✅ Your first week in Madrid: a checklist

Day one or two

1. Get a SIM. Prepaid from Vodafone, Orange, Movistar, Yoigo, Digi or Simyo. €10–20 gets you 20–50 GB. You need your passport. Digi and Simyo are the cheap ones; the big three have better rural coverage.

2. Get a transport card. See the transport guide.

3. Download: Metro de Madrid or Citymapper, and whatever food app you tolerate.

Week one

4. Empadronamiento — registering your address at the local junta municipal. Free, needs an appointment (cita previa), and you need it for almost everything official afterwards: health card, NIE process, resident discounts. Book the appointment the day you arrive; they run out.

5. Bank account. N26, Revolut and Wise work fine day to day and are instant. A Spanish IBAN (BBVA, Santander, Sabadell, ING, or the free-ish digital banks) becomes necessary for rent, utilities and some official forms.

6. NIE / TIE if you are staying — the process depends entirely on your nationality and reason for being here. EU citizens have it easy. Everyone else: start early, book the cita previa the moment you can, and expect it to take longer than anyone says.

Things that will surprise you

• The day is shifted. Lunch 14:00–16:00, dinner from 21:00. Restaurant kitchens genuinely close between.
• August. A large part of the city closes. Your local bar will have a handwritten sign on it for three weeks.
• Sunday. Most shops shut. Supermarkets in the centre often open; your neighbourhood one may not.
• Heat. July and August routinely hit 38–40°C. Life moves to the evening. Adjust rather than fight it.
• Noise. Flats are loud, streets are loud until 03:00 at weekends. Ask about noise before signing anything in Malasaña, Chueca, La Latina or Huertas.
• *Bureaucracy runs on the cita previa*.** Nothing happens without an appointment. Book everything early.

Rules and procedures change. This is a community checklist, not legal advice — confirm anything official with the relevant administration.