Every month a French couple writes to us after moving to Spain, convinced their PACS already counts here as a registered partnership. The instinct is reasonable —the two figures look alike— but the administrative reality is different: a French PACS does not automatically become anything Spanish. If you want effects in Spain, you have to register again. Here is what each figure is, which French papers end up on the Spanish registry's desk, and which ones must be translated.
What a PACS is and how it is proven
The pacte civil de solidarité (PACS) is a contract between two adults, of the same or different sex, to organise their life together. Since 1 November 2017 it is registered before the officier d'état civil at the town hall (mairie) —previously it fell to the greffe du tribunal d'instance— and the convention can also be drawn up before a French notary.
How do you prove it exists? In one of two ways, depending on where you were born:
- If you hold a French birth certificate, the PACS appears as a mention marginale on your acte de naissance. That certificate, with the mention, is your proof.
- If you are a foreigner born abroad —or a French national born abroad— there is no French certificate to annotate, so you request an attestation de PACS from the Service central d'état civil in Nantes.
There is also a certificat de non-PACS, which proves the opposite: that you are not bound by a PACS. As we will see, it is useful for showing you are free to register in Spain.
Why a PACS is not a Spanish registered partnership
The Spanish Civil Code does not contemplate the PACS. A pareja de hecho in Spain is registered in regional registries, run by each autonomous community under its own rules. There is no single national registry, and that is the awkward part: requirements vary from one region to another.
Even so, there is a reasonably stable common core: being of legal age (or emancipated minors), not being bound by marriage or another incompatible registered union, having no close family relationship, and proving residence in the region or municipality. Many communities also require a minimum prior period of cohabitation —as set by regional rules— plus supporting documents. So check the specific registry of your region before gathering papers. Our pareja de hecho guide is a starting map.
In practice: a valid French PACS does not spare you the Spanish registration. It can, however, help you evidence your situation and, above all, your free civil status.
Which French documents get translated (FR→ES)
To register as a pareja de hecho in Spain starting from a French file, the following are typically translated by a sworn translator:
- Acte de naissance with marginal mentions, recently issued.
- Certificat de non-mariage or a civil-status certificate, to prove that neither partner is married.
- Certificat de non-PACS when the registry asks you to show no earlier union exists, or the attestation de PACS if the procedure needs the prior PACS reflected.
The sworn translation into Spanish must be produced by a translator authorised by the MAEC; a translation signed only by a traducteur assermenté listed with a French court is not, before the Spanish administration, the equivalent of a Spanish sworn translation.
The nuance of EU Regulation 2016/1191
Here is a piece of good news. Since 16 February 2019, Regulation (EU) 2016/1191 exempts certain public civil-status documents —birth, marriage, registered partnership, absence of criminal record— from apostille and legalisation when they circulate between EU countries. It also creates multilingual standard forms attached to the document to ease its translation.
Two honest caveats: that form has no autonomous legal value (it never travels alone, only alongside the original), and the receiving country may still require a translation in exceptional cases. In practice, when the French certificate arrives without a multilingual form, or when the regional registry asks for a translation, the sworn translation remains the safe route.
You are EU citizens: don't confuse it with the registration certificate
As French nationals you are EU citizens. If you plan to reside in Spain for more than three months, there is a separate, prior step: registering with the Central Register of Foreign Nationals and obtaining the EU citizen registration certificate. That certificate evidences your legal residence; the pareja de hecho evidences your relationship. They are two different things, often processed in parallel.
And if at some point the couple prefers to marry rather than register, the circuit changes: we cover it in getting married in Spain as a French citizen.
In short
The French PACS and the Spanish pareja de hecho are cousins, not twins. The PACS is not carried over: you must register with your autonomous community's registry, under its own rules, and present your French certificates duly translated. At Textualia we translate the full file from French into Spanish —acte de naissance, certificat de non-mariage, attestation and certificat de non-PACS— with a translator authorised by the MAEC and delivery as an electronically signed PDF.