Schmidt & Schmidt offers the legalization of documents from Melilla by apostille.
As a spanish exclave, Melilla acceded to the Hague Convention Abolishing the Requirement of Legalization for Foreign Public Documents in 1978. Therefore no diplomatic authentication or legalization of documents from Melilla is required for the legal communication with another member state of the convention. The documents only need to be stamped with an "apostille" by the issuing state's authorities in order to be valid in the state of destination.
The responsibility for apostilles is regulated in royal decree 1497/2011. Depending on the type of document, different government bodies are responsible.
Responsible for issuing the apostille are the following institutions:
- for judicial documents - Secretarios de Gobierno
- for documents issued by the government - Ministry of Justice
- for all other documents - notaries
Documents issued by official structures of Spain, published in Spanish can be apostilled.
The process of legalization in Melilla includes verification of their authenticity. After passing through this procedure, a special stamp is placed on the document - an apostille. As a rule, the apostille is placed on the back of the document, or on a separate sheet, after which the document is stitched.
An apostille is a stamp of rectangular shape. The heading "Apostille (Convention de La Haye du 5 octobre 1961)" must be in French. The stamp indicates the signature verified by the apostille, the date and the identification number of the apostille itself.
The following documents can be authenticated by apostille:
- Certificates of civil status (certificates of birth, death, marriage and divorce)
- Education documents (school reports, certificates, diplomas)
- Excerpts from the commercial register
- Judicial decisions
- Notarially certified copies of documents
- Notarially certified translations
- Further notarial documents (authorizations, last will, declarations)
- Commercial documents legalized by a state organ of registration (articles of incorporation, registration certificates, tax registrations etc.)
Requirements for the documents:
An apostille can be issued exclusively on an original document. Therefor, the latter must be in an apparent good condition, all stamps and signatures have to be clear and readable. Furthermore, it must not contain alien marking and labels.
Additional services
In addition to the legalization of your documents, we can provide you with high quality translations.
If you want to bring company information before the court, it needs to be legalised as well. We are therefore offering extracts from the commercial register of Melilla including apostille and translation.
Usually, processing the documents takes us 14 days.
