Lay My Hat

We travel to Spain with our cat a couple of times a year to stay in our house when it's not being rented out. We don't have residencia.

Like many others, we found that the rules re pet travel had changed post-Brexit. A UK vet would need to fill in an umpteen-page document and charge - in our case - around GBP 150. They would need to do this for each and every trip - doh!

It subsequently came to light, however, that you can go to a Spanish vet who can issue you with an EU pet passport for around EUR 60. This would be valid in Spain and in the UK for however long you keep the injections up to date. This is a no-brainer and we thought we'd cracked it - the cat is an EU catizen, even if we can't be

...but maybe not. We now hear that the Spanish pet passports are only valid if you have permanent residence in Spain. The exact details are not very clear to me. If true, it does seem a bit vindictive: the Spanish authorities are essentially saying that their own vets are issuing pet passports which are not good enough to be recognised.

Can anyone shed any light on the issue?
John

NB: glad to see the forum is up and running again; I just had a sinking feeling that it had gone offline. Good effort!

An EU pet passport is for pets of EU citizens. (see the link). The UK has left the EU therefore is not party to this agreement. If an owner of the pet is not living in a EU country the the address in the passport is not valid.
https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/t ... dex_en.htm

This article suggests I's ok for UK pet owners who have holiday homes in France to use an EU pet passport ... can the same process be applied in Spain?

https://www.connexionfrance.com/French- ... home-owner

Ah well, thanks for the replies and it looks like this is yet another Brexit bonus that I could well do without.

I guess the only question is how rigorously the rules will be applied. The prospect of taking a chance on that, however, is not a comfortable one...

Assume the rules will be applied, then you won't get caught in a potential mess.

You're quite right and I guess we're just going to have to bite the bullet and get UK docs every time we travel. It's not even the case that we can blame the Spanish vets who issued the EU pet passport because I don't think they knew about the issue any more than we did.

NB: apologies for the late response but I have yet to discover how to 'subscribe' to a) a forum and b) a topic/thread ...can anyone enlighten me please?

Use the buttons at the bottom of the subject

and click the ones you wish to use within your profile.

Many thanks and I can see now how to subscribe to a specific topic/thread. I had already configured my profile to send notifications by email. I can't, however, find a way to subscribe to, for example, the Spain 'forum' (if that's the correct term) and it seems like the buttons at the bottom of that page simply give options as to how many threads to display and in what order you'd prefer.

Perhaps it's not possible to get notifications of postings to a forum or perhaps I've missed the blindingly obvious?

I do not think you can. However, if you ask on the section linked below, maybe Paolo will pick up on this question and tell you how.
At the moment I just pop in on a regular basis. It is said the more traffic the more it helps with SEO. Which is good for the website.
https://www.laymyhat.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=17

Thanks for that and I'll give it a whirl...