Index · Preguntas frecuentes
Most questions about Spanish immigration belong to one procedure and are answered on its page. The ones below do not: they only have an answer when you hold two or three procedures side by side, which is why the guides written one procedure at a time tend to get them wrong. Every answer here is drawn from a page on this site, and each one says which.
220 questions across 29 procedures
The NIE is a number. The TIE is a card. The NIE identifies you for tax and administrative purposes and never expires; it says nothing about whether you may live here. The TIE is the physical card that proves the residence status you have already been granted, and it carries your NIE on it. Being refused a TIE does not take your NIE away.
The National Police issue documents: the NIE, the TIE, EU registration certificates, invitation letters, return authorisations. Immigration Offices, under the Government Delegations, decide authorisations: work permits, arraigo, family reunification, long-term residence, student stays. They are separate networks with separate appointment systems, and the padrón is neither — it is your town hall.
It depends on the procedure, and the two defaults are opposite. Silence refuses a first work permit, a self-employed permit, a children's residence permit and a work-permit exemption. Silence grants a renewal of an employed or self-employed permit, long-term residence, the recovery of long-term residence, a seasonal call-back and a change to a permit's occupation or region.
Work permitSelf-employed permitLong-term residenceRecovering residenceChildren's residenceSeasonal work
More than people expect. The work and self-employed permits obviously. But also: student stays in higher education, automatically and with no separate permit; every exceptional-circumstances permit, with no limit of area or occupation; children's residence permits, automatically once the holder reaches working age; and permits for young people leaving care, with no labour-market test.
Work permitSelf-employed permitStudent stayHumanitarian residenceChildren's residenceUnaccompanied minors
Usually yes, and with no visa. A student who has obtained their qualification can move to a work permit without the labour-market test, and may work full time from the moment the application is admitted. A temporary resident can move to residence and work. The exclusions are cross-border worker permits, certain exceptional-circumstances permits, and family reunification.
For long-term residence, twelve consecutive months outside the European Union — measured against the EU, not against Spain — and twenty-four for former EU Blue Card holders. Building up to long-term residence is stricter: absences of up to six months each, totalling ten months across the five years, or eighteen months if they were for work.
Different regimes for different people. Permanent residence belongs to the EU regime: EU citizens and their family members, after five years, issued by the National Police. Long-term residence is the general regime's equivalent for everyone else, decided by Immigration Offices, and it authorises you to live and work in Spain indefinitely on the same terms as a Spaniard.
Apply for a cédula de inscripción at a police station. It is a Spanish identity document for people their own country will not document, and every procedure that asks for a passport accepts it instead. The usual proof is a notarial act, but you are exempt if you cannot safely attend your consulate, or if you were in care as a minor.
Cédula de inscripciónHumanitarian residenceUnaccompanied minors
No. Nationality follows its own rules. What birth in Spain to foreign parents holding residence gives is a residence permit of its own — five years, no visa — provided a parent applies in person within six months of the birth and the child has not left Spain since being born. Missing that window sends you to family reunification instead.
The Regulation is built to make it safe. Reporting gender-based violence suspends any penalty procedure for unlawful presence; reporting sexual violence means none is opened at all, and suspends any expulsion already ordered. Identifying someone as a potential trafficking victim suspends expulsion immediately, and the recovery period that follows lasts at least ninety days.
Arraigo, humanitarian residence for serious illness, labour-authority collaboration, long-term residence and cross-border work, covering the countries you lived in over the last five years. You are exempt after five continuous years in Spain, or if you proved it in an application within those five years without leaving since.
ArraigoHumanitarian residenceLong-term residenceCross-border work
You need it for almost everything else: schools, health centres, and the other two administrations ask for it in turn. It requires no permit and no authorisation. And for non-EU nationals without long-term residence it expires every two years unless renewed — quietly, without anyone telling you.
Your employer, at the Immigration Office of the province where the workplace is. You cannot start it alone from abroad: it needs a signed contract and an employer willing to document its own solvency and tax standing. The self-employed permit is the opposite — there you are the applicant, and you start at a consulate.
It depends which, and for two of the most searched the honest answer is that no figure is fixed in law. The Immigration Regulation sets no investment amount for the self-employed permit, and Ley 14/2013 fixes no income for international teleworking. Figures circulating for both are administrative practice, not the rule.
Self-employed permitDigital nomad visaNon-lucrative residence
It can, on nine grounds including fraud, ceasing to meet the conditions, and public order. But the procedure must be opened while the permit is still valid, you must get a hearing of at least ten days, the decision must respect proportionality — weighing your years here and your ties — and if six months pass with no decision, the procedure expires.
Work and self-employed permits, seasonal work, and residence exempt from a work permit all begin abroad or at a consulate. So does recovering long-term residence, where you enter Spain already holding the status. Arraigo, humanitarian residence, change of status and the victim protections are the opposite: they exist precisely because you are already here.
Work permitSelf-employed permitRecovering residenceArraigoChange of status
Each one links to the page that answers it, where the answer sits alongside the source it came from and the date it was last checked against that source.
This site publishes what the official sources say and nothing else. It does not give legal advice, and it cannot tell you what will happen in your particular case — for that you need a lawyer or the office itself.
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