Opening a bank account in Spain: your right to a basic account, and what a bank may refuse

Who has the right

Royal Decree-law 19/2017 brought the EU Payment Accounts Directive into Spanish law. It obliges every credit institution that offers payment accounts to offer a basic payment account, cuenta de pago básica, to three groups of potential customers: people legally resident in the European Union, expressly including those without a fixed address; asylum seekers; and people who have no residence permit but whose expulsion is impossible for legal or practical reasons.

Residence in the EU, not in Spain, is what the law says. A newcomer who has just arrived from another EU country, or who is waiting for a Spanish residence card while legally resident, is inside the first group.

What the account includes

For a single monthly fee of no more than €3, the bank must provide: opening, using and closing the account; cash deposits in euros; cash withdrawals in euros at the bank's own branches and cash machines in Spain and the rest of the EU; payments with a debit or prepaid card, including online payments within the EU; and up to 120 payments a year in euros within the EU by direct debit and transfer, including standing orders, at the branch and through online banking where the bank offers it.

Operations above those 120 can be charged, but in total over the year not more than the bank's average charges for that kind of operation, which the Bank of Spain publishes every quarter. The Bank of Spain may update the €3 cap every two years.

The bank cannot make the account conditional on buying other products — insurance, a card with a fee, shares in the bank — unless the law requires it or it is an unavoidable requirement for every customer of the bank. The account is for personal, consumer use; using it for a business, or for a volume of operations clearly unlike an individual's, falls outside the right.

A separate decree provides a free version for people in a vulnerable situation or at risk of financial exclusion, with its own conditions.

When a bank can say no

Only in three situations. First, if you do not provide the information the bank asks for under anti-money-laundering law, according to the risk it assigns to you. That is where most real refusals come from, and why the documents you bring matter: your passport, your NIE and proof of address are the usual minimum, and a bank may ask where your money comes from. Second, if opening the account is against national security or public order, in cases decided by the Council of Ministers. Third, if you already hold an account in Spain that lets you do everything a basic account does — unless that bank has told you it is closing it. The bank can rely on your signed declaration for this.

A refusal must be in writing, free, give the specific reasons, and reach you without undue delay and at the latest ten working days after your complete application. It must also tell you how to complain, including your right to go to the Bank of Spain's complaints service. The only exception is where saying why would breach anti-money-laundering law or the national-security grounds that motivated the refusal.

When the bank can close it

The bank may terminate a basic account unilaterally if you used it deliberately for illegal purposes; if there has been no operation on it for more than 24 consecutive months; if you gave incorrect information to get it; if you stop being legally resident in the EU, except in the case of people whose expulsion is impossible; if you later open another account in Spain that covers the same services; or if you fail to provide documents the bank needs to carry out its anti-money-laundering checks during the relationship.

In practice

Banks sell several kinds of account, and the basic one is not always the first they show. Ask for it by name: cuenta de pago básica. If you are refused verbally, ask for the refusal in writing with its reasons — the bank is obliged to give it — and keep it. It is the document the complaint needs.

Opening an account is often needed early: rent, utilities and payroll in Spain run by direct debit and transfer. The basic account covers that.