Help with a Spanish non-lucrative visa application

Who this route is designed for

The regulation describes the non-lucrative route as temporary residence for a person, and their family members, authorised to reside in Spain without carrying out labour or professional activities. That phrase is the whole character of the route: it is residence supported by means you already have, rather than by work done in Spain.

We are not going to tell you which kinds of people most commonly use it. That is the sort of claim that gets repeated across the web without anyone checking it, and we have no source for it.

A first application, not a renewal

This page is about a first application. Renewing an authorisation you already hold is a different transaction, made in a different place, under a different article, and it has its own page.

Where the application is made

At the competent Spanish consular office. The regulation sets this out directly, and adds something that saves a good deal of confusion: applying for the residence visa carries the application for the residence authorisation with it. You are making one application, not two.

The principal stages, at a high level

1. You apply for the residence visa at the consular office.
2. The immigration office assesses the requirements that fall to it.
3. The office obtains its own internal checks, including a criminal-record check in Spain and a police report. The regulation gives those reports seven days — a deadline on the office’s internal checks, not an indication of how long a decision takes.
4. A decision is made, and if the visa is granted you travel and complete the steps that follow arrival.

That is a sketch, not a procedure. The detail of how it runs for your case is what a partner is for.

What the regulation asks for, by category

The regulation lists the requirements for an initial authorisation in categories rather than as a document checklist, and that is the honest way to describe them:

• sufficient economic means to support yourself, and your family where relevant, for the period you intend to reside, without needing to work;
• health insurance;
• not being within a non-return commitment period, where you previously returned voluntarily to your country of origin under one;
• not representing a threat to public order, public security or public health, which the office checks through a criminal-record check in Spain and a police report;
• having paid the processing fee for the procedure.

On the money, the regulation gives percentages rather than amounts: 400 per cent of the IPREM per month for the applicant and 100 per cent of the IPREM per month for each dependent family member, additional to the first. They are expressed as minimums, measured at the moment of the visa application.

What we will not give you is an exhaustive document list. Consulates publish their own, they differ between offices, and a list copied onto a page like this one goes out of date quietly. Take the list from the office you are applying to, or from a partner.

How health insurance fits in

Health insurance is one of the named requirements, and it is the part we arrange. The article that names it says very little else in the article itself, and what that silence does and does not allow is a question we have taken some care over.

Rather than repeat that analysis here, where it would sit without its sources and drift out of step, it lives on our NLV insurance guide. If you want to know what the policy actually has to do, that is the page to read.

When to arrange cover

There is a right answer to this and it is not “as early as possible”. The useful question is what dates the policy carries rather than when you buy it, and we have a separate guide on when NLV cover should start, written around that distinction.

What we can arrange

We can explain what the route asks of a policy, arrange private health insurance that meets it, and provide the documentation the insurer issues. That is a separate purchase from the visa work, with its own price.

What to confirm with the processing partner

Everything that involves judgement about your case:

• whether your means and their source will satisfy the office;
• which documents your consulate requires, and in what form;
• how your family members are treated on the same application;
• anything unusual in your history that you want raised before you file;
• the timetable, which we do not estimate.

Common misunderstandings

“It is two applications.” It is not. The visa application carries the residence application with it.

“A police record is fatal.” The regulation says the opposite in terms: the existence of police antecedents is not by itself and automatically a ground for refusal, and the office assesses the case individually.

“The money requirement is a fixed figure.” It is a percentage of the IPREM, and the IPREM changes. Anyone quoting you a euro amount should be able to tell you which year it comes from.

“Travel insurance will do.” Whether a given policy satisfies the route is exactly what our NLV insurance guide exists to answer, and the short version is that the question is more specific than it looks.