How to get a Non-Lucrative Visa (NLV)

A U.S. citizen can visit Europe for 90 days without a visa. If you want to stay longer you need a visa. There are several types. We are retired, so we applied for a non-lucrative visa. We cannot get jobs in Spain.

There re basically four steps to getting the visa.

FOUR STEPS

1. Collect documents

2. Get them notarized and/or apostilled and then translated.

3. Submit documents to Spanish Consulate.

4. Go to Consulate for an "interview."

We retained a Spanish attorney to help and guide us. The one we chose charged us about €1,400.

DETAILS:

1. Collecting documents:

    Health Certificate. This is basically a statement from a doctor certifying that you are not infectious. No physical was required. You can download a form HERE. The form needs to be on the medical provider's stationery. This didn't cost us anything.

    Marriage License Certificate. This must be acquired from the county in which you were married. Ours was York County, Pennsylvania. Once we got the certificate, we had to send it to state officials to get it Apostilled. This cost us $10. Getting it Apostilled was another $20.

    Police Report: We got this through the FBI.  We used an FBI approved channeler, which directed us to a UPS office where we submitted scanned fingerprints. We got the report the next day. Here's a link to the FBI site. This cost us $94 ($47 each).

    Proof of Income: (This is the main requirement.) In our case we logged on to My Social Security and downloaded a pdf of our Benefit Verification Letter. In addition I wrote to my previous employer to get a statement of my pension. In 2022 the requirement was 2,316 euros monthly for the main applicant and an additional 579 euros monthly for a spouse. (The total of €2,895 is about $3,112. The exact conversion changes daily.) This didn't cost us anything.

    Health Insurance: This is a bit annoying. We had to have proof of insurance to apply for a visa, but wouldn't be able to use that insurance until after we got the visa and moved to in Spain 3 months later. (Basically we paid for coverage that we could not use.) We needed two policies - one for health insurance and a second for repatriation of our bodies in case we died in Spain.  Our attorney recommended DKV. I was 70 years old, Deb was 63. The annual costs for the policies was €650.10 for the repatriation insurance and €3,108 for the health insurance. We only had to purchase 3 months of health insurance because we were applying in September.. In January we paid for all of 2023. Repatriation insurance cost us €650 euros for a full year. Three months of health insurance cost €800 euros.

    Proof of housing: Before beginning the process we rented an AirBnB in Playa de San Juan for three months. Our attorney said we needed a long-term contract AND that an AirBnB lease would not met the requirements for the residency card. After we arrived in Spain, we spent a nervous month finding a year-long rental.

    Additional documents: TASA, EX-01 (Our attorney completed these for us)

    ALSO: We needed current passports and 2 additional passport-sized photographs. We got them taken and printed at a Walgreens. We also needed government issued identification that proved that we lived in the jurisdiction of the consulate that would issue the visa. (Each consulate has authority to issue visas for certain states. Here's a map that shows the jurisdiction of each Spanish consulate. Deb used her driver's license. I used a RealID.

2. Notarization/Apostilling and Translation

   Getting a document notarized means signing it in front of a notary who had confirmed that you are who you claim to be. 
    The Hague Apostille is sort of an international notarization.
    Most documents need to be translated into Spanish by an official translator.
    Marriage License: Apostille and Translated.
    Health Certificate: Translated
    Police Report: Notarized, Apostilled and Translated
    Proof of Income: Apostilled and Translated 
    Health Insurance: Our attorney took care of the documentation for this.
    Proof of Housing: This wasn't needed for the visa. Once we arrived in Spain we needed to get a signed lease, which was in Spanish and English. Our attorney reviewed it to make sure it met the requirements.
    COST: We spent $200 to get documents Apostilled in Raleigh. Getting everything translated cost $577.

3. Submit documents to Embassy or consulate.

    We emailed copies of all the notarized, apostilled and translated documents to our attorney. He reviewed them and submitted them to the embassy for us. He also arranged a date for our interview.

4. Go to Embassy or consulate for interview.

    Our attorney set up the date and time. We showed up at the Embassy in Washington, D.C., with two folders of documents and $152 in cash. A security guard led us to a room where we waited until our names were called. An official took all of our documents and our passports and told us to have a seat and she'd get back to us. Forty-five minutes she called us to the window, gave us a small stack of documents which she said we didn't need. She gave us a second stack of documents which she told us to take with us to Spain when we applied for the Padron. They kept our passports. And that was it.

NOTES:

    We began gathering documents Aug. 6.
    Our attorney reviewed and submitted the documents Oct. 7.
    Our attorney arranged an appointed for us for Oct. 19.
        We needed to provide an Priority Mail Express envelope for the Embassy to send us our passports.
    We received our passports with the visas on Nov. 10.
    The process was much less complicated than we expected, primarily because we had the help of a Spanish attorney. 

TOTAL COST:

    About $900 to get documents and have them notarized, translated and Apostilled.
    About $1,500 for insurance
    About $1,500 for the attorney's help
    TOTAL: About $4,000