Staying longer than ninety days
What the routes actually are for a stay that outruns the visa-free window, what the rules say rather than what the forums say, and the figures this page will not print because it cannot source them.
This page is context, not advice. Every figure on it is dated, and the ones that could not be sourced to an official page are missing on purpose.
The ninety-day question
If you hold a passport from outside the EU, the visa-free window is ninety days in any rolling one-hundred-and-eighty. Rolling is the word that catches people: it is not a fixed half-year that resets, it is a look back over the previous 180 days from whatever day you are standing on. The European Commission publishes the official calculator, and it is the only one worth using1.
The Schengen area is twenty-nine countries — twenty-five EU member states plus Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein1. Days spent in any of them count against the same ninety. A month in Spain followed by a month in Portugal is two months of your allowance, not one each.
What changed recently is enforcement. The EU’s Entry/Exit System began its rollout on 12 October 2025 and became fully operational on 10 April 20262. It records entries and exits of non-EU nationals digitally, with facial image and fingerprints, and replaces the passport stamp2. The Commission reports more than 52 million movements registered and over 27,000 refusals of entry since the rollout began2.
The practical upshot is dull but worth stating plainly: the count is now automatic. The old approach of hoping a border officer does not do the arithmetic has stopped being a strategy.
Time spent on a long-stay visa or a residence permit is not counted against the ninety days1. That is the whole reason the routes below exist.
The routes
Working remotely for companies outside Spain. Since January 2023, under Law 28/2022, there is a residence authorisation for international teleworking — the one everybody calls the digital nomad visa. The economic requirement is expressed as a proportion rather than a euro amount: 200% of the Spanish minimum wage per month for the main applicant, a further 75% for the first family member and 25% for each additional one3.
This page does not print the euro figure. The minimum wage is set annually and is quoted in Spain across fourteen payments rather than twelve, and the secondary sources disagree by several hundred euros a month depending on which basis they use. A number that is wrong by that much is worse than no number. Take the percentage from the official page and the current wage from the official page, and do the arithmetic yourself.
Living on your own means without working. The non-lucrative residence visa allows residence without lucrative activity, on proof of guaranteed and sufficient means of subsistence. It does not authorise you to work. Maximum processing time is three months, and the required documents are published by each consulate rather than centrally, so the list that applies to you is the one at the consulate covering where you live4.
Buying residence. This route has closed. The investor visa, the golden visa, was abolished by Organic Law 1/2025; no new applications have been possible since 3 April 2025, though applications lodged before that date and permits already in force are protected by transitional provisions5.
Holding an EU passport. Then none of the above applies to you, and the ninety-day question is not your question. The registration formalities that do apply are a different subject and this page does not cover them.
What it costs
Not printed, and deliberately.
Visa fees in Spain vary by nationality and are collected by the consulate, and the consulate that serves you is determined by where you live rather than by where you are going. Any single figure on this page would be wrong for most readers. The fee that applies to you is on your own consulate’s page, alongside its document list.
TK: whether a dated table of fees per consulate is worth building and keeping current. It is only worth doing if it can be maintained, and a stale fee table is worse than none.
Getting it checked
Everything above is editorial context. It is not immigration advice, it is not tax advice, and it was last researched in September 2026.
Two of the facts on this page did not exist three years ago. The teleworking route was created in 2023, the golden visa was abolished in 2025 and the Entry/Exit System went from announcement to fully operational between October 2025 and April 2026. A page like this ages, and the date at the top of it is the most important thing on it.
Before you commit money or a flight to any of these routes, put the specifics in front of an immigration lawyer or a gestor who does this for a living, and read the official pages linked above rather than a summary of them — including this one.
References
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home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies/schengen/border-crossing/short-stay-calculator_en ↩ ↩2 ↩3
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home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/news/entryexit-system-ees-fully-operational-2026-04-10_en ↩ ↩2 ↩3
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exteriores.gob.es/en/ServiciosAlCiudadano/Paginas/Servicios-consulares.aspx ↩
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one.gob.es/en/contents/abolition-investor-visa-spain-and-its-implications ↩
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