Spain

Ten years of legal, continuous residence immediately before the application, an oath to the King and the Constitution, a renunciation of the nationality you hold, and proof of good civic conduct and sufficient integration into Spanish society. That is the general rule, and for most of the world it is the only one. The Civil Code then names a class of origins for whom the ten years are two and the renunciation is not required, and the class is drawn by language and history rather than by treaty: Ibero-American countries, Andorra, the Philippines, Equatorial Guinea, Portugal, and Sephardim.

Whether you need a visa for a short visit to Spain is not in any Spanish instrument. Regulation (EU) 2018/1806 carries two annexes: nationals of the countries in Annex I need a visa to cross the external border, and nationals of the countries in Annex II are exempt for stays of no more than 90 days in any 180-day period. The Regulation is directly applicable, so Spain applies the lists as they stand and cannot add a country to either. What Spain does decide is what happens at its own border and what it asks you to show, and that is in Spanish and Schengen instruments this record does not reach.

A first permit to live and work in Spain for someone else is not applied for by the worker. The employer files it, at the immigration office of the province where the workplace is, with a signed contract whose start date is tied to the permit taking effect. Before anything about the worker is considered, the national employment situation is consulted: whether the post can be filled from the labour force already here. The employer must also show it can pay - and if the employer is a person rather than a company, that it can support its own household on top of the salary. The worker's own requirements are short: the qualification the profession legally requires, no criminal record in Spain, no outstanding commitment not to return, and the fee.

Spain's non-lucrative residence is for someone who will live here without working - not reduced work, none. The money is expressed as a multiple of the IPREM, the public income indicator the budget sets each year: 400% of it a month for the applicant, and 100% more for each dependent family member, held for the whole period of the permit rather than shown once. Health insurance is required. The first permit lasts a year. The Regulation defines who counts as family for this purpose, and the definition includes a stable unmarried partner where a year of shared life is proved, or less where there are children in common.

Spain treats you as tax resident if either of two things is true in a calendar year, and the second has no day count at all. The first is 183 days of presence, counting sporadic absences unless you prove tax residence elsewhere. The second is that the main centre or base of your activities or economic interests is in Spain, directly or indirectly. There is also a presumption: if your spouse and minor children habitually live in Spain, you are presumed resident unless you prove otherwise.

The right to health protection and health care in Spain belongs to Spanish nationals and to foreigners who have established their residence in Spanish territory. Being paid for out of public funds is a separate question with its own list, and for a foreigner it turns on legal and habitual residence plus not being obliged to prove cover by another route. What makes the Spanish rule unusual is article 3 ter: a foreigner who is neither registered nor authorised as a resident has the right to health protection on the same terms as a Spanish national, and it is paid from public funds provided no other system and no third party is liable. Anyone outside both routes may buy in through a convenio especial.

Spain does not give a student a residence permit; it gives a long-stay authorisation to be here for studies, and the requirements are about the course rather than about the person. For higher education it is admission to a recognised institution and payment of the enrolment fees - two things, stated in two numbered sub-paragraphs. Secondary education, pupil mobility programmes and volunteering each have their own list in the same article. The part worth knowing is article 57: the holder may be authorised to work for an employer or on their own account, and the authorisation is granted on the ordinary employment requirements minus three of them - including the one that asks whether the labour market permits the hire at all.

A non-EU family member of a Spanish national does not use the ordinary family reunification chapter. Chapter VII of the Reglamento gives them their own authorisation, and the definition is deliberately wide: the relationship counts whatever the place and moment it was created, provided it is maintained and the person accompanies, joins or reunites with the Spaniard in Spain. The list of who qualifies covers the spouse, a registered partner, an unmarried partner with twelve continuous months of life together - waived where there are children in common - and children under twenty-six, or older if dependent or disabled. Only one spouse may ever hold this authorisation, whatever the personal law of the applicant allows.

Spain's ancestry route in the immigration Reglamento is not a residence permit but a visa to come and look for work. Article 44 has the annual collective-hiring order set aside a number of job-seeker visas for children and grandchildren of a Spaniard of origin, and records why they can be set aside: article 40 of the Ley Orgánica 4/2000 exempts them from the assessment of the national employment situation. How many, who is selected and how applications are made is left to that ministerial order each year.

Spain has no residence permit written for retired people. What a pensioner uses is the non-lucrative residence of articles 61 and 62 of the Reglamento, which asks for means and forbids work, and asks nothing about age, pension or retirement. The practical effect is that a pension counts as what article 62 calls a periodic source of income, and the figure is the same 400% of the IPREM a month that applies to anyone else on that route, with 100% more for each dependant.

Spain's residence by investment no longer exists. The chapter that created it is still printed in the consolidated Ley 14/2013 with its heading, "Inversores", and every article under it reads "(Sin contenido)" - no content. Articles 63 to 67 carried the investor visa, how the investment was proved, what the visa did, the residence authorisation that followed it and how long it lasted, and all five were emptied. Anyone reading about buying property for residence in Spain is reading about a route that has been closed.

A foreign licence is valid in Spain for six months from the day you establish normal residence here, and after that it is not valid at all. What happens next depends entirely on whether your country has a convention with Spain. If it does and the convention allows exchange, you exchange the licence on that convention's conditions. If it does not, the Reglamento offers exchange only to someone who passes a practical driving test of up to thirty minutes and proves at least six months' employment as a professional driver - otherwise the route is to sit the Spanish examinations like a new driver. The Reglamento does not list the countries; the conventions do.

Spain turns access to a payment account into an obligation on the bank rather than a favour. A credit institution that offers payment accounts must offer a basic payment account to anyone legally resident in the European Union - and the article says in terms that this includes people with no fixed address - as well as to asylum seekers and to people without a residence permit whose expulsion is legally or factually impossible. The refusals are a closed list of three, and the first of them is the one that bites in practice: not providing the information the bank needs under the money-laundering law.

Spain belongs to a free-movement regime and it is the European Union's, which reaches nationals of member states, of the European Economic Area and of Switzerland and nobody else. There is no Ibero-American equivalent: nothing lets a Chilean or a Mexican enter and stay in Spain the way a CARICOM or Mercosur national can in their own region. What does exist between Spain and the region is a social security treaty - the Convenio Multilateral Iberoamericano, signed at Santiago in 2007 and in force since 1 May 2011 - and it moves contribution periods, not people. Its own text makes effectiveness depend on a second instrument: the Application Agreement, which states have signed one at a time.

What a person brings when they move to Spain is governed by a Union regulation, not by Spanish law. Personal property imported by someone transferring their normal residence from a third country to the customs territory enters free of import duties, subject to four conditions that do the real work: the goods must have been owned - and, if durable, used - at the old residence for at least six months; they must be for the same use at the new one; the person must have lived outside the customs territory for a continuous twelve months; and the goods must be entered for free circulation within twelve months of the move. Alcohol, tobacco, commercial vehicles and the tools of a trade other than portable instruments get no relief at all.