Renewing Spain's DNI costs €18: fee, photo and the padrón loophole

Renewing the DNI costs €18 and the photo isn't included

Renewing the DNI costs 18 euros: 12 for the fee and 6 for the photographs. The process is compulsory and yet the State covers neither the cost of the document nor that of the image it requires to issue it. The complaint is repeated with an argument that is hard to refute: if it is mandatory, it should be free, and if you pay, the fee should bear some relation to the real cost of the service. Some estimate that cost at under 5 euros. The passport, at 30 euros, completes the comparison.

What the €12 DNI fee includes

The breakdown used by anyone who has been to a police station is simple: €12 fee and between 6 and 7 euros for the five photos the format requires. The European health card, by contrast, is issued and sent at no cost at all. That contrast is the one most often repeated: a free health document versus a paid identity document.

The photo has a trick. With a 10x15 centimetre template and a shopping-centre printer, the cost drops to 10 cents. There are mobile apps that crop to the official size —32 by 26 millimetres, white background— and those who do it this way speak of 15 cents per print. The difference between paying 6 euros and paying 0.15 euros is the same as between going to the photographer on the corner and doing it yourself.

The padrón change trick to avoid paying

Renewal is free when you change your registered address. That is the loophole many exploit: register on the padrón at a second home, at a relative's house or at any other address, renew the DNI at no cost and then return to the original padrón. The document is then issued for ten years —five for younger holders— and the cycle repeats when the time comes.

The only requirement is not to let the document expire. If you turn up with an expired DNI, the fee is paid even if there is a change of address involved. The padrón certificate, incidentally, is not always free: some town halls charge around 5 euros to issue it, and the process requires requesting it twice.

The photo at the police station that is no longer taken

There was a time when the officer took the photograph with a webcam, as is done today for the driving licence. The installation of machines at police stations was announced and the project came to nothing. The reason cited is pressure from photo shops located next to the offices, which saw their business threatened. The result is the current situation: the citizen pays the fee, supplies the photo and on top of that has to travel there.

What goes wrong with service at the police station

The process should take five minutes and sometimes drags on for twenty. There are accounts of officers who do not know how to complete the process, who ask the colleague next to them, who run out of cards to print or who damage the chip of the new document and force it to be redone. Also of signatures that end up tiny on the DNI. And an administrative detail: a padrón certificate more than a month old may be rejected even if it is brought along as a precaution.

---

The exact point where the analysis gets stuck is the usual one: nobody disputes that you have to identify yourself, but nor is it explained why the cost falls entirely on those who comply. With the fee at 12 euros, the photo at 6 and the passport at 30, the question left without an official answer is how much of that money covers the service and how much is simply revenue.