Local entities are not obliged directly by law to receive, register and process applications, documents or communications addressed to the Administración General del Estado (General State Administration) or to(either local or regional) Administraciones Públicas (Public Administrations); but they may assume one or more of those obligations voluntarily provided that the corresponding conventions are signed.
These conventions are the so-called "ventanilla única" (one stop counter); and up to date, they have been undertaken by two different ways: either by signing a bilateral instrument between the Administración General del Estado and the due local entity, or by the accession of the local entity to the Framework-Convention previously signed by the Administración General del Estado and the Autonomous Community which it belongs to.
In both cases, if a convention exists in the local entity, this implies that this entity has the obligation to refer to the Administración General del Estado the applications, documents and communications (and the documents endorsed to these) they may receive, as well as to issue the required certified copies.
Consecutively, the registries of the recipient bodies must accept the applications, documents and communications and, in the case they exist, the documents endorsed, or their copies certified beforehand by the registry of origin to replace the original ones.
Furthermore, the applications, documents and communications should be registered in the "in"registers of both the registry/office/administration they are presented at and the one they are addressed to.
That is due to the Article 38.1 of the Legal Code for Public Administrations and Common Administrative Procedures (LRJ-PAC hereinafter) that provides that any document or communication received or presented at the counter must be registered; and also because both the date of the submission at the office of origin, and the one of the reception at a competent Administración General del Estado body to handle a procedure are relevant from different points of view: the first one for the purpose of meeting the deadline affecting citizens, and the second one as the starting point of the counting the maximum period for notifying its corresponding resolution as stated by the Article 42.3 b) of the LRJ-PAC and in the Article 4 from the Real Decreto (Spanish Royal Decree) 772/1999.
La Palma del Condado Council signed and accession convention of "ventanilla única" (one-stop counter) with the Administración General del Estado in 7 July, 2004 (published at the BOE, the Spanish Official Gazette, no. 179 of 26/07/04 and at the BOP, the Provincial Official Gazette, no. 156 of 10/08/04). Moreover, the Act 6/83 of Andalusia Autonomous Community Govern (BOJA, the Autonomous Govern of Andalusia Official Gazette, no. 60 of 29/07/83 and the BOE no. 214 of 07/09/83) that provides the obligation of the Local entities (council) to admit in their entry registers the document addressed to them.
Therefore, any citizen can submit any document addressed both at the Administración General del Estado and at the Comunidad Autónoma de Andalucía (Autonomous Government of Andalusia) in the office of the SAC (Citizen Advice Service) at the Council of La Palma del Cdo.
You can download a template of "ventanilla única" application in Spanish here
