Applying for the Spain NLV from Australia
This a step-by-step guide for Australians hoping to apply for the Spanish non-lucrative visa. The process is very different if you apply from a country other than Australia so this guide won’t be for you. That said, if you’re from the UK or USA or anywhere else, there’s stuff in here that will help you to understand the NLV and challenges with moving to Spain.
Regardless of where you’re from, you’ll find my next guide useful. It covers what you need to do from the day you land, to opening a bank account and getting a Spanish SIM card, your digital certificate and residency renewal.
Is it hard to get the NLV?
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. 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 (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’re required 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 not updated to reflect the Australian process.
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 but ultimately we were unhappy with his approach, especially as it cost us €2300 each. He would dribble us little bits of information as we went along but declined to help us understand the process as a whole. (As we eventually learned, each consulate around the world is different and we suspect that he did not know the ins and outs of the Australian system.) 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 and a smattering of advice. You still need to do all the legwork and submission on your own.
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 experience. If your situation is different from ours, you might find gaps or inconsistencies. Someone who’s already been through the Australian process might disagree with me or say that there are other ways to get the job done, and they might be right. All I can tell you is that these steps worked for us (a married couple) 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 run into problems because of the suggestions in this guide. Contents
This is rather a long read so I’ve broken it up into a timeline to give you a sense of the length of the process. Click on a link to jump to that section.
Find your consulate
Explore accommodation options
Work out your tax implications
Buy a printer/scanner – you’ll need it
Apply for your police check
Check the latest on drivers licences
Arrange Spanish health insurance
Get your medical certificate
Have your government documents apostilled
Have your documents translated
Get passport photos
Get proof of funds from your bank
Compile all the stuff you need
Fill out the application documents
Compile and send your documetn
Things to do when your application is approved
Open a Wise account
Don’t bother trying to open a Spanish bank account yet
Increase your Australian bank’s international transfer limit
Install authenticator apps
Download WhatsApp to your phone
The application timeline
Three of the points on the timeline are not negotiable:
1. You must collect your visa in person from the consulate (each of you) within 30 days of notification of approval. (In late 2024 I heard of someone being mailed their visas and paperwork from the Melbourne consulate. It might have been a) a fluke, b) not true, or c) the way of the future.)
2. You must arrive in Spain no more than 90 days from the date of approval.
3. You must have made an appointment to apply for your identification card (TIE) within 30 days of arriving in Spain. This doesn’t mean you must have attended the appointment, just that you’ve made one for a future date. (In lots of areas it’s really hard to get an appointment so they’re flexible about this.)
Don’t worry about the padron and TIE steps right now – I’ll explain them later. The 90 days between submission and approval is a limit the Spanish have imposed on themselves. Apparently, if they take longer than 90 days to assess your application you are deemed to have been successful and away you go. I haven’t heard how this works in practice.
Leading up to the application
There’s a lot to do and so many other people and processes involved that you need to get your ducks in a row earlier than you might think. In retrospect, we commenced the process a little late.
While there’s no distinct order in which things must be done, some of the documents you need have critical validity periods, like the police check and medical certificate. If you obtain these too early there’s a risk that they’ll expire before you’re ready to apply.
If you’re in the same position as we were, you’ll also have to sell your home in Australia – a nightmare at the best of times. You soon realise that it will likely take longer to sell than the visa process takes. We therefore had little choice but to hope we’d receive a favourable decision on the visa and get the house out of the way first. It brought to the fore the immense challenge of aligning the visa application timeline with the process of juggling open homes, solicitors, settlement dates, finding somewhere to live before departing the country, getting rid of most of our lifetime’s worth of stuff, and finding somewhere to store the valuable bits we couldn’t bear to part with but wouldn’t be taking with us.
For us it was a no-brainer: get the house up for sale, then apply for the visa, and hope like hell that everything comes together at the right time, in the latter half of the calendar year. Our house settled in December 2022; our flights were booked for 26 January. Phew.
4 months before submitting
Find your consulate
You must apply to the consulate that ‘covers’ the district in Australia in which you live; as part of the application you’ll need to provide proof of address. If you live in Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania or Western Australia you’ll apply at the Melbourne consulate. The Sydney consulate is for people from NSW, Queensland and Northern Territory. If you’re in the ACT or Queanbeyan you’ll apply to the Canberra consulate.
Just for the hell of it, check out the NLV requirements as listed by the Melbourne consulate. You’ll find there’s not much helpful info on the process.
https://www.exteriores.gob.es/Consulados/melbourne/en/ServiciosConsulares/Paginas/Consular/Visado-de-residencia-no-lucrativa.aspx
Last I checked, half the links don’t work and some of the information is just plain wrong, but at least you’ll know where to find the horse’s mouth if/when it’s time to reach out to an official.
Begin pondering accommodation options
This isn’t something you have to attend to right now, but it’s worth thinking about.
Many successful visa applicants seem simply to have booked an Airbnb for the first few months after they arrive in Spain. But in some regions a problem can arise when it comes to obtaining your physical residence card (TIE, or tarjeta de identidad de extranjero), which you need for identifying yourself in just about every bureaucratic process in Spain.
One of the visa’s requirements is that you make a booking at your local Spanish police station within 30 days of arrival to have your fingerprints taken and order your residence card. This is often misinterpreted as a need to have attended your appointment within 30 days of arrival. In many towns this simply isn’t possible, as the police station can be booked out for months. You just need to be able to show that within 30 days of arrival you made an appointment – or attempted to make an appointment (for example with a screen grab showing there were none available when you tried) for some time in the future.
At your TIE appointment you must show proof that you live in the area in the form of what’s called a ‘padron’ (empadronamiento), a certificate on the city council’s letterhead. In other words, you must make your padron appointment before your TIE appointment. (I cover the padron and TIE processes in the next post on the NLV subject, So you’ve moved to Spain.)
One of the things they’ll want to see at the padron meeting is a long-term rental contract, which can mean 6 or 12 months, depending on the region. In some towns, Airbnb ain’t that.
Hopefully now you understand the issue. If you think the region you’re moving to might be forgiving in that respect and allow you to use an Airbnb as proof of residence, at least make sure that the owner of the accommodation is willing to supply you with confirmation that you’re living there – many aren’t very helpful that way.
You don’t need a physical address for the NLV application you’re preparing right now. At the application stage you need only supply the name of the city or town to which you’re moving. You can work on where to live while you’re waiting for your approval.
Plus, Spain is really cracking down on short-term rentals, restricting them to a 10-day stay in some places. But the market being what it is, platforms like Spotahome are kicking back on that, explicitly offering longer stays plus the ability to check the willingness of the owner to let you use the place for getting your padron before you book. It’s like a soap opera at the moment.
Join a Facebook group in the area you’re moving to, e.g. Expats in [San Sebastian, Marbella …], and the Australians in Spain group, and ask what worked for them. Other groups like Spanish NLV are great in many ways but they comprise people from all over the world, so you’ll get a lot of conflicting information as few of them seem to be aware that there are so many variables based on where you are and where you’re from.
For us, Airbnb was too risky and our lawyer agreed. He introduced us to a local English-speaking realtor, Guillermo, and we set up a Zoom meeting with him. He soon found us something terrific that was within our budget (not easy considering we had our cat with us); as a local guy, he was able to explain the pros and cons and could vouch for the apartment’s quality and location.
There’s one more reason to use a local pro to act on your behalf when you’re looking for an apartment. Renters in Spain have a reputation of squatting and not paying rent, and the eviction process here is a nightmare. Landlords understandably take out insurance against that eventuality. The insurers, in their turn, insist that the applicant shows a Spanish employment contract to prove they have a job. See the problem? We expats are simply too hard to deal with and we’re often ignored.
If you sign a 12-month lease on a property, you are legally entitled to break it after seven months without penalty. On the flipside, you’re allowed to keep renting effectively for as long as you like (7 years, at least). Rental increases are restricted to CPI each calendar year. Spain looks after people who rent, unlike Australia.
Beware: lots of apartments are offered for 11 months, which frees the landlord of any such commitment. They can kick you out or raise the rent as much as they like.
Yep, we made a rather large financial outlay on a sight-unseen apartment, though we had visited the city before and knew the area. We’re not afraid of taking a bit of a risk for the greater goal. But as we subsequently navigated the process we were extremely glad we hadn’t gone down the Airbnb route.
To get an idea of the kinds of long-term leases are available in your chosen region of Spain check out idealista.com. Note that the rental prices you’ll find are per month.
If you message an agent through Idealista, you likely won’t get a response. Instead, begin using WhatsApp. People in Spain use it preferentially to any other form of communication. If the agent’s number begins with a 6 (it’s a mobile phone) you’ll reach him with a WhatsApp text message. Translate it into Spanish, obviously.
Work out your tax implications
Get advice because I’m no expert. Just to make it difficult, tax rules vary from region to region so you really will need advice specific to your plans. But here are some things to think about.
The Spanish tax year is January to December. You are deemed a tax resident in Spain if you spend 183 days or more (six months or more) in a calendar year in Spain. So if you arrive in Spain in February and stay the rest of the year then you’ll be liable for tax in Spain for that year (it comes due in the first part of the following year).
If you arrive in Spain in the latter half of the year you won’t be liable to pay tax in Spain until the following year.
Owing to the mismatch of financial year start-and-finishes in Australia and Spain, whatever time of year you arrive in Spain, there will be an overlap with your tax return obligations. You’ll be required to lodge an Australian tax return for part of the year as well as a Spanish one (although you’re excused the latter if you arrive here in the second half of the year – but you’ll need to do both for the following year). This double duty happens only once – you’ll cease paying tax in Australia after that first time. You won’t be double taxed – there’s an agreement in place between both countries. Your Spanish tax agent will ask to see your Australian tax return and make adjustments accordingly.
Capital gains tax on the sale of your house
In your Spanish tax return you will be asked to declare any and all worldwide income, which includes the sale of any property. If the sale of your house settles in the same calendar year as the year you become a tax resident of Spain it’s more than likely you’ll be up for capital gains tax in Spain – even if it was your primary residence. Judging by the myriad threads on various forums, this has caught a lot of people by surprise. There apparently are ways around it, for example if you buy a house in Spain that will be your primary residence within two years, and I heard something about being over a certain age being helpful, but get professional advice.
The 183-day rule is tricky to get your head around. To meet the requirements of the first year of your NLV, you must spend at least 183 days out of your first 365 days inside Spain from the date you entered the country.
Becoming a tax resident is a little different. You become a resident of Spain for tax purposes only after you’ve been in Spain for 183 days of a calendar year. It means that if you arrive in, say, August 2025, you won’t have met the 183 day mark by the time 31 December rolls around and so you won’t be liable for tax in Spain just yet.
To further complicate matters, if you’re planning on achieving long-term residency after five years living in Spain, you must have spent no more than 10 months out of the whole five years outside of Spain.
Clear as mud?
Wealth tax, inheritance and gift tax
If you receive an inheritance or a gift – whether financial or e.g. property – you’ll pay tax on it. (Queue disbelief and outrage in the online forums.) The rate varies from region to region. In some places they take only a couple of per cent (e.g. Guipuzcoa), while in others the government will take one-third of the value. It also depends on your relationship with the giver. See my reasons for getting advice?
Business interests or a self-managed super fund
You’re not allowed to operate a company in Australia if you’re a non-resident. We were required to appoint a new director to our Australian company, someone who’s an Australian resident. It’s not that we planned to work, but nor did we want to wrap up the company, and the business has routine reporting obligations even if there’s no income.
For similar reasons we also had to shut down our self-managed super fund. That hurt, because we loved not paying the finance industry for not doing anything, but so be it. We sold the fund’s assets and begrudgingly rolled over the cash into the simplest industry fund we could find.
This turned out to be a complete bastard of a job, especially when it dragged on and we had to finish the process from overseas. Leave plenty of time.
Now to the nitty-gritty of the application process. Your first and most crucial job …
Buy a home printer/scanner
If you haven’t got one already, get one with a flat-bed scanner (some of the docs you’ll need to scan are bulky and won’t fit through a document feeder).
There are sooo many bits and pieces you’ll need to photocopy, print or scan. We keep scans not only of our visa application documents but also of stuff like ATO assessment notices, which you need when it comes to proving who you are to the various MyGov services after you’ve left the country.
Apply for your AFP national criminal record check
Getting a police check can take a while. The Australian Federal Police (AFP) criminal record check is valid for six months so even if you get your certificate quickly it’s not too early to do it now. It’s likely that the process has changed since mid 2022 but here’s how it went for us.
1. Download an AFP criminal record check application form:
https://www.afp.gov.au/what-we-do/national-police-checks
On the national system, the most common option seems to be to apply for a digital certificate, but you need to select the hard copy option; there’s the option to download a PDF form on that web page to apply.
2. Print and complete the form, one for each applicant. Make sure to tick name and fingerprint check in section 1.
3. Go to your local police station with your form(s). If your coppers are like ours (Launceston Tas) they might get confused as most folks need only a state police check, not a national one, and the receptionist might try to persuade you that you’re an idiot. Persist.
4. Get your fingerprints taken. Much of the advice out there (including from our lawyer) is that you need ‘wet prints’ like in the movies instead of the modern scanned version. We did the wet prints, which was time consuming and messy for everybody. We’ve heard that others simply got scans of their prints and they had no trouble. After all, the prints are for the AFP themselves for processing the police check, not for the consulate. This remains a mystery but I’d bet on scanned prints being fine.
One source of confusion was how to pay for the prints. You do not need to pay the local station – many don’t have an EFTPOS machine anyway. Explain that the AFP will charge you, as is apparent on the form itself. It says (at the time of writing this):
Name and fingerprint check (Fee: $99 if fingerprints are taken and paid, $139 if not paid)
… which is a dead giveaway that the AFP can simply charge the fee at their end, in this case an extra $40 for taking the fingerprints. The form asks for your credit card details. If your local station does have a machine and insists on charging you, simply add your receipt to the application.
Interestingly, the fee that eventually appeared on our bank statement was $199.02 (for the both of us) so somewhere along the line there’s some outdated info. Hopefully it’s better now.
5. Add the fingerprint form to your hard-copy AFP application form (plus the receipt if you managed to pay at the time), bung it in an express envelope and send it off to the address on the form. We put both our applications and fingerprints in the same envelope and posted it that day, having cunningly brought some paperclips with us.
Soon you’ll receive a digital national police certificate by email, which is nice, but you do need the paper copy that will eventually arrive in the post. I say eventually because ours got lost in the system and we had to hassle them to send the certificate again. It took about four weeks, thanks to that particular balls-up. This is one of the documents you’ll need to have ‘apostilled’, hence the need for an original hard copy. An apostille is a very formal ribbon-and-stamp thingy that legitimises Australian government documents in the eyes of the Spanish consulate. There’s more on how to get documents apostilled later.
Check the latest on drivers licences
You’re allowed to drive legally in Spain on an Australian licence only for six months after you arrive; opinion is divided on whether you need an international licence, but I contend that it’s worth getting one just in case. After six months you are no longer allowed to drive in Spain. Some people will point out that you can still rock up to any rental agency and hire a car – but what happens if you have a bingle or get a ticket?
Quite a few countries have an arrangement with Spain that allows the holder of a drivers licence to simply exchange it for a Spanish one when they get to Spain (it’s apparently not that simple, but it’s possible). Australia doesn’t have that arrangement because each Australian state has its own system, and you must start from scratch at a driving school and pass written and practical tests. Ergh.
In January 2025 I was discussing the issue with an Aussie, Narelle, who is already in Spain and was keen on getting a Spanish licence. She contacted the Australian consulate in Madrid and made some enquiries. One thing she learned was that if you can prove that you’ve had an Australian licence for more than two years, you can at least skip the two-year L-plate restrictions when you do finally get your Spanish licence (no reduced speed limit, displaying plates etc.) But Australian licences don’t have the original issue date stamped on! She wrote to Queensland Transport and eventually they furnished her with a letter – and the Spanish driving academy accepted it as proof of driving experience. Lesson: do this before you leave Australia.
2 months before submitting
Arrange Spanish health insurance
Contact a Spanish health insurance company and get a quote for health insurance as per the visa requirements (full cover, no co-payment etc.) We went with Sanitas, who does this for foreigners all the time and are familiar with the requirements. Just make sure they understand that the cover you need is for a non-lucrative visa. Furthermore, we used a broker. We didn’t apply directly to Sanitas. It turns out that this is a good idea, as the broker will save you from under- or over-sharing stuff like existing conditions.
The broker will send you a health insurance certificate, by email, in Spanish. Print this in readiness for your application. Because we didn’t yet have our visa, or perhaps it was because we didn’t yet have a Spanish bank account from which they could direct-debit, Sanitas asked for a full year’s worth of cover up front – $2700 AUD for the pair of us (at the time 52 and 41 years old). Obviously, we weren’t terribly pleased about the hefty sum of money handed over before we even got our visas but in the absence of another option we bit the bullet and paid up.
The policy must have a commencement date that is no more than one month after the date you plan to submit your application. In our case, Sanitas insisted that cover can only commence on the first of any given month – so our unlucky timing window meant that we ended up paying for nearly three months’ cover before we even got there. I hope you can time your application better than we did, or maybe find a loophole on one of the forums. Perhaps another provider won’t be so tough.
Get your medical certificate
A medical certificate is valid for three months, so this is about the right time. At the time of writing this guide, the wording of the certificate needed to be:
As per the information given and the available medical records, [name] does not suffer from diseases that may have serious public health implications in accordance with the international health regulations 2005 and is fit to travel.
I took a printout of this paragraph for the doctor to copy. Explain that this statement needs to be printed on the medical practice’s letterhead with the practice stamp and/or doctor’s signature, preferably in blue pen so it doesn’t look like a photocopy.
It was tricky because our doctor had not seen this kind of request before. If your doctor insists that you need a blood test to prove that you don’t have tuberculosis, politely leave and find another doctor. Lots of people have encountered this problem. It depends on the doctor.
Get your government documents apostilled
The apostilles need to happen before the translation step. We got it wrong first time round thanks to incorrect advice from the lawyer.
An apostille is the certification of a government document that proves it’s legit. Someone at an Australian Passport Office will take your original document (not a photocopy), compare numbers and signatures with their records, and if everything is in order they’ll glue on a small printed label that says so, plus give it a wax seal and even a ribbon thing attached with a metal rivet.
‘Apostille’ is pronounced a-pos-steel (emphasis on the a), not as in the 12 apostles.
For the purposes of an NLV application, only two of your documents will need a government apostille:
your AFP criminal record check
your marriage certificate.
If you live in a capital city you can make an appointment at a branch of the Australian Passport Office to take in your valuable documents in person but you can also send them by post (registered or platinum express if possible).
You can book an appointment online or find the postal address on the Smarttraveller website:
https://www.smartraveller.gov.au/consular-services/notarial-services/documents-in-australia
The cost for two police certificates and our marriage certificate was $261 (i.e. $87 each).
Get your documents translated
Get your translations done after you’ve had your police checks and marriage certificate apostilled.
These are the documents that need to be translated into Spanish:
the apostilled national criminal record check (one each)
the apostilled marriage certificate
the medical certificate, not apostilled (one each).
The translator does not need original documents. A scan will do. Use your nifty new scanner to scan each of your criminal record checks and your marriage certificate, front and back with the ribbony bits and seals on clear display. Likewise, the medical certificate.
The translations must be done by someone accredited as a ‘sworn translator’ by the Spanish government who is NAATI accredited. I believe that anyone on the NAATI register fits into that category but it’s worth confirming that whomever you choose is correctly certified.
Follow your nose to ‘find a translator or interpreter’.
Email your scanned documents to the translator. She will then send you by post a hard copy version of each document that will comprise the certified translation attached to a copy of the document you provided – each carefully stamped and signed – as verification that they translated the correct document.
Scan the hard copies – not just as good record-keeping practice but because now you need to print a copy of the translated marriage certificate including the other stamped pages your translator attached to it. Why? Because there is only one original marriage certificate and one of you will not be able to include the original in your submission. It’s okay for one of you to use a photocopy because the consulate will be able to check the other’s original against it. The same goes for some of the other documents, as described later.
Get passport photos
We got ours taken at a photography shop, and ordered one set of Australian-sized prints (45 mm x 35 mm) for the application form and a second set of the smaller size you need once in Spain (32 mm x 26 mm) for the police station appointment, and likely a bunch of other stuff.
1 month before submitting
Get proof of funds
Go to your bank and ask for a printout of the bank statement associated with the account that you plan to use to prove you have the funds to qualify for the non-lucrative visa. We got statements dating back 12 months. Ask for a stamp or signature on the printout (each page if possible) to legitimise the document. Apparently it’s possible to get a statement of average balance, or something, but our bank (NAB in Launceston) didn’t really know what we were talking about so we just did the whole printout, warts and all, then one of the staff kindly stamped each page with their seal thingy. I’ve heard tell that some people have successfully applied with just a printout and no stamps.
Some people say that you should have the bank statements translated but we did not and didn’t have a problem. It would have been expensive, and presumably most people can read a bank statement even if it’s in another language.
Compile all the stuff you need – for each of you
A passport photo (Australian size)
An old-fashioned money order for the amount that the consulate tells you that you need to pay. In our case it was a total of $427 each ($488 as of June 2025; check here). Some people swear that it should be less, to match other countries’ fees – and they’re probably right – but the consulate has the right to charge you what they want. To get a money order, rock up to a post office, tell them you want two money orders for $xxx each made out to The Consulate General of Spain. That’s all you need to do. No other bank details are necessary, as the post office charges you the full amount plus a fee. At the time of writing a bank cheque or bank transfer will not be accepted by the Spanish consulate!
A photocopy of the data page of your passport
Financial means (your stamped bank statement) – original for one of you plus a photocopy for your spouse
Health insurance certificate – one for each of you (we provided a printout of the electronic certificates that Sanitas sent)
Photocopy of your drivers licence (both sides). If you don’t have a licence, an original rates notice, or any other formal doc that’s addressed to you to demonstrate that you do indeed live in the area served by the consulate you’re applying to. If your bills are in your name only, fix that now – add your spouse’s name to your power account or whatever.
Now is the time to remind you to tuck away or at least scan a recent ATO notice of assessment. You will need it or something similarly formal to prove your ID with e.g. MyGov.
There are only three more documents you need, which is where our lawyer came in handy, but with a bit of gumption you should be able to do it yourself with the tips I’ve written below.
Obtain and complete the application documents
This is a bit tricky because not only are the application docs written in Spanish, but they also seem to expect answers in Spanish. Our lawyer was invaluable here. That said, I’ll carefully describe how ours were filled out – it should be easy to complete your own forms once you’ve seen how it’s done.
Go to the website. I’ll include the lengthy URL to the correct page on the Melbourne site; the Sydney site has the same info.
You need three forms in total. As of January 2025 only one could be downloaded on that site: the national visa application form. The link to the EX-01 form doesn’t work. The link to the 790-052 form works, but it’s an online form that, ironically, you can only fill out once you’ve obtained your residence ID number, which you don’t yet have! You instead need to find a PDF version of it.
The solution is to get all three forms from the horse’s mouth. I emailed the Melbourne consulate and soon received:
Application for long-term visa (solicitud de visado nacional) – in English and Spanish
Residence application (solicitud de autorización de residencia), otherwise known as EX-01 – in Spanish only
Form 790/052 (the payment form) – Spanish only.
Please do your best to find the latest version of these. If you get stuck you can download them below – but I can’t guarantee they’re current.
Here’s how to fill them in.
Application for long-term visa (solicitud de visado nacional)
This one is in English as well as Spanish, so I don’t need to guide you much here.
That said, make sure your passport photo is glued, not stapled, to the box with something like Bostick craft glue.
Here are some notes on sections that could trip you up …
Section 19. Leave it blank. This is probably because to get a non-lucrative visa you are supposed not to be working, so leaving this blank might prevent the raising of a flag somewhere.
Section 20. Tick the first box ‘Non-lucrative residence or residence without a labour purpose’.
Section 21. We just stuck in the month after our application date ‘Noviembre’. Some seem to have successfully nominated a specific date in the future, to enable them more control over the entry date; if you nominate a date, say two months in the future, your 30-day window for entry would begin on that date. Much better.
Section 22. Number of entries required = 1 (because each person does their own form).
Section 23. The city you’ll be living in.
Section 27. Write the location of your consulate as the place (as you did with the residency application), and date.
Section 28. Sign here.
Form EX-01 – Solicitud de autorización de residencia temporal no lucrativa
Fill in a separate form for each of you.
SECTION 1
Pasaporte. Your passport number.
N.I.E. Leave blank.
1er Apellido. Surname. There’s also a field for 2er Appelido because Spanish people have two surnames. Leave that one blank.
Nombre. First and middle names.
Sexo. H for male (hombre), M for woman (mujer). There’s no binary option.
Fecha de nacimiento. Date of birth in the format DD/MM/YYYY.
Lugar. Your Australian city and state.
Nacionalidad. Australiano (for men), Australiana (for women)
Estado civil. Presuming you’re married, tick the second box C (casado)
Nombre del padre. Your father’s full name.
Nombre de la madre. Mother’s full name.
Domicilio en España / Nº / Piso. Leave blank.
Localidad. The city you’re moving to e.g. Jerez de la Frontera.
C.P. Post code. Leave blank.
Provincia. E.g. Andalucía. Look up your city’s province.
Teléfono móvil. Leave blank, unless you already have a Spanish number.
E-mail. Your preferred contact email.
Representante legal, en su caso / DNI / NIE / PAS / Titulo. Leave blank.
Hijas/os a cargo en edad de escolarización en España. Dependent children of school age. Tick Sí if yes, No if not.
SECTIONS 2 AND 3
Leave blank, except for …
Nombre y apellidos del titular. Your full name.
SECTION 4
Tick INICIAL
Tick Otros and write RESIDENCIA NO LUCRATIVA
The dotted lines at the end of the form should be filled out like this …
MELBOURNE [or the city of your consulate, not where you live), a 11 de OCTUBRE de 2025 (the current date in this format).
For a bit of flair, Google-Translate the month you’re signing, though it surely won’t matter that it’s in English.
FIRMA DEL SOLICITANTE. Your signature.
Tasa 790-052
HOLD IT! THE 790-052 FORM IS CAUSING PROBLEMS ALL OVER. SINCE AN UPDATE TO FEES ON 20 MAY 2025 SOME CONSULATES ARE REFUSING TO PROCESS THE CURRENT FORM. STAND BY FOR AN UPDATE SOON (HOPEFULLY).
Ejercicio. The current year.
N.I.F / C.I.F. / N.I.E. Your passport number.
Apellidos y nombre o razón social. Full name.
Nacionalidad. Australiano (for a man), Australiana (woman).
Provincia. (Leave the other address and telephone fields blank) E.g. Andalucía.
Autoliquidación. Tick PRINCIPAL.
Datos de la Autoliquidación Principal si es complementaria. Leave both fields blank.
Tarifa segunda: autorizaciones. In section 1, tick option C: Autorización inicial de residencia temporal.
Declarante. En: City of your consulate, date. Firma: your signature.
Ingreso. Importe euros: Write the amount your consulate tells you to write (don’t listen to anyone else). You can write the current fee, e.g.
$488 AUSTRALIANOS
Forma de pago: Tick the first box ‘En efectivo’ (it means in cash, hence the need for a money order).
The next page is identical. Fill it out and sign and date it too.
The third page is virtually the same too, but in the Municipio box we wrote $488 AUSTRALIANOS. The boxes at the end of the page, same as before.
Arrange all your documents in the correct order
This is important, apparently. Carefully arrange your document like this, from top to bottom. If there are two of you, you will be building two document piles.
Money order
Passport
Form EX-01
Solicitud de visado
Tasa 790-052
Photocopy of the data page of your passport
Financial means (stamped/signed bank statement) – one person presents the original, the other a photocopy
Health insurance certificate
Apostilled criminal record check (original)
Translation of criminal record check (stamped by translator)
Medical certificate (original)
Translation of medical certificate (stamped by translator)
Apostilled marriage certificate
Translation of marriage certificate (stamped by translator) – one person presents the original, the other a photocopy
Photocopy of your drivers licence (both sides)
Proof of address – one person presents the original, the other a photocopy
Bung each pile into separate A4 envelope or folder and label it with your name.
Post your application and hope for the best
Assuming you will be posting your application to your local consulate and not attending an interview, head to the post office and buy two Express Platinum Australia Post satchels (satchels are the tough plastic ones).
Into one of the express/platinum satchels bung the two sets of application documents and the second satchel that you’ve carefully labelled with a return address. The need for the self-addressed envelope is unclear to me. We had incorrectly hoped that it was for the consulate to send us back all our documents including the approved visas, but it turned out that we had to fly to Melbourne to collect them in person. Jess’s guess is that the envelope is for the event that your application is unsuccessful – it would be pretty cruel to make you fly to Melbourne to collect your stuff and not even receive a visa!
Update January 2024: I’ve heard that some Australians going through the Melbourne consulate did not need to attend in person but instead had their paperwork mailed back to them! Bliss, if true. I hope this is the case for you. Please let me know so I can update this guide.
After submitting
A couple of days after we posted our application, we got a brief email saying that the applications had arrived. Hazzah. There’s lots of info out there that says you’ll receive an application number that you can use to track progress, but we didn’t get that. Now it was time to wait.
Update January 2025: Good news for Sydneysiders. Someone has reported that they called into the consulate to ask if they could temporarily have their passport back so they could travel during the wait for approval. No problem. He just had to drop it back in after approval to have the passport stamped. I’m not sure about this in Melbourne; the news also isn’t much use to those of us from remote locations.
Things to do when your application is approved
Five weeks after submission we received a very unceremonious email saying that our visas have been issued. Then came some ambiguous instruction about making an appointment to collect them. Subsequent email exchanges revealed that ‘appointment’ at the Melbourne consulate is a loose term, and we could pretty much turn up any time before 2pm on a day of our choosing to grab our visas.
The consulate is just a reception office. We were out after about 20 minutes of waiting with a bunch of other people, having signed a couple of documents and had our licences photocopied.
The visa itself isn’t a grand certificate, it’s just a sticker plonked into an empty page in your passport.
The sticker will state the 90-day condition – your arrival-in-Spain deadline – but the most important bit of the visa stamp, in tiny writing, is your new NIE (número de identidad de extranjero, which translates roughly to foreigner identification number). This is not to be confused with your ultimate goal – the TIE (which is a physical card) – but the number itself will become bound to you for all of Spanish eternity.
Record and memorise your NIE (pronounced nee-ye) or, better still, have it tattooed on the back of your hand. For bonus points, learn to say the number out loud in the Spanish alphabet. Every delivery driver in Spain will ask you for it.
You’ll also get the rest of your submitted paperwork back. Keep it and bring it to Spain with you.
There’s a bit more work to do, but it’s all a little less stressful from here on in.
Open a Wise account
Wise seems to be one of the best ways to transfer money from Australia to Spain and is far cheaper than doing it through your own bank. You can open a Wise account from Australia online.
You simply deposit e.g. $10,000 AUD into your (as yet unopened) Spanish bank using Wise as a kind of middle man. It’s far cheaper than transferring using an Australian bank. Some Aussie banks will try to fool you with low international transfer fees, but they’ll bite you hard with exchange rate. Wise charges a fee for each transfer (around $40 AUD for a transfer of $10,000 into euros) but the exchange rate will be at the current market rate! It works out far cheaper.
You’ll use this mainly after you’ve opened your own account in Spain, but we also needed it to transfer stuff like our rental deposit to our Spanish landlord before we arrived. Wise will also give you a debit card (and a virtual card for your phone) that makes ATM withdrawals far cheaper than using your Australian bank card, which is useful for before you have a Spanish bank account.
Get the Wise app for your phone, too. It’s nice to know you can transfer a few grand if you get caught short while out and about.
Don’t bother trying to open a Spanish bank account yet
We did not find a way to open an account with a Spanish bank from Australia, though at one time it seems to have been possible. This is annoying because it seems that to pay for utilities and a whole bunch of other stuff, the usual way is with – and only with – direct debit through a local bank. They’re looking for an account with a Spanish IBAN (international bank account number) and you can’t get one of those from outside of Spain. Even the Wise account gives you a Belgian IBAN, which isn’t good enough. There’s more on opening a bank account in Spain in my next guide – but there’s nothing you can do about it until you get to Spain.
Update January 2025: Someone in a forum claims to have opened an N26 bank account from Australia using a VPN set to a Spanish region. What with all the money-laundering laws we were reluctant to try that.
Raise your Australian bank’s international limit
We’re with NAB and we luckily realised in time that our default daily international transfer limit was only $5000, even if you use a middleman like Wise to do your transfers. When it came time to pay the deposit for our apartment we needed way more than that in one go: three months’ rent, or nearly €6000 ($9300 AUD at the time). Call your bank and they’ll raise your international limit – you can do it over the phone.
I would advise against obtaining one of the bank’s cards for overseas travel. Just use Wise. It’s a far better deal (low fees, better exchange rate, use at any ATM).
Install authenticator apps
You don’t realise how much you rely on your mobile phone for e.g. two-factor authentication! Since our plan was ultimately to ditch our Australian mobile numbers once we’d arrived in Spain it made sense to look for alternative methods for logging in to a bank account.
Some banks have ‘authenticator’ apps, which are synced with the bank app. Even MyGov has one. With the authenticator app, when you log in to your bank account on your computer or phone you simply enter the random number generated in your app. There’s no need to receive a text message.
Alternatively, your bank might be able to supply a small token thingy that does the same job. Now is the time to ask.
But you won’t catch them all, and some institutions don’t have an authenticator system. I had to call a couple of our institutions from Spain and change my phone number after we’d obtained a Spanish SIM card. It can be a tedious process – but even a €10 monthly prepaid SIM card comes with hundreds of minutes of international calls so it’s not a big deal.
Download WhatsApp
Seriously, everyone in Europe uses it and little else. Service providers, real estate agents, restaurants and your friends are unreachable without it. You’ll be able to switch it to your new Spanish phone number once you get it.
THE END.
If you’d like to know how to set up your new life in Spain, read my next guide So you’ve moved to Spain.
