Spain's EU Family Card: EX-19, EX-24, and Which One Is Actually Yours

Two cards, and one of them changed in 2025

Which of the three regimes is yours

• Your family member is an EU, EEA or Swiss citizen who is not Spanish: the EU regime, Royal Decree 240/2007, form EX-19.
• Your family member is a Spanish national: the general regulation, Royal Decree 1155/2024, form EX-24.
• Your family member is a non-EU foreigner holding a Spanish residence permit: neither of the above. That is family reunification, a separate procedure with its own income threshold.

What the EU citizen has to prove

The file is not really about you. It is about whether your family member is genuinely exercising a right of residence in Spain, and almost every document in the folder exists to answer that question. Under current rules the EU citizen normally has to fall into one of four situations.

• Employed in Spain.
• Self employed in Spain.
• Holding sufficient financial resources for the family, plus public or private health insurance equivalent to the national health system.
• Enrolled as a student at a recognised institution, with health insurance and a declaration of sufficient resources.

There is no published income table here, which tends to surprise people arriving from the family reunification world, where the threshold sits at 150 percent of IPREM, currently 900 euros a month for a couple with 300 euros for each additional person. The EU regime asks a softer and vaguer question instead: whether the family would become an unreasonable burden on Spain's social assistance system, assessed case by case. In practice a Spanish employment contract and a payslip close that question far faster than a bank balance does.

Who counts as family under the EU route

• The spouse, provided the marriage has not been dissolved and there is no legal separation.
• A partner registered in a public register, where neither of you is simultaneously married to someone else.
• An unregistered partner in a proven stable relationship, generally evidenced by at least one continuous year of living together, or any length of time where there are children in common.
• Direct descendants under 21, or over 21 where they live at the sponsor's expense or are incapacitated.
• Direct ascendants who live at the sponsor's expense.

The unregistered partner route is real and it is used, but it is also where files fall apart most often. A padrón history showing both names at the same address, a joint lease, and a full year of it, is the evidence that actually carries. Screenshots and photographs are not.

Two separate three month clocks

Foreign documents, and the marriage or birth certificate above all, generally need an apostille or consular legalisation plus a translation by a sworn translator. That is the step that adds weeks, and it happens in the country that issued the document rather than in Spain. Starting it before you fly is the cheapest single thing you can do for this application.

The fee, and why the number keeps moving

You can usually work before the card arrives

Articles 12.2 and 14.4 of Royal Decree 240/2007 say that applying for the card does not obstruct your stay in Spain or the activities you carry on, and that beneficiaries of the regime may prove their status by any means admitted in law. The receipt issued the moment you file evidences your legal situation until the physical card is delivered. The practical effect is that a family member of an EU citizen can generally start work, employed or self employed, from the day the application goes in, with no separate work authorisation to obtain first.

Employers routinely do not know this, and a hiring manager looking at a paper receipt instead of a plastic card will often stall. A printed copy of the receipt together with the article references tends to settle it in one conversation. Where it does not, the delay is a human resources policy rather than a legal restriction, which is a much easier problem to escalate.

If your sponsor is Spanish, three things change

The list of eligible relatives is also drawn more widely. Children under 26, or over that age where they are dependent or have a disability. Ascendants who show they live in the sponsor's care and lack family support in their country of origin. The parent or guardian of a Spanish minor. A relative up to the second degree caring for a dependent Spanish national. Since Royal Decree 316/2026, in force from 16 April 2026, adult children and first degree ascendants of a Spanish national may also apply from inside Spanish territory rather than through a consulate.

Five years in, the card changes shape

Where these applications actually come apart

• Filing family reunification when the sponsor is an EU citizen. It is a different regime, a longer wait, and an income test that was never going to apply.
• A marriage certificate that is apostilled but not translated by a sworn translator, or translated but never apostilled. Both halves are usually needed.
• A sponsor who is registered in Spain but cannot evidence any of the four grounds. The common version is a remote worker paid from abroad with no Spanish contract and no private health policy.
• Assuming the age limit of 26 applies to a child of an EU citizen. Under the EU route the sheet still says 21.
• Leaving the apostille and sworn translation until after arrival, then watching the three month filing window close around them.

None of this is hard in the way a visa file is hard. It is a short procedure, with a small fee and a strong legal basis sitting behind it. What makes it go wrong is filing under the wrong rule book, and that decision gets made long before any paperwork is gathered. If you are not certain which of the three regimes your family sits in, that is the question worth settling first, because everything downstream of it is cheap by comparison.