NIE / TIE
Foreigner ID number / residence card
A number and a card. Conflating them costs you the appointment you waited weeks for.
The NIE is your foreigner identification number, used on essentially every official transaction in Spain. The TIE is a physical card evidencing a right to reside, and it carries a NIE on it.
They are obtained through different procedures, potentially at different offices, and booking the wrong appointment means starting the queue again — which in the busiest provinces is measured in weeks.
Neither is needed to start looking for somewhere to live, which is the sequencing point most worth knowing: people routinely pause a flat hunt for paperwork the flat hunt does not require.
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