Spain residence permit for remote employees, freelancers and business owners (Digital Nomad Visa)

They are two routes to the same status. The visa is issued by the consulate for your place of residence and is valid for up to 1 year; 60 days before it expires, you apply for the permit in Spain. The residence permit is issued for 3 years straight away if you are lawfully in Spain, including on a tourist visa or visa-free. Both give the right to live and work remotely, and time on both counts towards residence.

200 % of the Spanish minimum wage. In 2026 the minimum wage is EUR 1,221 a month in 14 payments (EUR 17,094 a year), so the threshold for the applicant is EUR 34,188 a year, or EUR 2,849 a month over 12 months. For the first family member add 75 % of the minimum wage (EUR 12,820.50 a year), for each further one 25 % (EUR 4,273.50). A couple with two children: EUR 55,555.50 a year.

As an employee, no: the employer must be outside Spain. A self-employed person may have Spanish clients, but for no more than 20 % of their total activity. If you plan to be employed by a Spanish company, that is a different type of permit.

If you spend more than 183 days a year in Spain, you become a tax resident and declare worldwide income. Employees have access to a special regime (known as the 'Beckham law'): 24 % on income up to EUR 600,000 a year and 47 % above that, for 6 tax periods. The condition is not having been a Spanish tax resident in the last 5 years. The application (Form 149) is filed within 6 months of starting work. Without the regime, the progressive scale applies. How Spanish residency interacts with your tax position in India or the UAE is something we look at before the move.

The teleworking provision in the law is tied to an employment relationship, so the self-employed generally do not qualify. There are exceptions for certain categories (for example entrepreneurs with an innovative project). We check this before filing so the tax plan does not come as a surprise.

A spouse or de facto partner, minor children, adult children and parents who depend on you. You can apply together or later. We check the family members' right to work separately in each case: practice under this provision is uneven, and we will not promise it in advance.

The permit is renewed for 2 years if the conditions hold: remote work for a foreign company, income not below the threshold on the renewal date, insurance, social security obligations. If income has fallen below the threshold, before applying for renewal you need either to restore it or to switch to another basis. The law sets no strict '183 days a year in Spain' requirement for renewal.

The general term is 10 years of continuous legal residence. Naturalisation requires renouncing your previous citizenship: the exceptions in the Civil Code apply only to Latin American countries, Portugal, Andorra, the Philippines and Equatorial Guinea. For Indian citizens there is a second side to this: India does not permit dual citizenship, so a Spanish passport means giving up the Indian one, with the OCI card as a separate status. We settle this question before the move, not after 10 years.

You file at the consulate for your place of legal residence: for UAE residents, the Embassy of Spain in Abu Dhabi. Police clearance is required from every country where you have lived in the last 2 years. UAE documents are legalised through the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Indian documents are apostilled by the Ministry of External Affairs.

Yes. Applications from India go to the Embassy of Spain in New Delhi or the Consulate General in Mumbai, depending on your state of residence. Indian documents (the Police Clearance Certificate, degree, marriage and birth certificates) are apostilled by the Ministry of External Affairs and translated by a sworn translator. If you are already lawfully in Spain, for example on a Schengen visa, we file for the 3-year permit directly with UGE-CE instead.

For the visa itself a Spanish account is not required: income is proven with statements and contracts. Residents of India remit money abroad under the RBI's Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS), which has a per-person annual cap, so larger transfers for the move are planned across family members in advance. Russian citizens, including UAE residents, should note the EU restriction: banks may accept deposits from Russian nationals only up to EUR 100,000 (Regulation (EU) 833/2014, Article 5b). We plan this ahead.

Employee: the employment contract, an employer's letter stating that the work can be done remotely, salary statements for the last 3 months and proof that the company has genuinely operated for at least a year (an apostilled registry extract). Freelancer: contracts with foreign clients, invoices and bank statements for 3 months, registration as a sole proprietor or self-employed in your home country. Business owner: incorporation documents, proof of your role in the company and of the payments. According to practitioners, since 2025 UGE-CE additionally asks for a 3-month history of inflows and proof of account ownership, and overly generic service contracts lead to refusals.

By law the permit in Spain is decided within 20 working days, and if there is no reply the application is deemed approved. In practice, because of the volume of applications, timelines currently sometimes stretch to 2–3 months: this is not a statutory term but the authority's workload in 2026. If a request for further documents arrives, you must answer within 10 working days or the file is closed, so we prepare answers to typical requests in advance. Consulates decide in 10 days by law, but appointments and seasonal workload stretch the path to 1–3 months.

By law: 10 days at the consulate or 20 working days in Spain. With document preparation, a realistic term from first meeting to visa is 2–3 months, and it depends on the workload of the specific consulate, appointment availability and requests for further documents. We do not promise 'two weeks'.

Yes. Article 62.4 of Law 14/2013 allows the spouse or partner, children and dependent parents. Adult children up to 25, with proven financial dependence and no marriage of their own; over 26, only with incapacity. Parents of the applicant or spouse, with proven dependence, presumed after 80. The family can apply with you or later.

To EUR 2,849 a month add EUR 1,068.38 for the first family member and EUR 356.13 for each further one. A couple: EUR 3,917.38 a month; a couple with two children: EUR 4,629.63. The main applicant proves the income; the official UGE documents do not add the spouse's income to the threshold. A shortfall can be covered with savings for the whole term of the permit.

Yes. If the application is refused through the fault of our team or an error in building the case, we refund the company's service fee less a minimal retention for costs actually incurred. Refund terms, the payment schedule and the rules on retaining service costs are fixed in the contract before work begins. Before we start, we check your documents and risk history free of charge and tell you about any risks in advance.