There are two main healthcare requirements for the Non-Lucrative Visa.   Firstly you must be free from any of the diseases listed under the International Health Regulations 2005, and secondly you need to have unrestricted access to healthcare in Spain.

Doctors Letter or Medical Certificate for a Non-Lucrative Visa Application

The first requirement is satisfied by obtaining a Doctors letter or medical certificate.  The Doctors letter or medical certificate can be provided by your own GP, or a private Doctor either in the UK or Spain.  The letter or certificate has to be signed by the issuing doctor, have their medical practice stamp, and their registration number.  In the UK this is known as a GMC (General Medical Council) number.

The padrón de habitantes, is a municipal register of inhabitants maintained by the town hall.

All full-time resident in Spain are required by law to register on the ‘padrón’, and certificate is the most widely accepted official proof of address.

If you’ve arrived in Spain with a residency visa, it’s one of, if not the first things you’ll need to do, as you need the registration certificate to apply for your TIE.

Registering on the ‘padrón’ helps the local town hall to apply for funds from central government to bolster their municipal budgets.  More registrants equals more funds. For this reason, many town halls are keen to get more inhabitants to register on their ‘padrón’, and often campaign to persuade more people to do so.  In touristic and popular holiday home areas such as the Costa del Sol, these campaigns are often targeted at the high numbers of foreigners who have holiday homes in the locality.

Aside from the potential benefits to the area where you live being registered on the ‘padrón’ is useful for a number of other purposes. These include proof of address, entitlement to local and reduced price services, and eligibility for subsidised rates of locally collected taxes – IBI.   For these reasons, many non-resident property owners also register on the ‘padrón’.

This can cause issues for part time residents, if or when they take up full time residency.  Town Hall’s will maintain that there are are no tax implications, for being registered, however tax authorities can and do associate being on the with being resident in Spain.  For example a holiday home owner who has just become a permanent resident in Spain, may find themselves being denied a exemption from customs or registration taxes when importing their own personal vehicle in Spain, simply because the ‘padrón’ entry shows that the date they first registered pre-dates their actual date of becoming a Spanish resident.

The ‘padrón’ certificate is valid for 3 months and when you need a new certificate, you just go back and get one of if your town hall is on the electronic register system, you can get a up to date one online using your digital certificate.  You only have to re-register every 2 or 5 years depending on your situation and nationality.

The process for registering on the ‘padrón’ varies from one place to the next and you may need some or all of the following:

• application form
• your passport
• your TIE / NIE or residency certificate
• copy of your Escritura (house deeds)
• or Rental contract and utility bill

Most town halls now have an online booking system where you book you appointment first and then go and register.

In a lot towns they issue the certificate straight away, however in some places you have to go back a week or two later to collect it.  A few small towns also carry out a check by sending a local police office to visit the address to verify that you are living at there!

The are quite a few steps and costs involved to import and register and car from a non-EU country in Spain.

First and foremost EU conformity, import and registration costs must be taken into account as these can make the import and registration in Spain impossible or too expensive to be worth while.

This said, under EU rules if you are moving from a non-EU country to live in an EU country, such as Spain, you can bring your possessions including cars, and avoid paying the costly duties and taxes and having to pay for expensive EU conformity certification.

These transfer of residence rules give you up to12 months form the date you get your residency to import your car and avoid paying customs and VAT.  However you only have 60 days from the date you take up residency, to register your car and avoid registration tax (if it applies).  

Importing a high value car from the UK in Spain post Brexit, now comes with added costs.  As the UK is no longer in the EU and the standard process to import and register a UK car in Spain now involves customs.

This means on top of the registration tax which in most cases will be 17% of the vehicle value, 10% customs duty and 21% VAT will apply, unless you can find away around it.

Paying nearly £50k to register a £100k motor is simply not a consideration.  There are however various ways these huge costs can be avoided, bringing the cost of importing and registering high value cars in Spain down to a few thousand Euros, rather than tens of thousands.

Spain’s Golden Visa offers residency to individuals who make a real estate investment in Spain of €500,000 or more.  The Golden Visa scheme has been in existence since September 2013 when legislation for the ‘residency by investment scheme’ was passed.  The aim being to attract foreign investors at a time when the economy of Spain was not in a very good place.  Since it’s inception, over 25,000 foreign investors have benefited from the scheme.

The scheme is open to nationals from non-EU or third countries, and has so far been most popular with investors from China, Russia and the USA.

What does Spain’s Golden Visa Offer Property Investors?

Nationals of non-EU countries require a visa to enter Spain, if the stay is intended to be more than 90 days.  The Schengen visa in most cases cannot be used to apply for residency in Spain.

There is an exception when an immediate family member is joining a family member who already lives in Spain and holds Spanish residency.   In all other circumstances a citizen of a non-EU country must apply for, and obtain a long stay visa through the Spanish Embassy in their home country.

Since UK has now left the EU, UK citizens / British nationals also have to apply for a visa if they want to live or work in Spain.

Once the visa has been issued, the applicant can travel to Spain and apply for residency and get their TIE, ‘tarjeta de identidad de extranjero‘.

The following is a summary of the main types of long stay visas that citizens of non-EU countries can apply for.

In Spain, the periodic road worthiness inspection, is the ITV. (Inspeccion Tecnica de Vehiculos – Vehicle Technical Inspection).  Like the UK MoT test, it’s mandatory for all road going vehicles, and driving without a valid ITV can result in fines.

When Does The ITV have to be done?

The frequency of the ITV test depends on the age and type of vehicle.  New cars are first tested after 4 years and must be inspected every 2 years thereafter, until they reach 10 years of age. Any car over 10 years of age has to be tested annually.

Motorcycles, mopeds and quad bikes are first tested after 5 years, after which the test is due every 2 years. Caravans are first tested at 6 years, after which the test is due every 2 years.

If a vehicle has been involved in a serious accident, it also has to undergo an ITV assessment after being repaired, to confirm its road worthiness.

Registering Classic Cars in Spain

The process of assigning a registration number to a Classic Car in Spain is more or less the same as that for a normal car.  However the car will have to go through more vigorous checks before it can be passed.  There is no differentiation in regard to age of vehicle and the registration number issued.  So a 50 year old classic Ferrari brought to Spain from another country, and a brand new Nissan Micra, could end up with consecutively numbered plates.

This is quite different to the UK for example, where vehicle registration numbers have a year marker, so you can know the cars are from the number plate.  Spanish vehicle registration numbers have no age identifier.

From a Classic Car perspective, this means that, if you’re bringing your pride and joy 1964 Mercedes SL to Spain, when you register it, you will end up with a registration number that doesn’t fit with the age of the car.  The registration will be just like any other regular new cars registered at the same time. Not great for prestige.

Spain does not have a system to issue personalised licence plates.  It does however have a system to identify and recognise Classic Cars.  Cars that qualify can achieve the status of being certified as a ‘historical vehicle’.  Classic Cars with this status can be registered with historical licence plates, so the owner can enjoy the kudos of having their beloved motor officially recognised and marked as a Classic Car.

Getting ‘historical vehicle’ status for a Classic Car, also brings with the added perks of cheaper insurance, longer gaps between ITV´s and road tax exemption.

The starting qualifying criteria is the age of the car, the qualifying age being 30 years.  The age for a Classic Car in Spain used to be 25 years, however was changed to 30 years in May 2018.  This change was not retrospective.  Classic Cars that already had historical number plates kept them.

The Convenio Especial is Social Security scheme which allows individuals who don’t otherwise qualify Spanish state healthcare, to make voluntary social security payments to access the system.

You can apply to register in the Convenio Especial scheme in your region, if you have been resident in Spain for 12 months.

The Convenio Especial social security payment is €60 per month if you are under 65, and €157 for those over 65, and gives you full access to the Spanish state healthcare system.  Pre-existing conditions are covered, however, general pharmaceutical prescriptions, ortho-prosthetics, dietary prescriptions and non-urgent medical transport are not.

What’s required to apply for Healthcare under the Convenio Especial?

You’ll need the following:

• Application form*
• Passport
• NIE, residency certificate or TIE (some places will not accept NIE – only green residency certificate or TIE)
• Padron Certificate
• Proof of non-entitlement to healthcare provided by another country

*Note – each autonomous region has its’s own application form and process.  Below is is a link to the form for the region of Andalucia: