Moving to Spain from outside the EU: the pre-departure checklist
Plain Spain editorial team · Last reviewed · 11 min read
The order matters more than the list. Most moves to Spain that go badly go badly because someone did step four before step two: signed a lease before the authorization came back, or pulled a police certificate so early that it went stale while the apostille was in the post.
What follows is the sequence, with the parts that are fixed in law kept apart from the parts that are only ever an estimate.
Key takeaways
- Nothing else here is safe to start until you know which visa you are applying for and that you clear its income floor.
- Your criminal-record certificate and your medical certificate both go stale. They are the last documents you collect, not the first.
- Authenticating a document and translating it are two separate jobs, done in that order, and both happen after the certificate is issued.
- On the Non-Lucrative route you have one month from the day you enter Spain to apply for your foreigner's card in person.
- Registering on your town hall's padrón is a legal duty, and the register is what proves where you live.
- Two different 183-day counts start when you arrive. They come from different laws and one can be met while the other is missed.
What has to happen before you book a flight?Link to this section
The visa or the residence authorization has to be granted. Not filed, not "in process": granted, with the decision in your hand.
Which one you are chasing decides everything downstream, so settle that first. The Non-Lucrative Visa is for people who will live in Spain on money they already have and will not work, and its income floor is set as a multiple of Spain's IPREM index. The Digital Nomad Visa is for people who keep working remotely for companies outside Spain, and its floor is a multiple of the Spanish minimum wage. Both pillar pages carry the current figure by household size. Read them before you spend a euro on paperwork.
Where you file is not a preference either. The Non-Lucrative application goes in person to the Spanish consulate in whose district you legally reside, per the Ministry's own information sheet Hoja 6, and being in Spain irregularly when you apply is itself grounds for refusal. The Digital Nomad route has two doors: anyone legally present in Spain, including on an ordinary tourist stay, can apply electronically to the Large Companies Unit under Ley 14/2013, while people applying from abroad go to their consulate for the visa instead.
One more thing belongs in this first block, because it changes the size of the number you need. Where you are showing savings rather than recurring income, the total has to cover the monthly amount for the whole length of the authorization you are asking for, not for a single month. Hoja 6 accepts a wide range of evidence for it, from bank certificates to property titles, but the arithmetic is unforgiving.
What should you be doing three months before you file?Link to this section
Start the documents whose timing you do not control, and start them in the order they depend on each other: issued, then authenticated, then translated.
Two different clocks run on the same certificate, and confusing them is a common reason a file has to be rebuilt. The first is coverage: how far back the certificate has to reach. The second is freshness: how old the certificate is allowed to be on the day you file.
| Document | How far back it must reach | How fresh it must be when you file |
|---|---|---|
| Criminal-record certificate, Non-Lucrative | Every country you legally resided in during the previous five years | Set by the consulate. Casablanca says three months; New York accepts an FBI Identity History Summary up to six months old |
| Criminal-record certificate, Digital Nomad | Countries of residence over the last two years, plus a signed declaration covering five | Neither the joint instruction nor the Large Companies Unit checklist sets a window |
| Medical certificate, Non-Lucrative | Not applicable | Three months, per the Casablanca requirements sheet |
The five-year coverage rule is statutory, not consular preference: RD 1155/2024 art. 38.e requires a clean record in every country of residence over the previous five years for any residence visa. Our working rule for both routes is to obtain certificates inside ninety days of filing, because that satisfies every consulate sheet we have checked and costs nothing extra when it is not required.
The certificate's local name is the part that changes by country, and it changes a lot. In Brazil it is the Certidão de Antecedentes Criminais from the Polícia Federal; in India, the Police Clearance Certificate issued through Passport Seva; in the Philippines, an NBI Clearance; in New Zealand, a criminal record check from the Ministry of Justice; in Türkiye, the Adli Sicil Kaydı through e-Devlet. What almost never changes is what Spain then wants done to it.
Authentication comes next, and there are two paths rather than one. Most countries are party to the Hague Convention, so the certificate gets an apostille from whichever national authority issues them. Some are not, and their documents need consular legalisation instead, which is slower and involves more counters. Nigeria and the United Arab Emirates are two live examples of the second path on Spain's own list. Only after that does the sworn translation happen, by a translator on the Foreign Ministry's register. Our guide to apostilles, legalisation and sworn translations walks the whole chain country by country, including what to do when yours is not on any list.
What should you be doing in the month before you file?Link to this section
Assemble the things that expire slowly and the things that need a decision from someone else.
Health insurance is the item people underestimate. Both routes require cover from an insurer authorised to operate in Spain, matched to what the public system covers, and travel insurance does not qualify no matter how comprehensive the policy document sounds. The Digital Nomad route has one exception: if you will be registering with Spanish Social Security, or you hold a coordination certificate that already covers healthcare, the Large Companies Unit checklist does not ask for a private policy on top.
Accommodation is where the sequencing gets genuinely awkward, and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise. Some consulates ask you to show you have somewhere to live in Spain: the Casablanca requirements sheet lists it outright, others never mention it. Meanwhile no sensible person signs a year's lease on a flat they have not seen, in a country they cannot yet legally reside in, for a visa that has not been granted. There is no clean answer to this. What works in practice is short-term accommodation you can prove and can walk away from, with the real search done once you are on the ground.
The rest of this month is assembly. The step-by-step for each route lives in its own guide: how to apply for the Non-Lucrative Visa and how to apply for the Digital Nomad Visa both take the file form by form.
What can you actually do while you wait for a decision?Link to this section
Very little that costs money. The useful things in this window are all cheap and reversible.
On the Non-Lucrative route the residence authorization itself is decided by the Delegación or Subdelegación del Gobierno within a maximum of one month of receipt, and RD 1155/2024 art. 63.4 is blunt about silence: if the month passes with no answer, the application is taken as refused. The consular decision on the visa carries a legal period of three months from the day after filing, extendable if the consulate asks for an interview or more documents. On the Digital Nomad route filed inside Spain, Ley 14/2013 art. 76.1 gives the Large Companies Unit twenty days from electronic filing, counted as working days, and silence there works the other way round: unresolved means granted.
After a favourable decision there is one more deadline, and it is the one people miss because they have stopped watching. You generally have one month from notification to collect the visa, and RD 1155/2024 art. 28.4 treats a missed collection window as withdrawal of the application. Some consulates are more generous than the regulation's floor. Casablanca allows two months. Do not plan around the generous version.
What has to happen in your first week in Spain?Link to this section
Two things, and one of them has a hard legal deadline.
The first is your foreigner's identity card, the TIE. If you arrived on a Non-Lucrative Visa, RD 1155/2024 art. 63.5 gives you one month from entering Spain to apply for it in person. Read that as a month, not thirty days, because the regulation counts months and a month from 31 January is not thirty days later. The form is the EX-17, and the form itself carries the instruction in capital letters: it can only be submitted in person before the competent National Police unit, and it is not accepted electronically or through general public registries. That means an appointment, and appointments in the busier provinces are the bottleneck. Start looking for one the week you land.
The Digital Nomad route splits here. A teleworker visa issued by a consulate authorises residence without needing a TIE at all, which Ley 14/2013 art. 75.4 says in so many words. An authorization granted by the Large Companies Unit does require one once it runs longer than six months, under art. 76.2 of the same law, and since those are granted for up to three years, that is nearly everyone on the in-Spain route.
The second is the padrón, the register of residents kept by your town hall. Ley 7/1985 art. 15 puts it plainly: "Toda persona que viva en España está obligada a inscribirse en el Padrón del municipio en el que resida habitualmente." Everyone living in Spain must register in the municipality where they habitually live. Article 16.1 then says why it matters to you beyond the obligation, because the padrón data "constituyen prueba de la residencia en el municipio y del domicilio habitual en el mismo". It is the document that proves where you live, and once you start dealing with Spanish administration you will be asked for it repeatedly.
What starts counting the day you land?Link to this section
Three clocks start: two of 183 days, and one of five years. The two 183-day clocks come from different laws and are read by different offices.
The first 183-day count is about keeping your residence. For a Non-Lucrative renewal, RD 1155/2024 art. 64.2.f requires that you have "residido de forma real y efectiva en España durante más de ciento ochenta y tres días durante el año natural": more than 183 days of real, effective residence in the calendar year. The second is about tax. Ley 35/2006 art. 9.1.a makes you a Spanish tax resident if you spend more than 183 days of the calendar year in Spanish territory, and it counts sporadic absences against you unless you can prove tax residence somewhere else. Art. 9.1.b adds a second, independent trigger that has nothing to do with counting days: Spain being the main base of your activities or economic interests. One of these decides whether your card is renewed. The other decides whether Spain taxes your worldwide income. Meeting one is not meeting the other, and a tax adviser in Spain is worth the fee in your first year.
The padrón has its own clock. Under Ley 7/1985 art. 16.1, registration by a non-EU foreigner without long-term residence authorization has to be renewed every two years, and letting it lapse quietly removes the proof of address you built the rest of your life on.
Put the five-year count in a calendar now. Five years of legal continuous residence opens long-term residence under RD 1155/2024 arts. 176.a and 183.1, in either the EU or the national form, with the right to live and work in Spain indefinitely. Continuity survives absences of up to six months at a time so long as they total no more than ten months across the five years, or eighteen where the absences are for work.
One correction, because it catches people in year one: Non-Lucrative residence does not permit work, for you or for your family. RD 1155/2024 art. 61.1 defines the status as residence "sin realizar actividades laborales o profesionales". The sourced way out is art. 191.4, which lets someone who has already resided for at least a year apply to modify the authorization into one that permits work, effective only once they are registered with Social Security. If work in Spain is the plan, plan it as a change of status rather than a surprise.
What do we handle, and what can only you do?Link to this section
We handle the file: which route, which documents, in which order, chased through to a decision. What we cannot do is stand in your place at a counter.
Only you can attend the consulate appointment, give fingerprints for the TIE, and sign what has to be signed by hand. Only you can obtain a criminal-record certificate from a country that will only issue one to the person named on it. Only you can decide where in Spain you want to live, which is the decision that shapes everything else and the one nobody should make for you.
There is a third category, and we deliberately leave it blank. Bank accounts, driving licence exchanges, school enrolment, moving pets, shipping furniture: these vary by bank, by province, by town hall and by your own nationality, and we do not publish a rule for them here because a confidently wrong rule costs you a wasted trip across a city. Ask the specific institution, in writing, before you rely on an answer. A checklist item that is right in Valencia and wrong in Vigo helps nobody.
If you are still deciding between the two routes, or you are not sure your income is counted the way you think it is, start with the eligibility check before you build a document file for the wrong visa.