Send a letter to Spain from Sweden

The house number comes after the street name, followed by floor and door position: Calle Mayor 25, 3º izq. Izq (izquierda) means left, dcha (derecha) right, ctro (centro) centre.

The postcode has five digits and comes before the town name. The first two digits indicate the province — 28 for Madrid, 08 for Barcelona. Never drop a leading zero.

Spanish names often include two surnames: the father's first, then the mother's. Write both if the recipient does.

The last address line must be SPANIEN in uppercase — the Swedish name for Spain — because your letter is sorted in Sweden before it leaves the country. This feels odd when writing in English, but Swedish postal workers need to recognise where it's going.

The last line is always the country name in Swedish: SPANIEN. This surprises people who write the rest of the address in English, but the letter is sorted in Sweden before it leaves the country, and Swedish sorting reads Swedish. Everything above that line should look exactly as it would if the letter had been posted inside Spain, because a postal worker there is the one who has to read it.

Almost every letter that fails to arrive has an address problem, not a transport problem. These are the mistakes that keep coming back on mail posted from Sweden to Spain:

Always add a sender address. A letter with a correct sender comes back to you if the address is wrong, and you can then send it again. Without one, the letter is simply gone.

Normal delivery is 4–7 vardagar, counted from the moment we hand the letter to PostNord — not from the moment you order. Order before 11:45 on a weekday and the letter is handed in the same day.

Most of the variation comes from distribution inside Spain rather than from the flight. A letter to a major city arrives faster than one to a rural address in the same country.

A standard letter to Spain costs 88 SEK and an express letter 128 SEK. Printing, paper, envelope, postage and hand-in to PostNord are all included. The price is the same to every country, so you never need to know which postal zone Spain belongs to.

PostNord divides the world into seven zones if you buy stamps and post the letter yourself, which is why other services charge different amounts for different countries. The table below shows both options.

Correos delivers mail five days a week throughout Spain and handles a high volume of incoming European post. The system is well established, though summer months in tourist areas bring significantly higher volumes and slower processing times.

Letters to the Canary Islands and Balearic Islands require air transport and typically take a few extra days compared to the mainland. Ceuta and Melilla lie outside the EU customs and VAT area, though this does not affect ordinary letters containing documents.

Registered international mail (Rek utrikes) may contain documents only, weighs no more than 2 kg and carries liability up to 2,000 SEK. It can be tracked to most countries, and only one recipient may be named.

It is the right service for notices of termination, powers of attorney and legal documents where you need proof that the letter was sent. The country name still has to be written in Swedish on a registered letter — SPANIEN on the last line.

Banknotes and coins may not be sent in an international letter, in any currency and for any amount. Dangerous goods are prohibited. Goods sent in a letter to a country outside the EU require a customs declaration and a barcode that an ordinary letter does not carry.

We therefore send documents and personal letters only. That is also what keeps the service simple: no customs forms, no weighing and no questions about the contents.

You need no printer, no envelope and no international stamps. Everything happens in your browser, and the letter is handed to PostNord in Sweden by us.