Where can you get FBI fingerprints taken in Madrid?

You cannot get fingerprinted at a U.S. government office in Madrid. The U.S. Embassy in Spain states plainly that its embassies and consulates are unable to provide this service. Your two working options in Madrid are Spanish police, who can ink a printed FD-258 card, or a private fingerprinting technician. You then send the card to the FBI yourself.

That single fact reorders the whole project. Applicants in Madrid routinely book an appointment at the Embassy expecting a fingerprint session, lose two weeks discovering it does not exist, and only then start looking for a comisaría or a technician. Work backwards from the FBI instead: the card is the bottleneck, the apostille follows the card, and the sworn translation follows the apostille.

What can and cannot the U.S. Embassy in Madrid do for you?

The Embassy’s criminal-records guidance is the authoritative statement here, and it draws a clear line.

One nuance worth flagging, because it trips people up in forum threads: the Embassy’s page also describes a separate fingerprint request route for USCIS-related matters, with dedicated mailboxes for Madrid and Barcelona. That is a different workflow serving U.S. immigration filings. Do not assume it produces an inked FD-258 you can mail to the FBI for a personal Identity History Summary. If you think your case falls under it, read the Embassy page carefully and ask them directly before you build a timeline on it.

Which form do you bring to the fingerprinting appointment?

Bring the blank card printed and ready. A Spanish police officer or a technician in Madrid will not have FBI stock on the shelf.

• FD-258 — the card the Embassy specifically tells applicants in Spain to print and hand to local police.
• FD-1164 — the other standard applicant card the FBI accepts. The FBI confirms it will accept these cards on standard white paper stock, and that where a fingerprinting agency prefers its own card stock, the card the agency supplies may be used.
• The FBI applicant information form — your identifying details, submitted with the card. Complete it yourself before the appointment so the technician only has to roll prints.
• Payment — a fee applies to the FBI request itself, and it is included in our flat price when we handle the file. The FBI takes credit card, money order or cashier’s check; cash and personal checks are not accepted.

Print the card on plain white paper at actual size. Do not scale it to fit a European A4 default — the print boxes have to land where the FBI’s scanners expect them. Take two or three blank copies with you so a smudged first attempt does not end the appointment.

The FBI will not accept the same fingerprint card you used for a previous Identity History Summary, and it will not re-authenticate results it processed in the past. If you already hold an older summary with no FBI watermark, there is no repair path: you need new prints and a new request. Cards are also no longer returned to applicants, so never treat a card as reusable.

How does the Madrid route actually run, step by step?

1. Print the card and complete the form. Download FD-258, print several copies at full scale on white paper, and fill in the FBI applicant information form with the name and details exactly as they appear on your passport.
2. Get inked in Madrid. Call ahead to a Policía Nacional comisaría, or book a private fingerprinting technician. Practice varies station to station — some will roll prints on a foreign card without hesitation, others will decline, so confirm before you travel across the city. Bring your passport.
3. Send the card to the FBI. The card, the applicant information form and payment travel together. Note the operational trap: the FBI’s credit card payment form cannot accompany packages sent by expedited courier, so if you want to use a courier, arrange payment another way.
4. Wait for the watermarked summary. The FBI applies its watermark and the signature of a division official to the search results when it processes them. That authentication is what the apostille later certifies, which is why nothing may be added to the document afterwards.
5. Get the federal apostille attached. The FBI is a federal agency, so the apostille is issued at U.S. federal level in Washington — never by a state Secretary of State. This is the stage we handle for you at $120 per apostille, all-inclusive.
6. Translate and file in Spain. Once the apostilled original is back in Madrid, commission a sworn translation into Spanish and submit the package to the office handling your visa, residence or citizenship file.

Which apostille route applies to your document?

The single most expensive mistake in this process is sending an FBI document to a state office. The decision is simple once you look at whose signature is on the page.

If your Spanish file needs more than one U.S. document — say an FBI summary plus a notarised marriage affidavit — the two documents split at this fork and travel to different authorities. Budget for that in your calendar rather than assuming one trip covers both. Our full walkthrough of the FBI background check apostille for Spain covers the paired-document case in more detail.

How long does it take from Madrid?

Two U.S. government sources give different numbers for the FBI stage, and an honest page shows both rather than picking the flattering one. The U.S. Embassy in Spain describes the mail option as four to six weeks plus the extra delivery time to Spain. A U.S. state education agency’s guidance on the same federal process puts a direct mail request at roughly twelve to fourteen weeks. Plan for the longer figure and be pleased if you get the shorter one.

The faster alternative is to skip the mail-in card entirely and use an FBI-approved channeler, which submits prints electronically into the FBI system and returns results far sooner than a posted card. The Embassy itself recommends requesting the summary online to save time. Channeler capture points sit inside the United States, so the Madrid-based version of this route means a technician captures your prints locally and a U.S. entity submits them. Our directory of all 12 FBI-approved channelers lists who is authorised and what each one returns; the document-specific pages for apostilling a Telos ID / IDVetting summary and apostilling a FastFingerprints (National Background Check, Inc.) summary show what the finished output looks like from each.

What are the translation requirements for Madrid province?

The Embassy is explicit: for official use in Spain, the criminal record certificate must carry the Hague Apostille and be officially translated. An apostilled English-language summary on its own will be handed back at the counter.

“Officially translated” in Spain generally means a translation by a sworn translator-interpreter (traductor-intérprete jurado) authorised by the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who signs and stamps the translation. Two practical points before you commission one:

• Translate after the apostille, not before. The apostille certificate is itself a page of text, and some Spanish offices want it translated too. If you translate first, you will pay twice.
• Ask the receiving office what it accepts. Practice differs between the immigration office handling a residence file and a consulate processing a visa abroad. A short email asking whether the apostille needs translating, and whether a scanned sworn translation is acceptable, saves a return trip.

Translation requirements are set by the Spanish authority receiving the file, not by any U.S. office, and the receiving authority always has the final word on what it will accept.

Which Madrid office receives the apostilled summary?

That depends entirely on what you are applying for, and this is the point where generic guides mislead people. The FBI summary is a supporting exhibit in a Spanish application; it is never filed on its own.

• Residence and immigration files handled inside Spain are typically submitted through the immigration channel for the province where you live — for Madrid province, that means the Madrid immigration office within the Government Delegation structure, or an electronic filing portal where your category allows it.
• Visas applied for before you move go to the Spanish consulate with jurisdiction over your U.S. address, not to any office in Madrid.
• Nationality applications follow the route specified by the Ministry of Justice for your category.

Because the correct office and its document list change with the application type and are updated by Spanish administration, confirm the current requirements on the Spanish government’s own service portal or with the office running your file before you post anything. We authenticate the document; we do not file your Spanish application for you, and we would rather you check the destination requirement than assume.

What is specific to Madrid, compared with other cities?

Three things differ if you are running this from Madrid rather than from a U.S. address:

1. No electronic capture at a U.S. office. Everywhere in Spain, an applicant’s prints have to be captured by a non-U.S.-government party. There is no livescan booth at the Embassy.
2. Two international legs. The card crosses the Atlantic once and the finished apostilled document crosses back. Each leg adds days and a tracking risk; use a courier with a signature for the return leg carrying the original.
3. A mandatory Spanish-side step after the apostille. Unlike destinations that accept an English-language apostilled document as-is, Madrid will want a sworn translation. Applicants who plan only to the apostille stage end up short by a week.

Madrid is also the province where the largest share of Spanish residence and work filings are processed, which means counter staff see FBI summaries often and know what a correctly authenticated one looks like. That cuts both ways: a clean file moves quickly, and a defective one gets spotted immediately.

Common reasons an apostille request is rejected

Nearly every failure we see on FBI documents from abroad comes from this list, and almost all of them are avoidable before anything is posted.

Do you still need Spanish consular legalisation?

No. Spain and the United States are both parties to the 1961 Hague Apostille Convention, so a single apostille replaces the old chain of consular legalisation. Once the federal apostille is attached, do not queue at a Spanish consulate for an additional stamp — it is not required and the request will be declined.

That distinction matters if your paperwork is going to more than one country. Non-Convention destinations still need the longer embassy legalisation chain, and Convention countries vary in the extras they demand around the apostille — our page on the FBI background check apostille for Costa Rica shows how the same FBI document is handled for a different Convention destination, including where translation rules diverge from Spain’s.

Madrid questions and answers

Can I use a summary a Spanish employer already has on file?

Only if it is the FBI’s original watermarked output and it still satisfies your receiving office’s recency expectation. Photocopies and scans are not apostillable, and the FBI will not authenticate a result it processed previously.

How recent does the summary have to be?

Spanish offices commonly want a recently issued criminal record certificate, but the acceptable age is set by the authority reviewing your file and varies by application type. Ask the office running your case and work backwards from their answer, because the FBI stage alone can consume months.

What if I am in Madrid but hold more than one nationality?

Some Spanish applications expect a criminal record certificate from every country you have lived in recently, not only the United States. An apostilled FBI summary covers the U.S. requirement; other countries’ certificates follow their own authentication rules.

Can someone in the United States act for me?

Yes, and it is usually the sensible arrangement. You provide the prints in Madrid; a representative in the United States receives the FBI summary and forwards it for apostille, removing one international leg from the middle of the chain. That is the model behind most Madrid fingerprinting services and it is how we handle files from Spain.

Does a channeler-issued summary get apostilled the same way?

The apostille route is the same federal one. What differs is the output format and how the authentication appears on it, which is why we maintain per-channeler guidance — including for summaries produced through Telos ID / IDVetting.

Other cities we fingerprint in

Madrid is not the only place this comes up. The same pattern — local print capture, submission from inside the United States, federal apostille, then a sworn or certified translation in the destination country — applies wherever an applicant is outside the U.S. and needs an FBI summary for immigration, residence, work or nationality purposes. If you are in Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Málaga, Bilbao or elsewhere in Spain, the Embassy’s position on fingerprinting is identical and so is the apostille route; only your local capture appointment changes. Contact us with your city and we will confirm the current capture options before you book anything.

Your next step

Do two things today, in this order. First, email the Spanish office that will receive your file and ask exactly what it wants: the apostilled original or a copy, whether the apostille itself must be translated, and how recently the summary must have been issued. Second, print FD-258 at full scale and call a comisaría or technician in Madrid to book the prints — that appointment sets your entire timeline.

When the FBI summary is in hand, send us the document and we will attach the federal apostille and courier it back to Madrid. Our fee is $120 per apostille, all-inclusive: no separate government-fee surcharge and no per-page add-ons. If you want the route mapped out before you print a card, start with our Spain-specific FBI apostille guide and start an order when your summary arrives.