Moving to Spain from the UK — what you have to arrange

A British passport holder may spend 90 days in any 180-day period in Spain without a visa. Living there beyond that needs a residence route, applied for from the United Kingdom before you go. Buying a property gives you no right to stay a day longer than 90.

Buying a property does not give you residency

Start here, because it is the misconception most readers arrive with and correcting it early is what makes the rest of this page worth reading.

Buying a property in Spain gives you a property in Spain. It gives you no right to enter, no right to remain, no extra days, and no priority in any application. A British owner of a Spanish house is subject to exactly the same 90-in-180 limit as a British tourist who has never been.

There was once a residence route tied to a property purchase above a threshold. We are not going to tell you what its status is today, because we have not read the instrument at source, and a status claim about a visa route is precisely the sort of statement that must not ship on second-hand evidence. If somebody offers you a residence permit on the strength of a purchase, that is a question for a lawyer before it is a question for a bank transfer.

The 90/180 limit, and how it is actually counted

gov.uk states it plainly on its Spain entry requirements page:

"You can travel without a visa to the Schengen area, which includes Spain, for up to 90 days in any 180-day period."

Two things about that sentence catch British owners out.

It is a rolling window, not an annual allowance. gov.uk adds that visits to Schengen countries in the 180 days before you travel count towards your 90. Somebody who spends February and March at their Spanish house, then wants three weeks in France in July, is doing arithmetic whether they realise it or not.

It covers the whole Schengen area. Days in Portugal, France or Italy are the same days.

The same 90-in-180 framing appears in Spanish law: Real Decreto 1155/2024 art. 205.3 turns on whether a visa permits its holder to stay «más de 90 días naturales en cualquier período de ciento ochenta días naturales». That is the boundary the whole system is built around.

If you overstay, gov.uk warns that you may be banned from Schengen countries for up to three years.

The visa routes, and which one fits

Living in Spain beyond 90 days means a residence route, and the route is applied for at the Spanish consulate for the district where you legally live, before you go. Under Ley Orgánica 4/2000 art. 27.1 a visa is applied for and issued at Spain's diplomatic missions and consular offices, and Real Decreto 1155/2024 art. 26.1 requires the application to be made in person at the consular office for your own district.

The non-lucrative route. For somebody who can support themselves without working, and who will not work. The means test is 400% of IPREM a month for the main applicant and 100% for each dependant, and the whole of it, with the arithmetic, is on Spain's non-lucrative visa.
A remote-work route. A separate route exists for people who work remotely. This site does not cover it in wave one, and we would rather say that than summarise a procedure we have not read at source.

Whichever route you take decides how you get your NIE. On a visa that permits a stay of more than 90 days in any 180, the number is granted automatically under art. 205.3. If your only connection to Spain is that you bought a house there, it is not, and you apply in person under art. 205.4. That distinction, and the five-day rule where silence means refusal, is on the NIE number.

What changed for a British citizen, and what did not

It is worth being exact about this, because a great deal of what is said about it is not.

What changed. Before 1 January 2021 a British citizen could live in Spain under free movement, with no visa, no income test and no consular appointment. That is gone. A British passport holder is now a third-country national for these purposes, which is why the 90/180 limit applies at all and why living in Spain means an application made in advance, in person, from your own consular district.

What did not change. Nothing about buying. A British citizen may buy a property in Spain on exactly the same terms as before, pays the same taxes as any other non-resident buyer, and needs the same documents. There is no additional permission to acquire, no restriction on ownership, and no separate approval for a British purchaser of an ordinary home. The purchase side of this site applies to you unchanged, and it always did.

What is different if you moved before 1 January 2021. People who were already lawfully resident in Spain at that date hold rights under the Withdrawal Agreement that later arrivals do not, and gov.uk's Living in Spain page has a section devoted to them. This site does not cover that position, and if it applies to you that page is the right starting point rather than this one.

The one thing worth separating in your head: immigration and property are two different systems. You can own a Spanish house and be a visitor to it. You can be resident in Spain and rent. The two decisions interact only through the NIE, and even there only in the direction described above.

The paperwork, in the order you will actually need it

| What | Why it comes when it does | Where | |---|---|---| | The residence visa | Everything else is downstream of it, and it is applied for before you leave | The non-lucrative visa | | The NIE | Automatic on a qualifying visa route; a separate in-person application if your connection is a purchase | The NIE number | | A Spanish bank account | The bank asks for the NIE first, and a non-resident file is assessed on documents | Spanish mortgages for non-residents | | Empadronamiento | Registration on the town hall's population roll, done once you have an address. This site does not cover the procedure | — | | Healthcare cover | Required for the residence application itself, and arranged before you travel. This site does not cover it | — | | The tax position | Follows from where you actually live, and it is not a form you fill in on arrival | See below |

Two rows there say plainly that this site does not cover them. That is deliberate. It is better than a paragraph written from a summary.

Tax residency is a separate question, and this page does not answer it

Most people arrive with half of an idea about 183 days. It is half of an idea: Spanish tax residency turns on more than one test, the treaty between the two countries governs what happens when both claim you, and the consequences reach income, capital gains and assets held outside Spain.

We are not going to state a threshold, a rule or a consequence here, because we have not read the statute at source and the wrong sentence on this subject is worse than no sentence. This is a question for a tax adviser, before you move rather than after.

What we will say is that immigration status and tax residency are two different things, decided by two different sets of rules, and that having one does not settle the other.

What gov.uk covers, and where it stops

gov.uk's Living in Spain page is genuinely good and it is current: it was last updated on 3 July 2026, and the update log shows real edits through 2026. Use it for healthcare, driving licences and residency procedure.

Its companion page about buying property is a different matter. That one was last updated on 13 May 2021, four years before the regulation that now governs the NIE, and it carries its own disclaimer: "We provide this information as a guide only. For definitive information, contact the Spanish authorities." Where this site is more specific than gov.uk, it is on that page's subject rather than this one's.

What this page does not cover

Healthcare arrangements, driving licence exchange, pensions, schooling, importing a car, importing a pet, or removals. Nor the procedure for any visa route beyond the one linked above.

What it does connect to is the property side: how a purchase actually runs on buying property in Spain, what it costs on what buying a property in Spain costs, and every Spanish term in the glossary.