Golden visa in Spain - Dsicontinued, but Alternatives Exist

The Golden Visa has been eliminated--but there are still legal ways to live or invest in Spain.

As of April 3, 2025, the legal framework that allowed residence in Spain through investment, known as the Golden Visa, has been officially repealed.

Organic Law 1/2025 removed the articles that regulated this visa. Therefore, no new applications or renewals can be submitted.

Don’t worry. At Strong Abogados, we continue to offer solutions for moving to Spain. We advise international clients on the legal alternatives available for living or investing in Spain.

What has changed?

The Spanish Golden Visa, often referred to as the Property Visa, was active between 2013 and 2025, and previously granted automatic residency in Spain to non-EU citizens who invested a minimum of 500,000€ in Spanish Real Estate.

The Spanish Golden Visa (or "Property Visa") grants automatic residency in Spain when you purchase property for 500,000€ or more. This can be any type of property: home, commercial, land, or a combination of properties. As opposed to the wealth visa, the golden visa does not require you to be in Spain 183 days of the year.

The golden visa required candidates to fulfill the following requirements:

You must invest 500,000€ in a property. (There are other lesser used options, such as investing 1,000,000€ in shares of Spanish companies or 2,000,000€ in Spanish public debt.)
You must be over 18 years old.
You must have a police clearance certificate showing that you have not had a police record during the last five years.
You must provide a medical certificate, and have medical insurance valid in Spain.
You must show sufficient means to support yourself and your family.

The steps to getting a golden visa consisted of:

You came to Spain with your travel visa and looking for a property.
Once the pre-agreement (contrato de arras) was signed and corresponding funds were deposited, you could apply for the golden visa.
If your golden visa application got accepted, you received a visa for one year.
After receiving your golden visa, you could keep renewing the visa, as long as you did not sell your property.

Please see our property guide to understand the steps to buying a property.

In 2015, the golden visa experienced an easing in the criteria for its concession and renewal. This has helped overcome the bureaucratic hurdles that characterized the prior procedure. The government has also expanded the beneficiaries to include unmarried couples (parejas de hecho) and children of the buyers who are over 18.

Strong Abogados offers a combined golden visa service to perform all the legal work involved in the property purchase ("conveyancing") as well as the work to obtain residency in Spain. We have longstanding expertise in both fields: since 2003, Strong Abogados has performed the legal work for 500 property transactions and helped 350 families obtain residency.

Questions? We're here to help!