Being allowed to stay is not the same as being sorted

An Australian visa process tells you exactly what's expected of you. There's a form, a list, a points system, an authority that says yes or no. Unpleasant, but clear.

The Spanish route doesn't have that. You get on the plane, you arrive, and nobody asks anything. That feels like simplicity, and it's the reason this process is systematically underestimated.

The first three months are free

As a citizen of the European Union you may stay in another member state for up to three months with a valid passport or identity card, without registering and without conditions. That's free movement, and it applies unconditionally.

If you stay longer, something changes — and it isn't a formality.

After three months, requirements apply

The Spanish Real Decreto 240/2007 obliges you to register if you stay longer than three months. Two conditions hang on that registration, and which apply to you depends on where your income comes from.

If you work in Spain, employed or self-employed, you're done. You fall under Spanish social security and with that both your income and your health cover are settled.

If you don't work in Spain — you work remotely for a Dutch employer, you live off assets, or you're retired — you have to demonstrate two things:

• Sufficient means for yourself and everyone who comes with you
• Health insurance that covers all risks in Spain

That's the homework most Dutch emigrants have to deal with, and it's work you do before departure. A Dutch health insurance stops as soon as you deregister from the municipality, and a bank statement isn't a bank certificate.

This is where the difference sits that defines the whole corridor. In a visa process you have to prove that you may come. Here you may come — and you have to prove that you can stay. That's the same burden of proof, only at a different moment, and nobody reminds you of it.

What goes wrong if you leave it

No letter comes and nobody stands at the door. What happens is subtler: you get stuck in places where you don't expect it.

• The bank wants your registration certificate for an ordinary account instead of a non-resident account
• The tax office — the Spanish one — needs your NIE and your registration as soon as you become liable for tax here
• The traffic authority asks for it if you want to exchange your driving licence or put a car in your name
• The school of your children allocates by address, and that address comes from your municipal registration

Each of those things can wait six months. But then they all wait at the same time, precisely at the moment you're building up your life.

The order is the real work

There's no authority making you wait, so your pace is up to you. What does have to be strictly in order is the registration itself, because every document is the key to the next:

First the NIE — your identification number, which you can already apply for from the Netherlands. Then a home, with the question asked beforehand whether you may register there. After that the empadronamiento at the town hall, and only last the registration certificate at the immigration office — every document is the key to the next.

Whoever reverses that order is told at every counter that they have to go somewhere else first. And appointments at Spanish counters are scarce — a missed appointment costs weeks, not days.

Your region is more than a matter of taste

Something else that belongs in the orientation phase and rarely is: education, healthcare and part of the taxes are arranged regionally in Spain.

That means the same question has a different answer in Andalusia than in Valencia or Catalonia — about how education is organised, which language is spoken at school, how healthcare is organised, and which regional levies apply. So you aren't only choosing a place where you like the climate.

That choice belongs early, because it determines which town hall, which immigration office and which tax offices you'll end up at.

Where this sits in your process

This is the orientation phase, and not a single document comes out of it. That's exactly why it feels as if nothing is happening — while this is where it's decided whether the rest runs smoothly or gets stuck.

The registration chain itself is phase 3 of 5 — in Vertrekklaar it sits as tickable steps applied to your situation, with a watch on which step waits on what. See the whole process to Spain.

Two things are to be settled here: knowing how you're going to meet the income and health-cover requirement, and knowing which region you're going to live in. Only after that do you spend money.