FBI Background Check, Apostille and Translation for Spain
The FBI check, the apostille and the sworn translation form one chain in a fixed order. Get the order wrong and you pay for it twice.
Reviewed August 2026. This is a document chain, not three independent errands. The sequence matters because an apostille authenticates the document that came before it, and the translation must cover both. Do them in the wrong order and you pay for the same document twice.
The single most expensive mistake has a simple cause. An FBI Identity History Summary is a federal document, so its apostille comes from the U.S. Department of State. People send it to their state Secretary of State, because that is where birth and marriage certificates go, and it comes back unapostilled weeks later.
Which authority apostilles which document
| Document | Issued by | Apostilled by |
|---|---|---|
| FBI Identity History Summary | FBI, a federal agency | U.S. Department of State, Office of Authentications |
| Birth certificate | A state or county | That state’s Secretary of State |
| Marriage certificate | A state or county | That state’s Secretary of State |
| University diploma | A private or state institution | Usually the state, after notarisation |
A household preparing a move usually needs both routes at once: the background check going to Washington, the birth and marriage certificates going to one or more state capitals. They move at different speeds and neither waits for the other, so start them in parallel and track them separately.
Getting the FBI summary
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| What it is | Your Identity History Summary, or proof that no record exists |
| Legal basis | U.S. Department of Justice Order 556-73 |
| Fee | $18, the same whether you apply by mail or electronically |
| Fingerprints | Required. They can be submitted electronically at a participating U.S. Post Office |
| Turnaround | Requests are processed in the order received. The FBI does not expedite. |
That last row is the planning constraint. There is no premium queue and no way to buy speed. Everything downstream of this document — the apostille, the translation, the consular appointment — inherits its timing, which is why this is the first thing to start and the thing to start earliest.
The chain, in the only order that works
- Request the FBI Identity History Summary. Submit electronically and get the fingerprints in early. Keep the receipt and the submission date.
- Receive it and check it immediately. Names, dates and the FBI watermark. An error found now costs weeks; found later, it costs the whole chain.
- Apostille it at the Department of State. Federal document, federal authority, form DS-4194. Do not send it to a state office.
- Then translate. The sworn translation must cover the apostille as well as the summary, because a translation of the document alone leaves the authentication unreadable to the office receiving it.
- Assemble and check against the consulate’s live checklist. The office handling your file is the one whose list governs. Do this last, and do it again shortly before the appointment.
Step 4 is where the order becomes non-negotiable. If you translate before the apostille arrives, you will be paying a sworn translator a second time.
The translation has to be a sworn one
Spain does not accept an ordinary translation of a legal document, however good it is. It requires a traductor-intérprete jurado, a translator sworn by the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which publishes the official directory of who holds that appointment. A bilingual friend, a translation agency without a sworn translator, or a machine translation with a stamp on it are all the same thing to the office receiving your file: not a sworn translation.
- Choose the translator from the Ministry’s published directory, not from a search result.
- Send the apostilled document, complete, including the apostille page.
- Ask what the translator needs and how long they take before you commit to an appointment date.
- Keep the sworn translation with the original. They travel together from here on.
Freshness is a real constraint, and it is not standard
Consulates commonly require a background check to be recent, and the permitted age of the document varies between offices and between procedures. We are not going to publish a number here, because the only one that matters is on the live checklist of the consulate responsible for your address.
The practical consequence is a squeeze. Start the chain too late and the documents are not ready. Start it far too early and the FBI summary may be considered stale by the time the appointment arrives. Read the requirement first, then work backwards from your target appointment date, and keep the slowest link — the FBI summary — as the thing everything else is scheduled around.
If your move slips by several months, re-read that requirement before assuming the pack is still good.
Where this goes wrong
- Sending the FBI check to a state Secretary of State. The most common failure, and it costs weeks.
- Translating before apostilling. The translation must include the apostille. Doing it early means doing it twice.
- Using a translator who is not on the Ministry’s list. The file is rejected on a formality that had nothing to do with the translation’s quality.
- Assuming the FBI can be hurried. It cannot. Plan around it instead.
- Not checking the summary on arrival. A misspelled name found at the consulate restarts everything.
- Treating one consulate’s checklist as universal. Requirements differ by office. Use yours.
Run the whole household as one register
A single applicant has one chain. A couple with children has several, running at different speeds through different offices, and the file is only as ready as its slowest document. Track them in one place with the same columns for each:
| Column | Why it earns its place |
|---|---|
| Document and person | Two adults means two FBI summaries, not one family one |
| Issuing authority | Determines which apostille route it takes |
| Date requested | The only way to know whether a delay is normal |
| Date received | Starts any freshness window |
| Apostille status | Requested, in transit, received |
| Translation status | Cannot start until the apostille is back |
Order the slow, non-expeditable items first and the short-validity items last. The FBI summary is slow and cannot be hurried, so it leads. Anything with a short freshness window should be started only once you can see the appointment date.
Keep the originals, and keep them intact
Do not remove staples, separate an apostille from the document it authenticates, or laminate anything. An apostille is attached to a specific document and the pair is what has legal effect; separating them destroys that. Scan everything on arrival for your own records, but submit what you were given, in the state you were given it.
Keep the scans somewhere you can reach from another country on a borrowed device, because at some point you will need to read a date off a document that is in a folder on another continent.
Sources for the facts on this page
Consulted 7 August 2026. Fees and procedures change; open the live pages before acting.
- FBI — Identity History Summary Checks: the $18 fee, the fingerprint requirement, DOJ Order 556-73, and that requests are processed in the order received without expediting.
- U.S. Department of State — Office of Authentications: that federal documents including FBI records are apostilled by the Department of State, while state-issued documents go to the state Secretary of State.
- Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores — sworn translator and interpreter directory: the official list of translators whose translations Spain accepts.
This page sets out the chain and the published rules. It does not tell you which documents your specific procedure requires, and no page can. That is what the responsible consulate’s checklist is for.
Find the office that governs your file in the guide to the consulate responsible for your state, slot the chain into the move timeline alongside your other time-limited documents, and store the finished pack in your document vault.