PASSENGERS TRAVELLING TO SPAIN
19 september 2007
No major changes have been introduced. The regulation was already in place last March 07.
Besides your full name, you will only be required to provide to your carrier (Iberia, Aer Lingus or Ryanair, etc.), the following:
- Your passport or National Identity Number
- Your nationality
- Your date of birth.
No form needs to be filled in.
Your carrier will take this information from you at the time of booking or at the time of check-in.
If you are ckecking in at an automatic ckeck-in kiosk, many already incorporate automatic passport readers, so you will be prompted to sweep your passport. If not, you will be asked to fill in those data.
In the same way, most airlines have automatic passport readers in their ckeck in counters, so their personnel will sweep them to read the necessary data directly from your passport. The proccess will take only a few seconds.
IRISH PASSPORT REQUIREMENTS
Validity: the passport must be inforce in order to enter or to leave Spain. A minimum period of validity is not required.
Children: they can only figure in their parents passport if they are under 16 years old.
RELEASE BY LOTERÍAS Y APUESTAS DEL ESTADO
The Spanish Embassy considers a release by Loterías y Apuestas del Estado (Spanish Lottery) of interest for the Irish public. It reads as follows:
Loterías y Apuestas de Estado (LAE) would like to inform the general public that a number of groups of criminals, of various nationalities, are using the prestige and the commercial names of the Spanish Lottery by fraudulent means in several countries, particularly in countries in the south-west of Asia and the Pacific, and countries on the American continent. They move with ease around the whole world and use mobile telephones, PO boxes, provisional or false addresses (including real addresses of official Spanish organisation), as well as names that bring to mind prestigious institutions ("el Gordo", la Primitiva", "European Lottery Commission", etc.) They also forge the printed sheets and signatures of various banks.
In order to carry out the fraud, the procedure that is generally followed consists of informing the potential victim that they have been the lucky winner of a substantial prize (even if they have not participated in any draw), although they cannot collect this prize until they have paid an amount going towards the taxes, bank costs, delivery costs or insurance processing, etc. Usually, the fraudster warns their potential victim that the deadline to pay these charges is very soon and that their right to collect the prize is about to expire.
Spanish Lottery prizes are always free of taxes, and the Spanish Police has already arrested and subjected to legal procedures some of the members of groups who were operating from Spain.
Therefore, when you are offered "prizes" that seem to be linked to the Spanish Lottery, DO NOT PAY any amount. Likewise, we would be grateful if you could inform local authorities of these crimes and send a copy of the false documentation to the following address:
Loterías y Apuestas del Estado. Legal Advice Service
c/ Guzmán el Bueno nº137
28003 Madrid,
- or to fax number 34 91 533 51 36