to CJIS. State that the result is for use abroad and must carry the FBI watermark and the signature of a division official. When we run the order, this is handled for you and the agency fee is inside our flat price.
5. Receive the authenticated summary at a U.S. address. The FBI mails all results, foreign and domestic, by USPS First-Class Mail. Sending it to Spain first and then back to Washington adds two ocean crossings for no benefit, so nominate a U.S. forwarding address — ours, if you are ordering through us.
6. Apostille it at the U.S. Department of State. The authenticated original goes to the Office of Authentications in Washington, D.C., which attaches the apostille certificate for Spain.
7. Arrange the sworn translation and deliver to the Barcelona office. Once the apostille is attached, a Spanish sworn translator renders the summary and the apostille into Spanish, and the file goes to whichever office is handling your procedure.

Who has authority to apostille an FBI background check?

Only the U.S. Department of State, Office of Authentications. An FBI Identity History Summary is a federal record, and no Secretary of State — not Florida, not Texas, not the state where you were born — has jurisdiction over a federal document. Sending it to a state office wastes weeks and the office returns it unapostilled. The FBI itself confirms the routing: once a result is authenticated, it “may then be sent to the U.S. Department of State by the requestor to obtain an apostille if necessary.” The current filing requirements are published on the Department’s apostille requirements page.

Spain is a party to the 1961 Hague Apostille Convention, which you can confirm in the HCCH status table for the Apostille Convention. That means one apostille finishes the legalisation chain. There is no second step at the Spanish Embassy or at a Spanish consulate, and no Ministry of Foreign Affairs stamp in Madrid. Anyone telling you the document also needs consular legalisation for Spain is describing a non-Hague country such as a legalisation-only destination — not Spain.

How long does each stage take, and where do you check?

Turnarounds for both the FBI and the Office of Authentications move with demand, and a figure quoted on a blog last year is worse than no figure at all. Rather than publish a number we cannot stand behind, here is what drives each stage and the official page that carries the live timing.

The fastest lever most applicants can pull is the submission channel. Electronic submissions and FBI-approved channelers return results faster than a card mailed to CJIS — but channelers generally capture prints electronically at U.S. locations and each one sets its own policy on cards mailed from abroad. If you are weighing that option, work through our directory of all 12 FBI-approved channelers and check the eligibility rules company by company. Channeler-issued reports are apostillable, but only with the correct authentication attached — see our notes on how to apostille an FBI background check issued through Telos ID / IDVetting or apostille a VetConnex-issued FBI background check.

Does Barcelona require a sworn translation, in Spanish or Catalan?

The Embassy’s guidance is explicit that a criminal record certificate used officially in Spain must carry the Hague Apostille and be officially translated. “Officially” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. In practice Spanish authorities accept translations produced by a traductor-intérprete jurado appointed by the Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores, Unión Europea y Cooperación (MAEC), who signs and stamps the translation and certifies its fidelity. A translation by a bilingual friend, an agency without sworn status, or a machine tool will be refused at the counter.

Two points specific to Catalonia:

• Language of the receiving body. State bodies operating in Barcelona — the Oficina de Extranjería, the Registro Civil, the Delegación del Gobierno — work in Spanish. Bodies of the Generalitat de Catalunya and many Catalan universities and professional colleges operate in Catalan and may accept or prefer a Catalan translation. Ask before you commission the work; paying for the wrong target language twice is a common and avoidable cost.
• Translate the apostille too. The apostille is a separate public document attached to the summary. Have the sworn translator cover both the FBI summary and the apostille certificate, and have them keep the page order intact. Splitting them, or translating only the summary, is a frequent reason a file is sent back for completion.

Which office receives the apostilled summary in Barcelona?

The destination depends on your procedure, not on your postcode. The usual ones:

• Residence and work authorisation — the Oficina de Extranjería de Barcelona, under the Delegación del Gobierno en Cataluña, or the relevant unit for large-company, highly-qualified or digital-nomad files.
• Spanish nationality by residence — the Registro Civil, with the criminal record certificate forming part of the nationality dossier.
• Employment, licensing or academic admission — the employer’s HR department, a professional colegio, or a university admissions office, each of which sets its own format rules.
• Applications filed before you move — the Spanish consulate with jurisdiction over your U.S. state, if you are applying for the visa from the United States rather than in Spain.

Confirm with the office handling your file whether it wants the apostilled original or a certified copy, how recently the check must have been issued, and whether it accepts a scanned upload. Requirements differ between procedures and the receiving authority has the final word on what it will accept.

How do you get the document back into Barcelona?

The constraint most guides skip: the FBI ships every result by USPS First-Class Mail. That is ordinary post, not a tracked courier, and once it leaves the United States you have no visibility until it appears — or does not — in a Spanish letterbox. For an item that took police appointments and weeks of processing to produce, that is an unacceptable point of failure.

The fix is to keep the document inside the United States until it is finished. Have the FBI mail the authenticated summary to a U.S. address, file it for the apostille from there, and only then ship the completed, apostilled original to Barcelona by tracked courier. When you order through us, the summary is returned to our office, walked to the Department of State, and dispatched to your Barcelona address with a tracking number — one flat $120 per apostille, all-inclusive, with the agency fees already inside that price and no per-page add-ons.

Common reasons an apostille request is rejected

• No FBI authentication on the summary. The most expensive mistake on this page. Authentication is applied at submission, and the FBI will not accept a previously processed result for authentication afterwards. A clean but unauthenticated summary cannot be apostilled.
• Filed with a state Secretary of State. Federal documents belong to the Department of State. State offices return them unprocessed.
• A photocopy, scan or printout instead of the document the FBI issued. The Office of Authentications works from the issued original.
• The document printed at the wrong size or in greyscale. The FBI’s authentication relies on a watermark. Reproduce it badly and the verification features are gone.
• Illegible or smudged fingerprints. If the examiner cannot classify the prints, the FBI cannot complete the search and there is nothing to apostille. Check the card in the police station, not at home.
• Name mismatch. The name on the FD-1164, the fingerprint card, your passport and your Spanish file should agree. Married names, two surnames and hyphenation cause real refusals in Spain.
• Missing Social Security number. If the number must appear on the summary, it has to be on the card at submission.
• Wrong destination country named. The apostille request identifies the country of use. Name Spain, not a country you might move to later.
• Pages separated. Do not unstaple, laminate, hole-punch or re-bind the summary or the apostille. Keep the assembly exactly as issued.
• Translation done before the apostille. Apostille first, then translate the summary and the apostille together. A translation that omits the apostille is an incomplete file.

Barcelona-specific questions

Do I need to travel to Madrid?

No. Fingerprints can be taken by police in Catalonia, and the apostille happens in Washington regardless of where in Spain you live. Madrid only enters the picture if you are dealing with the Embassy’s consular fingerprint channel for a USCIS, ICE or CBP case.

Does Spain also need a Catalan or Spanish police certificate?

Sometimes, but that is a separate document with its own route. The FBI check covers your U.S. criminal history; Spanish and other national certificates cover the rest. Confirm the full list with the office receiving your file so you do not order one and discover you needed both.

Can I use the same FBI check for another country later?

The apostille names one destination country, and every country applies its own rules about how recent a check must be and how it must be translated. A file built for Spain is not portable — compare, for instance, the different expectations set out in our guide to an FBI check apostilled for Costa Rica.

What if my prints are rejected and I have already left Barcelona?

A second capture is required — which is exactly why you should ask the Mossos unit to take two cards in one visit if they permit it. A spare card sitting in a drawer in Barcelona costs nothing; a repeat flight costs a great deal.

Where else does this route work?

Everything above applies anywhere in Spain: Madrid, Valencia, Seville, Bilbao, Málaga, Zaragoza, Palma, the Canaries. Local police take the prints, the card travels to the FBI, and the Department of State issues the apostille. The only things that change are the police unit you visit and the regional office that finally receives the file.

Your next step

Before you book anything, open the Embassy’s criminal records page and note the current Mossos d’Esquadra unit and address, then print FD-1164 and a blank fingerprint card at true size and take them to that unit. Once your prints are on the card, start an order with us and send us the signed card: we submit it to the FBI with the authentication request, receive the summary at our U.S. address, file the apostille with the Department of State, and courier the finished document to Barcelona — $120 per apostille, all-inclusive, agency fees included.