Taking your pet to Spain: chip, jab, passport — and 21 days of patience

Whoever has ever read what taking a pet to Australia requires — at least six months, an import permit, mandatory quarantine — can breathe a sigh of relief with Spain. Within the EU your dog or cat simply travels with you: no quarantine, no permit, no months-long process. There are three requirements, and the order is fixed.

The three requirements, in the mandatory order

First the chip. Your animal has to be chipped with a microchip that meets the EU standard — with Dutch dogs that's almost always already the case, with cats far from always. The chip has to be in before the rabies vaccination is given, otherwise that vaccination doesn't count for the travel rules.

Then the rabies vaccination. Valid and given after the chip. If your animal's vaccinations have been kept up neatly for years, this is a matter of checking the date instead of arranging something new.

And the EU pet passport. You get that from your own vet: a blue booklet with the chip code, the vaccinations and your details. It stays valid as long as the rabies vaccination is repeated on time — arrange it once, then, for all future travel within the EU.

After a first rabies vaccination a waiting period of 21 days applies before your animal may cross the border. If your cat has never been vaccinated against rabies (not mandatory in the Netherlands, so it happens often), that jab plus three weeks therefore determines your earliest possible departure. Whoever discovers this in the last week postpones their own move — start on it at least a month in advance.

For puppies and kittens there's a lower limit too: vaccination is only possible from twelve weeks, so a very young animal simply can't come yet.

The journey itself: the back seat wins

This is one of the few emigrations where the pet can simply go in the car. Two days of driving with stops is calmer for most dogs — and even for cats with a good carrier — than an aircraft hold, and you keep control over breaks, water and temperature yourself. If you fly anyway: every airline has its own rules for animals in the cabin or the hold, and in the Spanish summer some refuse the hold because of the heat. Book the animal at the same time as your own seat, not afterwards.

Include the practical side in your moving plan too: the passport travels with the owner, not with the household contents in the removal van.

And in Spain

No obligation to register on arrival as with people — but two things to arrange early: a Spanish vet (for the booster vaccinations that keep the passport valid), and the regional rules of your new home, because Spanish regions set their own requirements for things like dog registration and certain breeds. Ask your new vet at the first visit — they know the region's rules better than any website.

The costs? A fraction of the Australian route: chip, jab and passport at the vet. The cost indication on the Spain page includes a modest item for it — per animal.