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‘It seems impossible’: The problems Spain’s digital nomad visa applicants face

Despite all the hype, getting Spain’s digital nomad visa has been far from easy for some, with applicants telling The Local it's become "unappealing", expensive and that Spanish authorities are "completely confused" about what's required.

Published: 3 May 2023 14:18 CEST
Updated: 6 May 2023 08:15 CEST

A number of foreign readers looking to move to Spain have told The Local about the bureaucratic problems they've faced when applying for the new digital nomad visa. Photo: Jonathan Kemper / Unsplash

There was a lot of excitement when Spain’s digital nomad visa or DNV finally became available in early 2023 and many freelancers and remote workers from non-EU countries could get the chance to live in and work from Spain.

Up until that point, the only real option for those who were unable to get a visa to work in Spain or didn’t have half a million for the Golden Visa was the Non-Lucrative visa, but as the name suggests people were prohibited from working on this visa, even if it was for a foreign employer or clients.

When the DNV finally launched there was much confusion from the outset with no clear instructions from Spanish authorities on how to apply and no clear announcement to say it was now available. Several law firms, as well as journalists, including those from The Local, managed to piece together the application process from several government sources.

Since February 2023 when clear guidelines and requirements were laid out in the media and by several Spanish law firms, many from all over the world have begun the application process in a bid in make their dreams of living in Spain a reality.

Unfortunately, The Local Spain has learned that in practice the process hasn’t been easy. Many applicants have been coming up against lots of bureaucratic setbacks and obstacles, spending thousands on lawyer fees, taking weeks to gather documentation and getting it all translated.

We spoke to several digital nomads who are currently in the process of applying for Spain’s DNV about what their experiences have been like.

Jess Haddow is an American who works remotely for a company in the US. He was very happy when the visa was announced so that he could join his fiancée who lives in Valencia. As the process is very complex, he decided to use a lawyer to help with his application.

“I started booking consultations with various law firms and received quotes between €1,200 and €1,800, and I ultimately went with the lowest bidder,” he explained.

“My goal was to move to Spain in March, so I immediately went to work collecting the correct paperwork. I was very worried about receiving the apostille for my FBI background check in time because the US State Department was reporting a 10-12 week delay,” he added.

He managed to get around this issue by contacting his Senator’s office to get help expediting the apostille, and after some back and forth, they ultimately relented and helped him get it in four weeks.

It was then that he discovered a small clause in the list of documents that was required that was to become his main issue. The clause stated that he would need to provide a certificate of social security coverage from his country or his company would need to register for and pay social security in Spain.

When Jess contacted his lawyer about this she originally believed it must be a mistake and that getting private health insurance should negate the need to provide the certificate.

It soon became clear however that this wasn’t a mistake and that remote workers would indeed need to prove social security coverage from their home country to get their digital nomad visas.

So, Jess contacted the US Social Security Administration to see if he could get the required certificate. “Their response to me was that only employees who are transferred to an employer’s physical office or affiliate’s office in Spain for a period of less than five years are eligible for a certificate of coverage. They said that the Social Security Totalisation agreement between Spain and the US does not cover remote work”.

One way around this was for Jess’s company to register with and pay his social security in Spain, which ultimately they were unwilling to do.

The second way around this was for Jess to become a freelance contractor instead of a remote worker with a contract and become autónomo (self-employed) in Spain and pay his own social security. But, by doing this Jess learned that he wouldn’t qualify for Beckham’s Law, which would limit his personal income tax in Spain. “This was a bit of a dealbreaker for me,” he said.

“I have spent around €2,800 for lawyers, consultations, notaries, and documents in pursuit of the digital nomad visa, and I’m no closer to my dream of living in Spain,” Jess added.

After liaising with two different tax professionals, Jess has ultimately decided to try a different route to gain Spanish residency.

Sam is from the UK, but is also in a similar situation to Jess, being a remote worker employed by a company, rather than a freelancer.

“This visa route at the moment almost feels like an impossibility, he explained. “The main reason for this issue seems to be the sheer burden of documentation that needs to be provided. We’ve been working on gathering documentation for six weeks now and are still waiting on key documents”.

Despite being in the UK, he has also come up against the same social security issue. Unlike the US, however, the UK has in some cases been issuing social security certificates to remote workers.

“The UK is taking 10 weeks for online applications and 29 weeks for postal applications. In some cases though, they are not issuing the certificates at all because they do not believe the DNV is appropriate for its issuance,” Sam explained.

So far, Sam has spent upwards of £10,000 on solicitors fees, translations and other administrative fees, despite not yet being able to live in Spain. “Having spent a lot of time looking at other digital nomad visas I am currently of the opinion that Spain’s is one of the most unappealing and difficult to obtain,” he said.

Despite all this he is determined to continue with his application and find a way around the issue and make his childhood dream of living in Andalusia a reality.

digital nomad visa spain problems — Remote contract workers looking to get Spain’s digital nomad visa appear to be experience the bulk of the bureaucratic problems. Photo: Shridhar Gupta/Unsplash

Some UK members of the Spanish Digital Nomad Visa (DNV) group on Facebook have reported that their certificates needed for social security coverage have finally come through from the HMRC. One member has also posted they may grant urgent requests to do it sooner if you provide a good enough reason.

Many members are also advising applicants from the UK to only request their certificate from the HMRC for a temporary period such as two years (even if you are planning on staying three years on the visa), as they will not issue it if they believe you are permanently moving to Spain or spending longer.

Ray Goldberg from Australia has taken a slightly different approach. He is currently in Spain on a 90-day Schengen visa and is trying to get his digital nomad visa approved from here before the three-month period runs out. He has gained permission from the trust he works for in Australia to work remotely.

One of his main issues has been having to get all his company documents notarised and apostilled in Australia as the embassy in Spain has been unwilling to help. “The UGE (authority in charge of issuing the visa in Spain) itself is completely confused as to what is and what isn’t required. I spent considerable time running around trying to get documents notarised in Spain,” he explained. “It took me two weeks to get documents notarised and even then it was under duress”.

He is using a lawyer to help him through the process. “There are a multitude of lawyers charging outrageous fees when they don’t really understand the visa. Quite a few tried to get me to pay for sessions remotely before the visa was even released,” he pointed out.

While it’s still been difficult, not everyone has found the process quite so impossible, this is particularly those who are freelancers and work for themselves rather than those who are employed by companies. This is due to the fact that they have to promise to register as autónomo when they arrive in Spain and will therefore be in charge of paying their own social security contributions.

Nikki Martinez from the US who is applying jointly with her husband is one of these and works as a freelance health coach and chef. She submitted her application at the beginning of April and has almost completed the process in just four weeks.

“Just heard back and there’s only one document they’re asking for from me (and it’s an easy one) so it’s looking very good!” she said. “It’s a document to further prove my current contract with my client, which we actually already had, but found there was a discrepancy between my original contract date and the letter they wrote for me.”

Despite the process being easier though, she has still opted to use a lawyer to help her complete everything and get it all in order so she doesn’t miss anything. “I truly believe hiring help will ultimately be what will get us approved. I personally do not have a Degree. My education is more tech/certification style and experience. So I had to take extra steps to prove my three years of experience,” she explained.

She used Navarro & Asociados Abogados and paid an initial fee of US $753, then paid $931 at the time of submitting her visa application (this included the fees to submit the application as well). On top of that, her translation fees were $543.

Sarah Chappell is another freelancer who has found the process slightly easier. “I came on holiday a month ago and decided to stay,” she explained using the DNV as a way to do so, and is planning on completing the application while in the country.

Sarah found that there was a lot of paperwork and upfront costs involved, but that this was to do with setting herself up in Spain than the DNV specifically.

While the process has been difficult and somewhat problematic, there are many freelancers on the Spanish DNV Facebook page who have already managed to secure their visa and are currently on their way to starting a new life in Spain.

As for remote contract workers, it seems that the conditions still need to be ironed out by Spanish authorities for those from several countries.

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Good tourist, bad tourist: How to travel responsibly in Spain

Barcelona resident David Mar doesn’t travel, but he thinks about tourism every day.

Tourists crowd the buses — essential for movement in a hilly neighbourhood like his. They leave trash for residents to discover in the morning. They shout and sing at night and wander drunkenly through the residential streets, ambling into backyards and pulling down laundry on clotheslines.

“It’s a disturbance that goes from when you wake up in the morning until you go to bed at night,” he told The Local Spain. “You don’t feel welcome in your own neighbourhood.”

Mar lives in Turó de la Rovira, on a 262-metre hill that towers over the city.

A viewpoint atop the hill called Los Bunkers de Carmel has gone viral on TikTok for its sweeping city views, bringing hordes of tourists to come drink wine, watch the sunset, and sometimes party into the early morning.

But for the residents of the surrounding Carmel neighbourhood — among Barcelona’s poorest — the consequences of this tourist explosion have been severe.

Mar was involved in a physical altercation with a group of four Australians, after he confronted them for tipping over parked motorcycles.

And last June a 76 year-old man was assaulted by a group of seven English-speaking youths after he tried to stop them from jumping a fence that had been put up around the Bunkers.

Such events are commonplace in Carmel, Mar says, with the post-pandemic massification of tourism provoking an unstoppable flow of Instagram-like-hungry travellers, fuelled by an increasingly lucrative industry whose interests often conflict with those of local residents.

“It collides directly with the most basic rights of those who live here,” Mar says. “Our right to housing, our right to transportation, our right to rest peacefully.”

With some 1.3 billion international arrivals globally in 2023, more people are travelling for pleasure than ever before in human history.

But as excessive crowds stress infrastructure and locals find themselves pushed out of their own communities, prevailing attitudes towards travel must be reconsidered if global tourism is to continue growing sustainably.

“Tourism isn’t a right, it’s a decision that you make,” Mar says. “And if you do it, you must be aware of the consequences it can generate.”

A couple uses a selfie stick to take a picture next to a banner warning tourists on drought alert in Catalonia, near Sagrada Familia basilica in Barcelona. (Photo by PAU BARRENA / AFP)

Empathy abroad

Bartolomé Deyá Tortella, a researcher and the Dean of Tourism Faculty at the University of the Balearic Islands, says few tourists consider such consequences.

Instead, they embrace their inner hedonist and focus their vacation time on maximum pleasure for minimum price. This mindset might cause a tourist to forget their values and do things they’d never do at home.

“We all become capitalists when we practice tourism,” Deyá told The Local. “You think, ‘I paid for this, I’m on vacation, I’m having my moment of pleasure, I worked the whole year for it.”

Such thinking could explain why someone might respect quiet hours in their own neighbourhoods, but shout drunkenly in the streets late at night while on vacation.

Or why on a trip to Mallorca, where Deyá lives and works, a tourist might feel compelled to take a 10-minute shower — despite the water-stressed Mediterranean island’s near-drought conditions — while residents routinely shower in a minute or less.

Failure to consider saving water or respecting quiet hours comes down to lack of empathy, Deyá says, and our tendency to other the people whose communities we enter while traveling.

“Act as if you were in your own home,” he says. “If when you’re in your own city you don’t shout in the street because you know your neighbours are sleeping, why do it when you’re traveling?”

Social sustainability

Much has been said about environmental sustainability, but it’s easy to forget the social impacts of travel; how our interactions with local people and economies can change that society.

“When every one of us travels, it implies that the places where we came from are transformed, the places we pass through are transformed, and obviously, so are the places we arrive to,” Manuel de la Calle Vaquero, Vicedean of the Faculty of Commerce and Tourism at Complutense University of Madrid, told The Local Spain.

With this in mind, the most sustainable way to travel is by using one’s presence to positively impact the local community.

Or in other words, to leave a place better than you found it.

“When you jump on a plane, it’s important to make sure that trip counts for something positive,” says Justin Francis, founder of Responsible Travel, a holiday company that collaborates with local partners to plan socially and environmentally sustainable vacations.

“I advise people to fly less, keep short trips flight-free – and, when you do fly, stay in a place longer and travel in a way that does as much good as possible,” Francis says.

Anti-gentrification banners addressing were already hanging from balconies in Barcelona back in 2017. (Photo by Josep LAGO / AFP)

Neighbourhood colonisers

One of the most significant ways in which tourism can alter the social landscape is through accommodation.

Not long ago, tourists and residents in Spain did not typically mix, with tourists sticking near their hotels, rarely straying into residential zones, Deyá says.

But today’s tourist has matured, and now expects novelty; an “authentic” experience that they can convince themselves distinguishes them from the thousands of other tourists expecting the same.

Nowadays they live among residents, in apartments instead of hotels, utilizing short-term rental platforms like Airbnb, which has led to the dissolution of boundaries between a city’s tourist and local zones.

Vaquero describes this new kind of tourist as the “anti-tourism” tourist, in the sense that they’re not interested in the sort of tourism promoted by governments and travel agencies, but instead consider themselves the explorers of new “authentic” destinations outside the typical tourist sphere.

“The one who wants to leave the traditional tourist circuit and supposedly goes looking for ‘authentic’ neighbourhoods — that tourist is obviously the coloniser,” Vaquero says.

The boom in short-term vacation rentals has led to what’s been dubbed the “Airbnb effect” in neighbourhoods worldwide, in which residents are slowly replaced by a constant flux of tourists. For landlords, vacation rentals can be far more lucrative than renting to residents, thus incentivizing them to evict long-term tenants in order to list their properties on Airbnb.

This is exactly what happened to Emanuele Dal Carlo. His landlord didn’t want to renew the lease on his small Venice apartment because they could make more renting it out on Airbnb. Like so many other Venetians, Dal Carlo had to move to the mainland.

To better understand the cultural erosion he saw happening to his city as a result of Airbnb, Dal Carlo enlisted the help of researchers to conduct a study, through which he discovered only 2,000 of the 3,300 Airbnbs in the city were registered with the government, and many were rented by foreign hosts with zero connection to Venice.

This means that much of the money tourists spend on accommodation never lands on the ground, thus eliminating any potential benefit to the local economy.

“What’s wrong is that the money available from tourism is not fairly distributed between workers and residents,” Dal Carlo says.

Dal Carlo now runs Fairbnb, an ethical Airbnb alternative which promotes “community-powered tourism.” Hosts are certified local, and the platform fees are put directly towards a social project in the local community, like food redistribution or sustainable energy initiatives.

As a tourist, the best way to avoid feeding the problem is by avoiding short term rentals when possible, Dal Carlo says, and instead booking accommodations with local businesses, like small independent hotels or traditional bed and breakfasts.

And if you absolutely must use Airbnb, Dal Carlo suggests booking with local hosts.

“If you’re traveling to Venice and your host is from Finland, ask yourself some questions,” he says.

An elderly local man on crutches waits to cross as a group of tourists using Segways squeeze by and into the narrow streets of Barcelona’s Gothic Quarter. (Photo by PAU BARRENA / AFP)

Whose fault?

In Spain, anti-tourism protests have crescendoed in recent weeks. The travel industry, it seems, has grown beyond its means, and locals are taking note.

To some degree, the problem can be traced to poor planning on the part of local governments and the unchecked expansion of algorithmic platforms like Airbnb.

Deyá points out that many government entities in Spain have welcomed tourist money, pursuing marketing campaigns without investing in adequate preparation.

“Tourism is the typical sector where many governments say, ‘ok, let’s leave it, because this works. Don’t touch it,’” Deyá says. “But there’s been no planning, there’s been no strategy.”

Back in Barcelona, the city’s public transport authority was involved in the promotion of the Carmel bunkers through its Bus Turistic webpage, encouraging tourists to come see the “spectacular views over Barcelona.”

The promotion was taken down on April 16th after continued anti-tourism protests from the Turó de la Rovira neighbourhood council, of which Mar is a member.

But as is the case with so many industries in a crowded world full of contradictions, the individual cannot be absolved of all responsibility, as one’s choice to participate in harmful systems enables their continuation.

No law or tourist tax will compel tourists to act with empathy, and the absence of such regulations should not be used to justify one’s bad behaviour abroad.

“The problem is that we’re hypocrites, and we think that it’s someone else who has to solve the problem,” Deyá says.

Mar, who’s never been much of a traveller himself, is no longer interested in traveling internationally after seeing what tourism has done to his city.

“So much of my city has become inhospitable for residents,” he says. “Because we’re truly suffering from it here in Barcelona, the concept of tourism disgusts me more and more.”

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