Move to Spain

01Who can move to Spain §

Everything about moving to Spain splits at one question — do you hold an EU, EEA or Swiss passport?

If you do, you have the right to live here provided you meet the conditions for stays over three months. There is no visa to apply for and nobody to persuade. There is registration: a NIE, an EU registration certificate, the padrón at your town hall, and proof that you can support yourself or are covered for healthcare.

If you do not, there is no general “Spanish residency” to apply for. There are specific routes, each with its own conditions, and you have to qualify for one of them before you move. Which one depends almost entirely on where your money comes from.

• Employed by a company outside Spain, working remotely — the digital nomad visa is the route designed for you.
• Living on a pension, savings or investments — the non-lucrative visa, which does not permit work.
• A Spanish employer — a work authorisation, where part of the application belongs to the company.
• A Spanish or EU family member — a family route, often faster and cheaper than people expect.
• Studying — a student route, with limited work rights attached.

A common and expensive mistake is to move first on a tourist stamp and look for a route afterwards. For most non-EU nationals the application starts at the Spanish consulate for your home area, before you leave.

02The order to move to Spain in §

Spanish administration runs on dependencies. Each office wants the document the previous office issued, and several of them want an appointment you cannot get at short notice. Doing things in the wrong order does not just waste a morning — it can add a month.

The dependencies that catch people out

• The padrón needs an address, so it comes after housing — but healthcare and school places need the padrón, so housing sits earlier in the chain than most people plan for.
• The NIE comes before almost everything financial: bank account, property, utilities, car.
• Your criminal record certificate usually has a validity window, so ordering it too early is as bad as too late.
• Apostilles and sworn translations add one to two weeks that nobody plans for.
• The TIE card is fingerprinted in Spain after arrival, on its own appointment.

This is exactly what we mean by coordination rather than paperwork. Anyone can fill in a form. Knowing that the certificate you are about to order will expire before your appointment is the part that saves you money.

03What it costs to move to Spain §

There are three separate cost buckets and they are usually blurred together, which is how people end up surprised.

• Government fees — visa fees, the TIE card fee, the tasa 790. Fixed, published, unavoidable, and small compared with the rest.
• Document costs — apostilles, sworn translations, criminal record certificates, medical certificates. Typically a few hundred euros, more with a family.
• Professional fees — the lawyer, the tax adviser, the relocation coordination. This is where prices vary wildly between providers.

Beyond the paperwork, budget for the things that arrive in the first month: a rental deposit that is often several months up front for foreigners without Spanish payslips, private health insurance if your route requires it, and the gap before your Spanish bank account is fully usable.

04How long it takes to move to Spain §

For EU nationals already in Spain with an address lined up, the core registration can be done in weeks. For a visa route, think in months, and start earlier than feels necessary.

The part that makes timelines unreliable is not processing — it is appointments. Consulates and immigration offices release slots on their own schedule, and demand varies enormously by city and time of year. September, when families move for the school term, is the worst moment to be starting.

Any company that tells you a guaranteed date for a Spanish government appointment is telling you something they cannot know.

What can be controlled is readiness: having a complete, correct file the day a slot opens, so you take the first one rather than the third.

05After you move to Spain §

The visa is a milestone, not the finish line. The month after arrival is where most of the friction actually lives, and it is the part almost nobody prepares for.

• Padrón at your town hall — the key that unlocks healthcare and school places.
• Bank account — straightforward with a NIE and an address, awkward without.
• Healthcare — public system, convenio especial or private, depending on your route and your work status.
• Schools — the enrolment calendar does not move for you, so this is planned backwards from the term.
• Driving licence — exchange rules depend on your country, and there is a deadline after you become resident.
• Tax — pass 183 days in a calendar year and Spain treats you as tax resident on worldwide income. Worth understanding before you arrive, not in your first April here.

06Where to move to in Spain §

The rules are national. Almost nothing else is. Appointment waiting times, town hall procedures, rental supply, the availability of English-speaking services and the size of the existing international community all vary enormously between provinces.

We work on the Costa Blanca — Alicante, Benidorm, Altea, Calpe, Jávea, Dénia — because it combines a large established international population with an administration that is workable and a rental market you can actually enter. That is where we can meet you in person; the paperwork we handle wherever in Spain you are heading.