Blocked bank accounts in Spain are common unfortunately in Spain. We often have clients advise that they can no longer access their online banking or use their card and they do not understand why. Clients often do not realise until they experience a problem becuase of unpaid bills.
Why might a Bank account in Spain be blocked or frozen?
This can happen due to the stricter money laundering requirements nowadays. The bank account may be blocked becuase the Bank needs up to date information from you.Maybe a passport has expired. Maybe they realise they do not have a NIE number for you. They may also require financial information such as tax information for you. Or it could be that you need to prove you are non resident.
What do I need to do?
With a blocked bank account, you need to contact the Bank. If they require documentation from you, sometimes it is possible to send by email to them. Other times you or someone else with power of attorney needs to go to the Bank in person. You may find that they will not tell you anything much by email or telephone becuase of data protection laws. In this case, then someone really needs to go to the Bank. But it can only be the client or often someone with power of attorney on behalf of the client.
Can Spanish Solutions help with a Blocked Bank account in spain?
Perhaps the Bank will not allow you to send the documents by email as they need an original or certified copy. Maybe they need them delivering in person. Sometimes Spanish Solutions can assist with this.
You would need to send us information and funds to prepare a draft power of attorney. We could then email this to you to go to a Notary back home.
The Notary will then need to send this to the Foreign Office for a Hague Apostille. This needs sending back to us in Spain with your instructions and details of the Bank and we can try to assist for you. Occasionally the Bank do demand to see their client in person though. (They have the right, especially due to Money Laundering laws these days). But usually we can
manage to resolve the situation. Please bear in mind the cost of a draft power of attorney, a Notary in UK and apostille is going to cost upwards of 400 pounds. Sometimes it is cheaper and better to fly over. But this is not always possible.
Blocked Bank account affecting Utilities
If your blocked bank account has led to problems with payment of utilities, we can often help. Generally a Bank will only not pay utilities though if there are insufficient funds. If the account is blocked or frozen you need still to send funds to top it up. If we can help you at all please contact us.
83 Comments
Pete Flynn
Hi, I have been unable to access my Santander.es bank account on-line recently as they now appear to have added an extra layer of security. After the usual login details a code is required that has been sent to your mobile phone – I don’t have a Spanish mobile phone and don’t recognize the number that they appear to have listed against my account. How can I sort this out? I live in the UK and don’t regularly visit Spain but I have a property there that I rent out so need to have visibility of my bank account in Spain?