Spain's Entrepreneur Visa: One Year From the Consulate, Three From Inside Spain

If you are moving to Spain to build something rather than to be employed by someone, the route you want is the entrepreneur authorisation under Law 14/2013, the one most people call the startup visa. It is the least understood of Spain's residence routes, and the reason is structural. It is not one procedure. It is two, they share a name and most of the paperwork, and they hand back permits that differ by two years. This post sets out both, what each one asks for, and how to work out which one is yours.

What the entrepreneur route is for

There is no minimum investment. There is no minimum number of jobs you need to promise to create. Spain's Large Companies and Strategic Groups Unit, the UGE-CE, states both plainly on its own page for this route. That makes it a different animal from the investor route, where the money is the qualification. Here the project is the qualification, so a well argued plan from a founder with very little capital can clear a bar that a wealthy applicant with a conventional business will not.

It is also not the digital nomad visa, which it gets confused with constantly. That route is for people already earning from work performed for clients or an employer outside Spain. This one is for people building the company itself, in Spain, and being judged on whether that company is worth having.

The fork nobody explains

Here is the part that catches people out. The same idea, the same founder and largely the same documents can go through two different doors, graded by different institutions, running on different clocks, handing back different permits.

• From outside Spain, you apply for an entrepreneur visa at the Spanish consulate for your district. The favourable report on your business activity is written by the Economic and Commercial Office in that consular district, or by the Directorate General for International Trade and Investments. The consulate's legal period for deciding is ten working days, and the visa it issues is valid for one year.
• From inside Spain, if you are already here legally on a valid stay or residence permit, you apply for an entrepreneur residence authorisation electronically to the UGE-CE. The favourable report is written by ENISA, the state innovation company, and the UGE-CE requests it on your behalf once your file is accepted for processing. The maximum resolution period is twenty working days, and the authorisation it issues runs for three years.

Route one, from the consulate

This is the route for someone still abroad with no Spanish permit to convert. You file in person at the consulate covering where you live.

The report on your plan does not come from ENISA on this route. It comes from the commercial and economic arm of Spain's trade administration, which is a different reader with a different frame of reference. That report also sits outside the ten day clock, which is why practitioners generally describe this route as slower in practice than its legal deadline suggests.

The documentary core is what you would expect from this family of permits, and in most cases includes:

• A passport valid for the period you are applying for
• A favourable report on the business activity from the competent economic and commercial office
• Evidence of sufficient financial means for yourself and any family joining you
• Health insurance with an insurer authorised to operate in Spain, covering medical, hospital and out of hospital costs
• A criminal record certificate from the countries you have lived in recently, typically dated no more than six months before the application

Route two, from inside Spain

If you already hold a valid stay or residence permit, a student stay included, you can normally file with the UGE-CE without leaving the country. Everything goes in electronically. If the file is accepted for processing, the unit itself asks ENISA for the report on your project, which means you are not queueing at two administrations in sequence.

What ENISA is actually reading

ENISA grades two things, and only two. Whether the activity is genuinely innovative, and whether it is scalable.

Some projects qualify almost mechanically: sustained research and development spending, public research funding in recent years, a reasoned report from the science ministry, an innovative SME seal, a recognised innovation certification. Everything else gets a qualitative read, and that read is about the plan itself. Evaluators look at whether the market is attractive and growing, how far the product has actually got, whether the business model scales rather than simply adding headcount, how the founding team's experience maps onto the problem, and whether anyone independent has put money, a signature or an order behind it.

The report is partly about you as well. The UGE-CE describes the evaluation as covering the applicant's professional profile and their involvement in the project, alongside the plan itself and the value it brings to Spain. A strong plan attached to a founder with no visible connection to it is a weak file.

The income test is smaller than most people expect

What happens after the first permit

The in country authorisation runs three years and is renewable for a further two, provided the conditions that produced it still hold and the activity is still running. That is a long runway by Spanish immigration standards, and it is the practical reason to reach for this route when it is available.

The consular visa is a different shape. It admits you for a year, and that year is meant to be spent establishing the activity you described, after which you move onto a residence authorisation from inside the country. Treat those twelve months as a runway to that conversion and the route works. Treat them as a settled permit and the renewal arrives faster than the business does.

The other ENISA file, and the 15% rate

Where this goes wrong

• Filing at a consulate while already in Spain legally, and taking one year when the same plan would have bought three.
• Treating an unfavourable report as appealable. There is no formal appeal against the assessment itself, so the realistic path is a substantially rewritten plan, and the clock starts again.
• Writing the plan for an investor rather than for an evaluator. Investors buy upside. The evaluator is checking innovation and scalability against stated criteria, and a deck that never addresses either one directly does badly.
• Leaving the criminal record certificate too late, or too long. It typically has to be dated within six months of the application, and legalisation or apostille time eats into that window.
• Assuming the innovative label survives contact with reality. Both the renewal and the emerging company status depend on the activity continuing to be the thing you described.

Which route is yours

Whichever route you end up on, the plan is the application. Everything else on the list is administration.