Applying for the Spanish non-lucrative visa from Australia

We found the process of obtaining a Spanish non-lucrative visa (NLV) far more complex than it should have been. That’s not because the process itself is difficult. Sure, it’s lengthy and there’s a lot to do, but most folks can successfully navigate the system when they put their mind to it.

Nevertheless, the whole process is shrouded in mystery. It varies wildly based on your home country, the consulate to which you apply, and the region of Spain you’re moving to, and not everyone realises that and so will confidently tell you something that was correct for them but likely wrong for you.

Even the information on the consulate websites themselves is problematic. Here's just one example. On the Melbourne consulate website it says (current in June 2025):

‘Applications must be submitted in person at the consular office.’ 

This, it turns out, is not true in Australia, though perhaps pre Covid it was. At the time of writing you can post your application documents to the consulate. It seems that in other countries – particularly the US – you do usually have to submit your application in person and undergo an interview in the process. That suggests to me that the wording on the Australian consulate website has simply been copied verbatim from one of the American consulate sites and no one has thought to check its veracity.

Because this was possibly the biggest move of our lives, we engaged a Spanish immigration lawyer for help. He helped us dodge a few pitfalls. It’s just that, perhaps understandably from a business perspective, his approach was to feed us little bits of information as we went along and not up front. This is a little hard to swallow if you are a control freak like me. Considering his high fee (€2300 per person late 2022), he was also rather light-on with a whole bunch of stuff that we’d have loved to have known earlier. He also made some mistakes that cost us time and money. In the end, all we really received from our lawyer was a few forms completed in Spanish on our behalf. The service we got should have been a lot better.

How I wished someone had written a step-by-step guide on how it all worked.

This is it.

Disclaimer

I am not an immigration expert. This guide is merely a retrospective set of instructions based on our experiences. If your situation is different from ours, you might find some gaps or inconsistencies. Someone who’s already been through the process might disagree with me or say that there are other ways to get the job done. All I can tell you is that our way worked for the consulate through which we applied and for the part of Spain we moved to, so obviously I can’t accept any responsibility should you encounter problems because of the suggestions in this guide. 

Contents

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The application timeline