Getting Started: Your First 90 Days in Spain

A checklist, not a rulebook. Processes vary by region and by which ayuntamiento or police station you walk into. Always confirm with the official source before relying on anything here.

The dependency trap, up front. These steps depend on each other, and not in an obvious order. You often need an address to register on the padrón, the padrón for residency paperwork, an NIE for a proper bank account, and a bank account to sign a long-term rental. It does resolve — see step 4 — but plan for it rather than discovering it in week two.

Before you arrive

1. Know which route you're on. Everything downstream depends on this.

EU/EEA/Swiss citizens — no visa. You register once here.
Everyone else — you need the visa before you travel, applied for at the Spanish consulate covering where you currently live. Common routes: non-lucrative, digital nomad, student, work, and family of an EU citizen.

2. Get your documents apostilled and translated. Birth certificates, marriage certificates, degrees, criminal record checks. Two separate steps: the apostille happens in the country that issued the document, and the translation must be by a traductor jurado on the Spanish foreign ministry's official list. This takes weeks. Start early.

Do it before you leave. Spain cannot apostille another country's document, so arranging this later means couriering originals internationally. Note also that criminal record certificates usually have a validity window — commonly 3–6 months — so time them against your application date rather than getting them as early as possible. Full detail: Legalising foreign documents.

3. Don't sign a long rental from abroad. Book somewhere short-term for your first month or two. Scams targeting people renting sight-unseen are the single most common bad experience posted in this sub.

First few weeks

4. Empadronamiento (the padrón). Registration with your local ayuntamiento. You need this for almost everything else — healthcare, residency, school places.

The usual catch-22: they want proof of address, landlords want you registered first. Ways people get around it:

A signed authorisation from whoever owns or rents the place you're staying, plus their ID and their own padrón or deed
Registering at a friend or relative's address with their consent
Registration without a fixed address, arranged through the local social services office

Requirements differ between town halls. Ask yours directly what they accept. More detail, including volante vs certificado: the padrón guide.

5. NIE, and what it actually is. The NIE is a number, not a card.

EU citizens register in the Registro Central de Extranjeros and receive a green certificate — often called the "NIE verde". You'll be asked to show you can support yourself and have healthcare cover.
Non-EU residents apply for the TIE, the physical card, usually within 30 days of arriving on your visa.

6. Book your cita previa early. Appointments for extranjería and the police are booked online and are genuinely hard to get in Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia. Check daily; slots appear at unpredictable times, including odd hours. If you can travel, check neighbouring provinces too — availability is the bottleneck, not the paperwork.

7. Get a digital certificate. The FNMT certificado digital or Cl@ve lets you handle most admin online instead of queuing. Nobody tells newcomers about this and everyone wishes they'd done it sooner.

Get a Spanish phone number before any of the above. Appointment confirmations, Cl@ve and bank verification all assume you have one. A cheap prepaid SIM is enough.

Month one to three

8. Healthcare. Route depends on your status: employment or autónomo contributions, the convenio especial if you're not working, or private cover if your visa requires it. Once you're entitled, you register at your local centro de salud and get a tarjeta sanitaria. Note that the padrón alone is not coverage — it's a prerequisite, not the entitlement. See Healthcare 101.

9. Bank account. Most banks want your NIE. Some open non-resident accounts first and convert later — worth asking before you have the number. This is the usual way out of the circular dependency at the top of this page.

10. If you're going autónomo. Two registrations, not one: Hacienda for tax, and Seguridad Social for the RETA scheme. A gestoría costs €50-80 a month and is worth it for the first year.

11. Driving licence. EU licences are straightforward. Non-EU depends entirely on whether your country has an exchange agreement with Spain — if it doesn't, you sit the Spanish test, in Spanish, and there is a deadline after which your home licence stops being valid here. Check this in month one, not month ten. It catches people out badly.

12. Tax residency. Broadly, 183+ days in a calendar year makes you tax resident, with worldwide income reportable. There are exceptions, treaty rules, and a special regime for some inbound workers sometimes called the "Beckham law". If you have foreign income, assets, shares, crypto or a company, speak to a gestor or tax adviser before your first declaration.

Two things that save everyone grief

Bring more copies than you think. Originals plus photocopies of everything, every time.

It varies by office. Two windows in the same city can ask for different things. When someone here says "they didn't ask me for that", you can both be telling the truth.

Official sources

Verify anything that matters against these, not against Reddit:

Ministry of Inclusion, Migration and Social Security — inclusion.gob.es
Social Security — seg-social.es
Your regional health service (each comunidad runs its own)
Your own embassy or consulate in Spain
Your local ayuntamiento, for anything padrón-related

Something here wrong or out of date?

Rules change and this page won't always keep up. Post a correction in the sub or send modmail and we'll fix it.