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How long does it take to be approved for Spain’s digital nomad visa?

Spain's digital nomad visa is already proving to be a very popular way for non-EU nationals to move to the country. So how long does it actually take to apply for?

Published: 29 September 2023 10:11 CEST
How long does it take to be approved for Spain’s digital nomad visa?
How long does it take to be approved for Spain's DNV? Photo: David L. Espina Rincon / Unsplash

Spain’s digital nomad visa, which launched in early 2023, is currently one of the easiest ways to move to Spain if you work remotely or are self-employed.

The digital nomad visa or DNV allows remote workers or self-employed people from non-EU countries to work and live in Spain, as long as no more than 20 percent of their work comes from Spain.

It can be extended for up to five years and can be applied for from the Spanish consulate in your home country or while on holiday in Spain. 

Officially it’s called the visa for teletrabajadores de carácter internacional, but most people applying are simply referring to it as the DNV.

The application can be a painstaking process, however, with lots of research to do, even more documents to gather, and proof to send.

READ ALSO: All the documents you need for Spain’s digital nomad visa

So how long does the process actually take?

Firstly, if you’re applying from your home country, you may need to make an appointment at your local consulate. This can take a while, depending on where you’re from and where you’re applying. It’s best to contact them to find out how long the wait will be. 

If you’ve gathered all your documents and sent them off, then the official time in which you can expect to receive a response from the body responsible – the Unidad de Grandes Empresas (UGE) is 20 business days.

Some people are lucky and get their applications approved quickly or they’re highly organised and have made sure there are no more documents or pieces of evidence to send. This means that it is possible to receive an approval within the 20 days.

One member of the Spanish Digital Nomad Visa Facebook group confirmed: “Application submitted June 21st. Approved just before midnight yesterday, July 18th for the full three years”, which is exactly 20 working days.

Another member also had a similar experience saying “Just received approval, family of 4 from Canada. Applied 26th July, approved on 23rd Aug – exactly 20 business days”.

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

Not everyone received an answer after exactly 20 days though. For some people, it was near enough though.

Another member said “The wait time for approval was 23 days, I was not asked for any further documents”, while another who was an employee with a permanent contract confirmed he waited 18 days.

The process can take longer 

As with most bureaucratic processes in Spain, it doesn’t always take the amount of time that it should do in theory.

If you have missed out on some documents or the authorities need to see more proof in order to approve your visa, the process will typically take longer than 20 days.

One member reported that they had been waiting at least two and a half months for their approval. “I had a long process of applying (it’s been 77 days since my first one went in and then a second and then a request for additional documents) but finally received my approval”.

Another explained “I applied on the 6th of July. On the 31st of July, they requested documents: on the 14th of August, and did not hear back so I requested for positive silence on the 24th of August and last night 4th of September I received the notification”.

READ ALSO: ‘No lawyer can guarantee you get Spain’s digital nomad visa’

How long does the appeal process take?

It’s common for some people to be rejected for the visa. This could be because they haven’t provided enough evidence or simply down to miscommunication.

There have been a lot of instances when the UGE has said that applicants haven’t provided enough evidence on how long their company has been operating for example, when the applicants believed that they had.

If you are rejected, the good news is that you appeal. Currently, appeals are taking varying amounts of time depending on your situation.

One member of the DNV Facebook page confirmed “My lawyer said they have 15 working days to respond”.

While that may be what lawyers are saying, this isn’t always the case.

Another member said “I’ve heard of people waiting 5 months”, while another explained, “I appealed my visa denial last March 31st and I just got my approval yesterday, June 20th”.

To speed the process up, we recommend doing as much research as you can and gathering all documents you need, before starting the application. 

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DIGITAL NOMADS IN SPAIN

Cafés in Spain on war footing against remote workers hogging space

Bars and cafés in Valencia, Santiago and Barcelona have started to take action against lingering remote workers and digital nomads by cutting off the Wi-Fi during peak hours, with some even banning remote working on their premises.

Published: 10 May 2024 11:02 CEST
Cafés in Spain on war footing against remote workers hogging space

Increasingly in recent years, a trend has emerged: someone arrives in a café, orders a coffee, opens his or her laptop and then spends the whole day working without buying anything else.

For many digital nomads and remote workers, it seems spending a couple of euros on a coffee is a fair price for occupying a table for an entire morning or afternoon.

Some might say they are contributing to the local economy and supporting local businesses, but clearly, for a small business owner this isn’t a profitable arrangement, and many are now fighting back.

In Valencia, posters have appeared at some cafés banning remote working during peak hours: 8.30 to 12.30.

One Valencia café owner told La Vanguardia: “Our place is small and between 10 and 11.30 in the morning it’s impossible, we need all the tables.”

Raquel Llanes, boss at the Departure Café in the Raval area of Barcelona, explained to Barcelona Secreta that the situation has gotten out of control: “We’ve had customers who have ordered an espresso and sat for eight hours, people who have asked us to turn the music down so they could have meetings, customers who took out their Tupperware to eat… At first we adapted the space with sockets and to work, but after two years we realised that the numbers weren’t working out.”

Some have opted for less friendly, but equally effective methods: turning off the Wi-Fi network of the premises during peak hours.

“The owner has got rid of the Wi-Fi to avoid precisely these situations. People sat down and didn’t leave,” one waitress told La Vanguardia.

Similar sentiments have arisen in the Galician city of Santiago, where one café owner told La Voz de Galicia: “We prefer them not to come. If someone comes in and opens a laptop we don’t tell them anything, but if they’ve been there for a long time and we need space for a group, we ask them to please move”. 

When a remote worker in Valencia posted a negative comment about a café where the owner had asked him to leave, their reply went viral, as they stated “we can’t lose regular customers so that you can work”. 

Remote working (teletrabajo in Spanish) has exploded in popularity in Spain in recent years, particularly in the post-pandemic period, and often the people taking advantage of this flexibility are foreign digital nomads and remote workers. Many of them choose to work from local bars and cafés.

It should be said that not all people working remotely in Spain are foreigners. Many Spaniards also have flexible or remote working arrangements and will no doubt occasionally work in a local bar or café. Equally, many digital nomads take advantage of the abundance of ‘co-working’ spaces popping up around Spain, which are exactly for this purpose.

There are even café owners who promote the ‘work friendly’ environment as a means of establishing a loyal customer base.

Other hospitality businesses have preferred to allocate an area for remote working while keeping the bar area and certain tables for regular customers who stop by for a quick bite or coffee. 

READ ALSO: The best co-working spaces for digital nomads in Spain

The row over remote working in traditional Spanish bars and cafés is yet another chapter in the current debate over the influence mass tourism and gentrification is having on Spaniards’ standard of living. 

In the increasingly online, post-pandemic world, the change has been stark in some parts of Spain. Take a stroll through the Raval or L’Eixample neighbourhoods of Barcelona, or the Ruzafa and El Cabanyal areas of Valencia in 2024, and you’re likely to see buildings plastered in Airbnb lockboxes and possibly even hear more fluent, non-native English than you do Spanish in certain parts.

Tourists and wealthy remote workers, the logic goes, visit or move to a trendy city they’ve seen on an international ranking, say Málaga or Valencia, which causes rents to rise because landlords in the area convert their properties into short-term tourist rental accommodation to meet the growing demand, which in turn turfs out locals or shuts down local businesses. 

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