The step-by-step plan for Spain

As a Dutch citizen you need no visa: you get on the plane, you arrive, and nobody asks anything. For the first three months you may stay unconditionally. That is exactly why this journey is systematically underestimated.

Stay longer than three months and you're obliged to register — and that registration has requirements: demonstrable income or assets, and healthcare cover that's valid in Spain. In a visa journey you have to prove you may come. Here you may come, and you have to prove you can stay. The same burden of proof, just at a different moment — and nobody reminds you until you get stuck at the bank, the school or the traffic authority.

Which situation applies to you decides your whole preparation. Are you going to work in Spain, employed or self-employed? Then this is arranged by itself: you fall under Spanish social security.

If you're not working in Spain — you work remotely for a Dutch employer, you live off assets, or you're retired — then at registration you have to show two things: sufficient means for everyone who's coming, and health insurance that covers all risks in Spain. Pensioners have it easier: for them the S1 form suffices, with which the Netherlands keeps carrying the healthcare.

What "sufficient means" exactly is, is set annually and assessed individually — naming a figure that no longer holds next year is worse than naming none. The current threshold you'll find via the sources with this step. This is your first homework, and it belongs here: whoever only works this out in Spain stands there with a file that can't be completed.

Education, healthcare and part of the taxes are arranged regionally in Spain. The same question has a different answer in Andalusia than in Valencia or Catalonia — how education is set up, which language is spoken at school, how healthcare is organised, and which regional levies apply. So you're not just choosing a climate.

That choice belongs early, because it decides which town hall, which immigration office and which tax office you'll end up at — and with children also in which language they'll be taught. A scouting trip outside the high season says more than ten evenings of searching.

The calculator for Spain works on your own moving choices and shows three cost blocks. The application block is almost nothing for Spain: fees of tens of euros, plus possibly a gestor and translations. The weight is elsewhere — in the move (from almost nothing to a few thousand euros, depending on your choices) and above all in the landing period: deposit, rent in advance, and living while no income comes in yet.

A rule of thumb that makes the journey less stressful: don't count yourself rich on a quick sale or a quick job, and only start spending once the first months are covered.

This is the step without forms, and yet this is where most journeys fail. Emigrating isn't something you do alone — even if the papers are in one name. Discuss with your partner and, depending on their age, your children: why do we want this, what are we giving up, and what is for each of us the condition for saying yes?

Two points that need extra attention with Spain: the partner who isn't bringing the income needs a working life there too — check already how that occupation does in your region, and in which language. And for children the language at school is the biggest transition: young children pick it up surprisingly fast, for teenagers it's harder and extra support is no luxury.

Close the orientation phase with a target date for departure. Not as a deadline — as a compass. Unlike a visa journey, with Spain you wait for nobody's permission, so the pace is up to you. A realistic picture: from serious decision to being settled, this journey takes most people three to nine months, depending on how fast your home and papers come together.

You fill it in below in this card, and filling it in is completing the step. You can always adjust your target date — the planning adjusts with it.