Apostille for Spain: Which Documents Need One and How to Get It

Spain will not accept a foreign document in a visa or residency file unless it carries the Hague Apostille, and in almost every case a sworn translation into Spanish alongside it. That sounds like ordinary paperwork. In practice it is the step that decides whether your appointment goes ahead or you fly home and start again. This page covers which documents need an apostille, who issues it in your country, the order the two steps have to happen in, and how we take the whole thing off your hands.

Quick answer: does Spain require an apostille on your documents?

Yes, for any public document issued outside Spain that you are submitting to a Spanish consulate, immigration office or registry. Spain is one of the 130 contracting parties to the Hague Apostille Convention, so a single apostille from the country that issued your document replaces the old chain of consular legalisation. Most documents then need a sworn translation into Spanish, and the two steps happen in a fixed order.

• Who issues it: the competent authority in the country where the document was issued. Never Spain.
• What it proves: that the signature, seal or stamp is genuine. It says nothing about whether the content is true.
• Also required: a sworn (jurada) translation into Spanish by a translator on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs list.
• Order: apostille the original first, translate second. Never the other way round.
• Validity: the apostille itself does not expire. The document underneath it usually does.

The rule that catches most people out

The apostille has to come from the country that issued the document. A birth certificate issued in Ohio is apostilled in Ohio. A British marriage certificate is apostilled by the FCDO in the United Kingdom. You cannot carry a foreign document to Spain and have a Spanish authority stamp it here, and the UK government says so in plain words in its own legalisation guidance: “You cannot get documents issued outside the UK legalised using this service, get them legalised in the country they were issued.”

We put this first because it is the most expensive misunderstanding we see. Every few weeks someone arrives in Spain with a folder of pristine originals, planning to sort the legalisation once they land. There is no way to do that. The documents have to go home, get apostilled, and come back.

Which documents need an apostille for a Spanish visa

The exact list depends on your route and on the consulate handling your file, but this is the core set behind almost every application we prepare.

The criminal record certificate goes by a different name in each country, and picking the wrong one costs weeks. In the United States it is the FBI Identity History Summary. In the United Kingdom it is the ACRO Police Certificate, which is the version issued for use abroad. A DBS check is built for domestic UK employment, which is why applicants are asked for the ACRO instead. In Canada it is the RCMP criminal record check.

Our page on the medical certificate of good health sets out the exact wording consulates accept, which is worth reading before your GP writes anything, because a certificate with the wrong phrasing still gets apostilled and still gets rejected.

The order matters: apostille first, translation second

The apostille goes on the original document. The sworn translation is then made from the apostilled original, so that the translation reproduces the apostille as well as the text underneath it.

Doing it the other way round is the most common wasted expense in this whole process. Translate first and you end up with an apostille attached to a translation, and an original carrying nothing at all. That file comes back.

One more detail that trips people up. The translation has to be done by a traductor jurado appointed by the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and listed on its official register. A certified translation, a notarised translation, or a very good translation by a bilingual friend are all different things, and none of them is accepted.

Getting the apostille from the United States

Two different authorities handle this, and which one you need depends on who issued the document.

State documents. Birth certificates, marriage certificates, death certificates and state level records are apostilled by the Secretary of State of the state that issued them. Each state runs its own form, fee and turnaround, and they differ more than you would expect. California, New York, Florida, Texas and Illinois are five separate processes.

Federal documents. The FBI Identity History Summary, which is the criminal record check nearly every Spanish route asks for, is a federal document. It is apostilled by the US Department of State Office of Authentications, not by any state. According to the Department of State, the fee is 20 dollars per apostille and processing is currently running at approximately four to six weeks.

That last figure is the one to build your calendar around. Add the time to obtain the FBI check itself, then four to six weeks for the apostille, then the sworn translation, and you can see why we ask American clients for their appointment date before we discuss anything else. Requirements also vary between posts, so check which one covers you on our list of Spanish consulates in the United States.

Getting the apostille from the United Kingdom

The FCDO Legalisation Office is the only body that issues an apostille on a UK document. It runs four service levels, and the gap between them is measured in weeks.

Return courier is charged on top of the standard service: GBP 6 to a UK address, GBP 32 to European countries including Spain, and GBP 42 to the rest of the world, per 1.5kg.

The e-Apostille is the option most applicants never hear about. It is fast and it is the cheapest of the four, but the document has to be a PDF electronically signed by a UK notary or solicitor, so a paper certificate only qualifies once a notary has certified it in that form. The next day and same day services are restricted to businesses registered with the Legalisation Office. That restriction is the whole reason an agency can return a document in days while a private applicant sits in a five week queue, and it is why we route our clients’ UK documents through partners rather than the post.

Document requirements also differ between London, Manchester and Edinburgh, so confirm yours against our page on the Spanish consulates in the UK.

Getting the apostille from Canada

Canada now issues apostilles rather than the older authentication and consular legalisation chain, which makes life considerably easier for Canadian applicants. Which authority you deal with depends on where the document was issued. Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec and Saskatchewan each apostille their own provincial documents. Everything else goes to Global Affairs Canada Authentication Services. Federal documents such as the RCMP criminal record check always go to Global Affairs.

If your document was issued in Spain

This is the opposite direction, and it comes up constantly for clients who already live here and need a Spanish document abroad.

Competence sits with the Ministerio de la Presidencia, Justicia y Relaciones con las Cortes for judicial and administrative documents. Notarial documents follow a different path: the Ministry is explicit that only the Colegios Notariales can apostille those, so a deed or a power of attorney signed before a notary goes to the notarial college, not to the Ministry.

A Spanish document used inside Spain needs no apostille at all. And between EU member states, Regulation (EU) 2016/1191 removed the legalisation requirement for a list of public documents including birth, marriage and criminal record certificates, so an apostille is often unnecessary within the Union. That regulation does not reach the United Kingdom, which is why British documents still need the FCDO.

Documents that cannot be apostilled

The Convention does not cover everything, and Spain’s guidance names two exclusions directly: documents issued by diplomatic or consular officials, and administrative documents relating directly to a commercial or customs operation.

Passports and identity cards sit outside it too. What can be apostilled is a notarised copy of the passport, not the passport itself, which is a distinction that surprises people at the counter.

What actually gets documents rejected

• The translation apostilled instead of the original.
• A translation done by someone who is not on the sworn translator register.
• A DBS check sent instead of an ACRO certificate.
• A document whose own validity window has closed while the apostille was in the queue. The stamp lasts forever; a criminal record check or a medical certificate does not.
• Photocopies apostilled instead of originals, or an apostille attached to the wrong page of a multi page document.
• Starting the apostille after the appointment is booked rather than before.

We handle the apostille and the sworn translation for you

Our clients do not manage this themselves, and there is a practical reason for that beyond convenience. We work with partner providers registered for the fast apostille services, and with sworn translators on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs register, so the whole chain runs as a single job. When it is split across three suppliers, each one waits on the other and nobody owns the deadline.

What that looks like in practice. You tell us your route and your appointment date. We tell you which documents your file actually needs, which is often fewer than the internet suggests. The apostille goes through the fast route instead of the standard postal queue. The sworn translation is made from the apostilled original, in the right order. The complete set comes back to you ready to hand over.

We have been doing this from Barcelona since 2010, and now from Marbella and Valencia as well, today across more than a thousand Spanish residence applications a year. Most of them are American and British families, so the document chains on this page are the ones we run every week.

Send us your consulate or BLS appointment date and our advisors will work the timings backwards from it. If the date is not realistic we will tell you that straight away, along with what to do about it. Contact our team and we will come back to you within one business day.

FAQ

How quickly can I get an apostille?

It depends entirely on the issuing country and the service you use. A UK e-Apostille takes up to 2 working days, while the UK standard postal service is quoted at up to 25 working days plus courier. US federal documents are running at roughly four to six weeks at the Office of Authentications, and each US state sets its own pace. Plan for the slowest document in your file, not the fastest.

Can I do the apostille myself?

Yes. Nothing stops you applying directly to your Secretary of State, the FCDO or Global Affairs Canada, and for a single document with a distant appointment date that is a perfectly sensible choice. The reasons people hand it over are speed and sequencing: the fastest UK services are closed to private applicants, and the apostille and the sworn translation have to happen in the correct order with no gap in between.

Can any notary issue an apostille?

No, and the distinction matters. A notary authenticates a signature; the apostille is a separate certificate issued afterwards by a designated authority. In the United States a notary notarises and the Secretary of State apostilles. In the United Kingdom a notary or solicitor certifies and the FCDO apostilles. In Spain the individual notary does not issue it either: notarial documents are apostilled by the Colegio Notarial.

Can I get a foreign document apostilled in Spain?

No. The apostille is always issued by the country where the document was created. A US or UK document has to be apostilled at home before it travels, and there is no Spanish authority that can fix it once it is here.

Does an apostille expire?

The apostille itself has no expiry date. What expires is the document beneath it. Consulates apply their own validity window to criminal record certificates and medical certificates, so an apostille from last year attached to a certificate from last year is usually no help.

Do I need a sworn translation as well as the apostille?

For almost every document in a Spanish visa or residency file, yes. The exception is a document already issued in Spanish, or a bilingual document that carries the Spanish text on the same page. Everything else needs a traducción jurada by a translator on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs register.

Which visa routes need all of this?

All of the long stay routes. The document chain is the same whether you are applying for the non lucrative visa, the visa for remote workers, a student visa, a work permit or family reunification. What changes is which documents appear in the list, not how they are legalised.

Reviewed by Lucia Lagunas Reyes, immigration lawyer registered with the Pamplona Bar Association, MICAP 2572. Fees and processing times on this page were checked against the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the US Department of State, the Spanish Ministry of Justice and the Hague Conference on 29 August 2026. Official timescales change, and every file turns on its own documents.