BRITISH nationals living in Catalonia are stuck in a post-Brexit legal limbo with lengthy battles to secure the identity cards needed for them to remain.

The Spanish government said the TIE card is the only one that identifies the holder as being covered by the Withdrawal Agreement between the UK and EU. However, obtaining one has not proved as simple as it should be and many Brits have faced a legal nightmare trying to prove their residency status.

The Spanish government delegation in Catalonia told the Catalan News Agency (ANC) that from June last year, when the process started, and the beginning of May, their foreign office in Barcelona had received more than 3000 TIE applications, and approved 93.5%. They have not commented on other offices in Catalonia – Lleida, Girona and Tarragona.

However, none of the British people in Barcelona spoken to by the ANC had had any success, despite sending their TIE applications off months ago.

Emma Johnston, who is an Erasmus student in Barcelona, told ACN: “I can’t think of anyone who is British who has not had an absolute nightmare in getting it done.” She said she moved to Spain to study last July and had her first meeting about her ID card in December, but had heard nothing since.

Beatrice Damon, who has also been living in Barcelona and doing an internship since September, also had her first meeting in December and cannot go any further with her application.

“They told me it could take three months, but it has obviously taken quite a bit longer than that,” she said. “I’ve heard stories of it taking people six or seven months to get a TIE.”

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The Spanish executive office in Catalonia said the normal time spent receiving and responding to applications is three months, and the average time for resolution 31 days, which included those where people had to provide additional documentation which was not included with their initial request.

Olivia Millard, who lived in Madrid before moving to Barcelona told the agency she had to wait for almost three months just for her first appointment.

She said: “I waited a month the first time I emailed them, no response. So I emailed again, waited another three weeks, no response.

“So I emailed them again and then on the third time they replied and offered me a meeting.”

Inconsistency seemed to be the biggest factor for the variance in waiting times, along with the speed of government responses. Millard said there was “no kind of rhyme nor reason to how the system works”, and said some of her friends in Madrid who had applied at the same time as her “have just picked up their cards, within the last few weeks or so”.

Damon said that while she knew some people with successful applications who had also started the process in December, “most of the people who applied around that same time still haven’t got it.”

Bradley de Abreu, from Age in Spain, an information facility for British nationals, told ANC there had been significant delays, with applications in some parts of Catalonia taking “a lot longer” than three months.

He said in Girona, they had warned it would take between four and six months to obtain a TIE, and added: “One issue is that they’re understaffed, the other issue is that they are only offering four appointments a week for UK nationals.”

From today, the Spanish government will not impose restrictions on UK nationals trying to enter the country, but Spain is on the UK’s “amber list”, meaning Brits will be required to quarantine for 10 days once they return.