Refused entry at a Spanish border (denegación de entrada)

Official fee

Legal assistance and an interpreter are free where you lack sufficient means. The carrier bears the cost of your maintenance and return

Official name

Denegación de entrada en frontera

Forms

—

Steps

12

Documents required

4

Source: Boletín Oficial del Estado — Real Decreto 1155/2024, por el que se aprueba el Reglamento de la Ley Orgánica 4/2000 (texto consolidado). Checked 14 September 2026.

Every immigration fee, with the official Spanish wording

Step by step

1. 1

   You are entitled to a lawyer and an interpreter from that moment

   Not once a file is opened somewhere, not on arrival at a detention centre: the right to legal assistance, and to an interpreter if you do not understand or speak the official languages being used, begins at the moment the check is carried out at the border post. Both are free where you lack sufficient economic means, under the rules on free legal aid. Ask for them by name.

2. 2

   The refusal has to be in writing, and it has to say why

   Officials refuse entry by a reasoned decision, notified directly to the person appearing at the border post. It must contain the express determination of the ground on which entry is refused — not a general reference to not meeting the requirements. It must also inform you that the effect of the refusal is return to your point of origin, and of your right to legal assistance and an interpreter.

3. 3

   It must tell you how to appeal

   The decision has to state the appeals that can be brought against it, the period for doing so, and the body they must be filed with. It also has to mention expressly that, to challenge it in the administrative courts, you need to apply for free legal aid under the rules that govern it.

4. 4

   What appealing does — and does not do

   The refusal does not exhaust the administrative route and can be appealed. But lodging an appeal does not, by itself, suspend it. That is the hard truth of this procedure and the reason the practical answer usually runs alongside the legal one: the appeal continues after the flight, not instead of it.

5. 5

   You can appeal from outside Spain

   If you are no longer in Spain, you can still bring both administrative and judicial appeals through the Spanish diplomatic or consular representations, which must forward them to the competent body. Being returned does not end the matter.

6. 6

   And you can start it while detained

   Someone deprived of liberty may state their wish to lodge a contentious-administrative appeal, or to bring the corresponding action, before the Government Delegate or Sub-delegate, the director of the immigration detention centre, or the person in charge of the border post they are under. That statement must be recorded in an official act and added to the file. It still does not suspend the refusal, but it starts the case.

7. 7

   Seventy-two hours, and then a judge

   The return is carried out immediately and, in any event, within seventy-two hours of being ordered. If it cannot be executed within that period, the authority — or the head of the border post acting for it — must go to the investigating judge to determine the facilities where the person is to remain until the return can happen. The seventy-two hours are not an administrative target; they are the point at which a court has to be involved.

8. 8

   What happens to your passport

   Where entry is refused under the international agreements Spain has signed, an entry stamp is placed in the passport crossed out with an indelible black ink cross. It is worth knowing in advance what that mark is, because you will be travelling on that document afterwards.

9. 9

   Where you have to wait, and what must be there

   You remain in the facilities set aside at the border post until you return to your point of origin or continue to another country that will admit you — for a maximum of seventy-two hours. Those facilities must have adequate services and, expressly, social, legal and health services proportionate to their average occupancy. The restriction on your freedom of movement has one permitted purpose only: securing that return, and its duration and scope must answer to that and nothing else.

10. 10

    The airline pays, not you

    While you remain at the border post or in the facilities where your stay was ordered, all maintenance costs incurred fall on the company or carrier that brought you — without prejudice to any fine imposed on them. The carrier must also take charge of you immediately and bear all the costs of transporting you back to the state you were carried from, to the state that issued your travel document, or to any other where your admission is guaranteed.

11. 11

    Your consulate must be told

    A restriction of freedom of movement for the purpose of return following a refusal of entry must be communicated to your country's embassy or consulate. Where that cannot be done, or your country has no embassy or consulate in Spain, it is communicated to the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs instead.

12. 12

    On 'sufficient means': there is no figure in the Regulation

    You must show at entry that you have resources for your stay and for those travelling in your care, or can lawfully obtain them, and enough to cover onward travel or return. The amount and how it is evidenced are set by ministerial order, not by the Regulation. It expressly takes into account that a hotel booking or an invitation letter may already cover all or part of your board — so the figure is not a flat sum regardless of circumstances. Where you are in transit to, or will spend part of the stay in, other EU states, the reference amounts those states have notified under the Schengen Borders Code apply.

Common questions