Spain Spouse and Partner Visa Requirements: Which Route Applies to You

One question decides everything about bringing your partner to Spain, and it is not how long you have been together. It is whether the partner already in Spain is a Spanish citizen, a citizen of another EU country, or a non-EU national holding a residence card. Those are three separate legal regimes with different paperwork, different waiting times, different money requirements and different outcomes. People who file under the wrong one lose months. This page sets out all three, from the law and from the Spanish consulates’ own published requirements, so you can tell which is yours before you spend anything.

Spain spouse visa: the three routes side by side

Read that table again if your partner is Spanish. A free application you can file from inside Spain, with no income test and a five year permit, against a paid process that requires your sponsor to have lived here a year first and makes you wait abroad. Same couple, same relationship, completely different process.

There is no fiancé visa for Spain

This is the first thing to clear up, because it sends a lot of people down a road that does not exist. Spain has no engagement or fiancé visa category, nothing equivalent to the American K-1. Being engaged, however sincerely, creates no immigration right here.

What you actually have is three ways to convert a relationship into a residence right:

• Marry, in Spain or abroad, and apply as a spouse.
• Register as a couple, the pareja de hecho, and apply as a registered partner.
• Prove a stable unregistered relationship, which is possible but held to a stricter evidentiary standard.

Everything people search for as a fiancé visa resolves into one of those three. Which one is available to you depends on the regime, and that brings us back to who your partner is.

Route one: your partner is Spanish

Since 20 May 2025 this is its own regime. Spouses and partners of Spanish citizens no longer apply for the EU family member card: they apply for the temporary residence permit for family members of Spanish nationals, set out in articles 93 to 99 of Royal Decree 1155/2024, on form EX-24. Article 94 lists who qualifies, provided you live together:

• The spouse, over 18, with no annulment or divorce and no marriage of convenience.
• The registered partner, over 18, where the union is entered in a public register in an EU or EEA state or Switzerland and the registration has not been cancelled.
• The stable partner, over 18, with no registration but at least twelve months of continuous cohabitation, inside or outside Spain. Where the couple have children together, the twelve months are not required.
• Children under 26, or older if dependent, and dependent parents, among other relatives.

How the process runs

If you are both in Spain, either of you files at the Immigration Office of your province (article 97.1.c). Being in Spain without a valid status does not stop the application: article 97.4 removes that requirement for this permit. Once the application is admitted for processing you can live in Spain and, if you are of working age, work for an employer or for yourself on a provisional basis until the decision (article 97.5, as reworded by Royal Decree 316/2026 in April 2026). That provisional permission does not apply if a similar application based on substantially the same facts has already been refused or rejected.

If you are abroad and your Spanish partner lives in Spain, your partner files at the Immigration Office and, once it is granted, you have one month to apply for the visa at the consulate, which then has fifteen days to issue it. If you both live abroad and are moving together, you apply for the visa at the consulate directly (articles 41 and 97).

The Immigration Office has two months to decide. Silence after that counts as a refusal, which can be appealed. The procedure is free and handled with priority (article 97.8). The permit lasts five years, or less if your partner will live in Spain for a shorter period, and lets you work for an employer or for yourself anywhere in Spain. There is no income threshold in article 96: what you prove is the relationship. You also provide criminal record certificates. For a spouse or registered partner a past conviction is weighed case by case rather than being an automatic bar, while an unregistered stable partner has to show a clean record (article 98.1).

If you already held a valid EU family member card through a Spanish partner on 20 May 2025, you keep your residence while you meet the conditions of the new regime, with no need to file a new application (third transitional provision). The change only affects new applications.

Route two: your partner is a citizen of another EU country

If your partner is, say, Irish, Italian or French and lives in Spain, this is governed by Royal Decree 240/2007. Articles 2 and 2 bis list who counts as a family member, whatever their own nationality:

• The spouse, provided there has been no annulment or divorce.
• The registered partner, where the union is entered in a public register in an EU or EEA state and the registration has not been cancelled.
• Direct descendants under 21, and over 21 if dependent or disabled.
• Dependent direct ascendants.
• The unregistered partner, where stable cohabitation of at least one year can be properly evidenced. Where the couple have children together, proving stable cohabitation is enough on its own.

Your partner must be registered in Spain as an EU citizen and meet article 7: working, self-employed, or holding enough resources and health insurance for the family.

How the process runs for EU partners

If your nationality requires a visa to enter Spain, you apply at the Spanish consulate covering where you live, as a family member of a Union citizen. The consulates publish the requirements, and two of them are worth knowing before you start: the visa is free of charge, and the legal period for a decision is fifteen calendar days from the day after submission, extendable to forty five if an interview or extra documents are requested.

One document catches people out. Alongside the usual passport and civil registry certificates, the consulate asks for a notarised declaration signed by the EU citizen stating their willingness to accompany or be joined by their family member. It is easy to arrange and easy to forget.

Once in Spain, you apply for the residence card at the Immigration Office of your province. Article 8 gives you three months from the date of entry to file, and you are issued a receipt immediately that proves your legal stay while the card is processed. The card itself is valid for five years, or for the EU citizen’s expected period of residence if that is shorter.

Route three: your partner is a non-EU resident in Spain

If the partner already here holds a Spanish residence card but is not an EU national, you are in family reunification under the general regime, and the burden sits on the sponsor rather than on the relationship.

The sponsor has to prove four things: a residence history in Spain, sufficient income to support the family member, a housing report confirming the home is adequate for both of you, and health insurance for the family. The residence history means having lived here for at least a year and having applied to renew the permit for at least another year, and your permit is only granted once that renewal has actually come through (article 68.1). That is why this route is not available to someone who arrived recently. Holders of permits under Law 14/2013, such as the digital nomad visa, follow their own rules and can bring a partner without that wait.

On income, the reference is 150% of the IPREM for the first family member. The IPREM has stood at 600 euros a month since 2023, so that works out at 900 euros a month of stable, documented income. The Immigration Office will typically look at the last six months of earnings and may also examine the previous year’s tax return, so a single good month does not carry it.

The sequence runs in the opposite direction to what most people expect. The sponsor in Spain files first, at the Immigration Office, while the partner waits abroad. Only once that authorisation is granted does the partner apply for the visa at the consulate, and there is a deadline: the visa application must be submitted within two months of being notified of the authorisation. The consulate then has one month to decide and issue the visa (article 40.3). The visa has to be collected within one month of being notified, and the partner then has one month to enter Spain. From entry, the permit runs to the same date as the sponsor’s, with a minimum of one year (article 68.9).

One line from the consular requirements is worth quoting because it surprises people from countries where the position differs: reunification cannot be offered to more than one spouse or partner.

Pareja de hecho: registering as partners in Spain

Spain has no single partnership register. Each region, and sometimes the town hall, runs its own pareja de hecho register and sets its own conditions: both of you of age, neither married nor registered with someone else, registered on the padrón in that region, and in some regions a minimum period living together. Check the rules of your region before you book an appointment.

For immigration purposes, what counts is that the union is entered in a public register and that the registration is still in force. For a Spanish partner, a stable relationship proved through twelve months of cohabitation works too, without any registration.

Partnerships registered abroad only count as registered partnerships if the register is in an EU or EEA country, or Switzerland for a Spanish partner. A domestic partnership from a US state, for example, does not count as a registration, although it helps to prove a stable relationship. Either way, a foreign certificate needs the Hague Apostille and a sworn Spanish translation before a Spanish official will read it. Getting that chain right, in the right order, is where a lot of otherwise straightforward files stall.

Unmarried couples: what each route asks for

You do not have to be married, but what you have to prove changes with the regime.

With a Spanish partner, a stable partner needs at least twelve months of continuous cohabitation, inside or outside Spain, or children in common.

Under the EU regime, an unregistered partner needs stable cohabitation of at least one year, properly evidenced. Where there are children in common, proving stable cohabitation is sufficient without the one year requirement.

Under the general regime, an unregistered partner needs at least twelve months of continuous cohabitation, inside or outside Spain, or children in common (article 66.1.b of Royal Decree 1155/2024). The relationship no longer has to have started before your partner moved to Spain. That condition belonged to the old regulation and went with it in May 2025, although many guides still repeat it.

Where a couple falls short on either test, registering as a pareja de hecho first is usually the cleaner route. It replaces an evidence exercise that an official has to weigh with a formal legal act that they simply verify.

What gets these applications refused

• Filing under the wrong regime. The single most expensive mistake, and the reason this page starts with the table rather than the paperwork.
• Filing for the EU family member card when your partner is Spanish. Since May 2025 that is no longer the route for new applications.
• Foreign documents without apostille or sworn translation, or translated before being apostilled, which is the wrong order.
• Cohabitation evidence that does not cover twelve continuous months.
• Income that clears 900 euros in one month but not across six.
• Missing the two month window to apply for the visa after the reunification authorisation is granted.
• Names or dates that do not match across passport, birth certificate and partnership certificate.

How we handle these files

The first conversation we have with a couple is not about documents. It is about establishing which regime applies, because that answer changes the timeline, the cost and sometimes whether the application is possible at all right now. Where the partner in Spain is a recent arrival on a non-EU permit, the honest advice is often to wait or to look at a different route entirely, and we would rather say that in the first call than after you have paid for translations.

Where the route is clear, the work is in the evidence. Making sure the partnership register you use produces the legal effect you need. Getting the apostille and the sworn translation done in the right order. Building a cohabitation file that answers the question an official is actually asking rather than simply being thick. And keeping the sequence tight, because the two month visa window after authorisation is real and it is missed more often than you would think.

My Spain Visa has been filing Spanish residence applications since 2010, from Barcelona, Marbella and Valencia, and our lawyers bring more than fifteen years of experience in the sector. We file over a thousand applications a year, most of them for American and British families.

Tell us who your partner is, where each of you is right now, and whether you are married, registered or neither. That is enough for our advisors to tell you which route you are on and what it realistically takes. Contact our team and we will come back to you within one business day.

FAQ

Is there a fiancé visa for Spain?

No. Spain has no engagement or fiancé visa category. To bring a partner you have to marry, register as a pareja de hecho, or evidence a stable unregistered relationship to the standard your regime requires.

How long does a Spain spouse visa take?

It depends entirely on the regime. With a Spanish partner, the Immigration Office has two months to decide the permit, and if you are abroad the consulate then has fifteen days to issue the visa. As the family member of another EU citizen, the consulate has fifteen calendar days to decide, extendable to forty five. Under the general regime, the sponsor’s authorisation is processed first at the Immigration Office, which has two months, and the consulate then has one month for the visa, so the realistic total is considerably longer.

Is there an unmarried partner visa in Spain?

Yes, in all three regimes, on similar terms. With a Spanish partner, and under the general regime, you need a registered partnership, twelve months of continuous cohabitation, or children in common. Under the EU regime you need a registered partnership, stable cohabitation of at least a year, or children in common.

How much do I have to earn to bring my spouse to Spain?

Under the general regime, 150% of the IPREM for the first family member, which at the current IPREM of 600 euros a month is 900 euros a month, shown as stable documented income rather than a single payment. With a Spanish partner there is no income threshold in the regulation. Under the EU regime there is no fixed figure either; what is assessed is whether the EU citizen works or has enough resources.

Does the visa cost anything if my partner is Spanish?

No. The permit procedure for family members of Spanish citizens is free under article 97.8, and so is the visa. A small service charge applies if you choose to submit through a visa application centre rather than at the consulate.

Can I marry in Spain and apply from here?

Marrying in Spain is possible and the civil registry has its own requirements and waiting times, separate from immigration. Whether you can then apply from inside Spain rather than returning home depends on your regime and your current status, and it is one of the points worth settling before you book anything.

What if my partner is Spanish but has never lived in another EU country?

Then you are in the Spanish family member regime: form EX-24 and articles 93 to 99 of Royal Decree 1155/2024. If your Spanish partner has lived and worked in another EU country and is coming back with you, EU free movement rules may apply instead. It is a common scenario and one where getting the classification right at the start saves the most time.

Reviewed by Lucia Lagunas Reyes, immigration lawyer registered with the Pamplona Bar Association, MICAP 2572. Articles 93 to 99 of Royal Decree 1155/2024, as amended in 2026, and articles 2, 2 bis, 7 and 8 of Royal Decree 240/2007 were checked against the consolidated text in the Boletín Oficial del Estado, and the visa requirements against the published requirements of the Spanish consular network, on 25 September 2026. Requirements vary between consulates and every couple is assessed on its own documents, so this page is general information rather than advice on your file.