Spain’s Golden Visa Is Cancelled — What Now?

The Golden Visa is gone — here is what that means

Spain’s investor residence visa — residency for a €500,000 property purchase — was abolished on 3 April 2025. Buying property no longer grants the right to live in Spain.

The programme ran for over a decade and shaped how a generation of international buyers approached the coast. Its closure changed the sequence of relocation, not its possibility: the property and the residence permit are now two separate projects, each with its own logic — and several of the remaining routes are, for many families, better than the visa they replaced.

If you already hold a Golden Visa: existing permits keep their rights, and renewals continue under transitional rules. The door closed for new entrants, not for those inside.

The routes that remain

Non-Lucrative Visa — the retiree’s and rentier’s route: prove sufficient passive income and comprehensive health cover, and live in Spain without working. The income bar is set as a multiple of the IPREM index and rises with each family member; property ownership is not required but comfortably evidences accommodation.

Digital Nomad Visa — for remote employees and professionals working for non-Spanish clients. Its quiet superpower is the pairing with the Beckham regime: residence and a flat 24% on employment income in one coordinated move — something the Golden Visa never offered.

Work, entrepreneur and family routes — employment contracts, qualifying business projects, and the EU family framework each carry their own permits. For EU/EEA citizens nothing changed at all: registration, not visas.

What this does to a purchase plan

Property no longer buys residence — so residence planning now comes first, and the property fits into it.

The practical order for a relocating family: choose the visa route with an immigration advisor, sequence the tax election where one applies, secure the NIE — and only then let the property search set its own pace. Buyers who do not need residence at all — holiday-home owners spending under 90 days per 180 in the Schengen area — are untouched by the whole subject.

Three ways buyers misread the change

1. Assuming the purchase still carries a permit. Marketing materials older than April 2025 still circulate. The programme is closed; verify anything that claims otherwise.

2. Overlooking the 90/180 rule. Non-resident owners from outside Schengen live within it. Counting days badly has consequences; a residence route removes the ceiling.

3. Treating residence and tax residence as one decision. A permit lets you stay; day-count and centre of interests decide where you are taxed. The two must be planned together — ideally before the escritura, as ever.

Related terms

This page is general information, not financial, tax or legal advice. The example is hypothetical and does not represent an offer, a forecast or an expected result. Figures for taxes and lending vary by circumstance and change over time — verify current rules with a qualified professional before making a decision.