The young Spanish woman who is living a nightmare after discovering she became married to a stranger when her ID card was stolen

The night Mar's purse was stolen, she thought the offender would take the money and throw the purse in any rubbish bin. What she could not imagine, not even in her worst nightmares, was that she would end up registered at an address that was not hers, married to a man she did not know at all and with a debt of 7,200 euros that the tax authorities are claiming from her, believing that it was a marriage of convenience.

Mar Barrera is a 21-year-old girl. Her father is from Malaga, but she lives with her mother in Castelldefels (Barcelona). She spent her first few years in Fuengirola, where she returns every summer to see her "little sisters", as her paternal family lives on the Costa del Sol. She works as a receptionist to pay for her studies in interior design.

Her nightmare began on the evening of 1 April 2023, when she was celebrating a friend's birthday in Barcelona. "We decided to go to a bar precisely because there were a lot of thefts," says Mar. "I was carrying a big bag with books and my wallet with my documents. I left it for a second to take something from the table and it disappeared."

Mar, who was about to turn 19 at the time, did not think that the theft could have any significance, but even so she decided to go to a Mossos d'Esquadra regional police station to report the incident, despite the low value of the stolen goods (some 156 euros). "I got a new ID card and forgot about it," she says.

In October of the same year, she went to the town hall in her village to make some arrangements for her grandmother. That's when Mar discovered that someone had changed her address registration. "They had changed it a few days after the bag was stolen." Her address was changed to that of a flat shared with three or four other people in the centre of Barcelona.

That day, the young woman filed her second complaint - or rather an extension of the first - to state that she had not changed her address and to ask for her seniority to be respected (she had been living in Castelldefels for 10 years). Through this, she also reported that someone had stolen her identity, probably using the DNI that was in her wallet in April 2023.

Once again, Mar turned her back on the subject, hoping that the authorities would perform the necessary procedures. She thought that things could not get worse, but, on 12 May 2025, she received a notification from the tax authorities for an administrative offence: a fine of 7,200 euros. That was on her birthday. "What a gift..." Mar says.

It was actually her mother who received the notification, but she decided to wait until the next day to tell her daughter, knowing how important the girl's birthday is to her. However, while Mar was in class and at work, her mother spent the day "calling everywhere, consulting with lawyers and taking all the steps she could".

According to the letter, Mar owed the state 7,200 euros for fraud. The original fine was 6,000 euros. The rest were surcharges, because Mar had not responded to the administration's alleged requests. "The first letter was sent to the flat where I had been registered without my consent; the second, to an address in Mijas where I lived as a child with my mother; and the third, when I could already not appeal or defend myself, was sent to my home."

The surprise came when Mar found out the reason for the offence: she had unknowingly married a man of Arab origin. "The original offence (6,000 euros) is for becoming the common-law partner of a man without papers. They investigate you to check if it is real or if it is out of interest. They saw that it was a fraudulent marriage. I was fined and he must have been expelled."

When she received the infraction, Mar Barrera ran to file a new complaint to report that, once again, her ID card had been used for a fraudulent marriage. "They had to take it to a notary (or the civil registry), they had to ask for my birth certificate and go through many places. There are too many mistakes. The accumulation of errors is unheard of," she says.

The young woman contacted the tax office to clarify what had happened and to provide the complaints she had filed, but was told that the administrative procedure could not be stopped. She was advised to pay and then complain. "I'm not going to pay any fine," she says.

This week she has an appointment at the government delegation to try to unravel the bureaucratic labyrinth. "The first thing they have to clarify is whether I am married to this man. They assure me that, in the next few days, I should receive a new resolution rectifying everything."

Mar takes it philosophically and says that it can happen to anybody. At the same time, she is happy to have reported it and advises everybody to do so as well if something threatens their rights and well-being. In the meantime, she can only take it with humour. "My boyfriend says this counts as cheating," she jokes.