If a Dutch company wants to do anything formal in Spain — open a branch, sign a contract, bid for a public tender, buy a property through the company — sooner or later someone will ask for one document: the KvK extract. It is the single sheet that proves the company exists and shows who runs it. And it comes with a piece of good news that we will get to quickly, because it changes the whole paperwork route.
What the KvK extract actually is
The Business Register extract (uittreksel Handelsregister) is the official document issued by the Kamer van Koophandel (KvK), the Dutch Chamber of Commerce, proving that a company is registered in the Business Register (Handelsregister). It is, quite literally, the company's identity card: an up-to-date registry extract gathering everything a third party needs to know before signing with it.
On the extract you will find:
- The KvK number (KvK-nummer), the company's registration number.
- The legal form (BV, NV, eenmanszaak, VOF…) and, where relevant, the trade names.
- The registered office and any branch addresses.
- The date of incorporation and the business activities.
- The directors and board members, and who is authorised to sign on behalf of the company.
- Whether the company is bankrupt or under insolvency proceedings.
That last point is exactly why the extract carries so much weight: it does not only say the company exists, it also flags whether it is in trouble. A bank or a notary wants to read it before taking any step. It is the Dutch counterpart of the French Kbis extract or an English certificate of good standing — same job, different registry.
The good news: order it in English
Here is the part that saves you a translator you thought you needed. At Textualia we translate from English, French and German into Spanish — not from Dutch. If your company documents were only ever available in Dutch, you would have to look elsewhere. But the KvK extract is different: you choose the language when you order it, and English is one of the options, at the same price as the Dutch version. The certified electronic version is likewise available in Dutch and English with no price difference.
So the Dutch document we could not touch directly arrives on our desk already in English, and from there it is a standard English into Spanish job: a sworn translation by a translator accredited by the MAEC. You never need a Dutch-into-Spanish translation, which is just as well, because that is the one pair we do not offer.
A caveat the KvK itself makes
The English extract is not a magic key. The KvK warns that not every organisation accepts the English-language version, partly because some fields and legal terms are not fully translated on the document. So before you order, the sensible move is to ask the Spanish counterpart — the notary, the bank, the tax office, the contracting authority — which version they want to see: the English extract as-is, or an English extract turned into a Spanish sworn translation. When they ask for the latter, that is squarely our lane.
One more technical note if you go for the digitally certified extract: it carries a certified electronic seal that stays valid indefinitely while the file remains digital. If you print it, the signature can no longer be verified and the document loses its certified status. Keep it as a PDF and forward it as a PDF.
Apostille: ask before you assume
This is where Dutch company matters part ways with civil-status paperwork. A Dutch birth or marriage certificate presented in Spain is usually covered by Regulation (EU) 2016/1191, which lets you skip both apostille and translation with a multilingual form. A commercial register extract is not a civil-status document, so that Regulation does not cover it as a matter of course.
Whether the KvK extract needs a Hague apostille to take effect in Spain depends on the receiving body, and the EU exemptions do not blanket-cover commercial register extracts. Do not take it for granted: confirm with the administration, notary or bank whether they require the apostille. And remember the golden rule — if the document is apostilled, the apostille gets translated too, inside the same sworn translation.
When you need the extract translated
Whenever a Dutch company acts before a Spanish administration, a notary or a bank, the other side will want to read its extract in Spanish and with guarantees — that is, as a sworn translation. The most common cases:
- Opening a branch or incorporating a subsidiary in Spain.
- Opening a corporate bank account or contracting services.
- Taking part in a public tender or procurement process.
- A property purchase where the buyer is a Dutch company.
- Any operation where you must prove who can sign on the company's behalf.
How Textualia fits in
Everything online, no travel. You order the KvK extract from the Chamber of Commerce in English, upload it, see the price up front, and receive the sworn translation from English into Spanish as an electronically signed PDF, valid before notaries, banks and the Commercial Register. If you need a paper original, we issue it on official Spanish stamped paper.
We know this document from the inside — what a Spanish notary expects to read in a company extract, and how terms like bestuurder, gevolmachtigde or statutaire zetel map onto their correct Spanish legal equivalents. The Dutch original we could not translate reaches us in English, and from there it is a clean, standard job. Ask first: if what you truly need is Dutch direct, we will tell you as plainly as we opened this piece.