Spain Start-up Visa

The law sets no capital threshold. Article 70 of Law 14/2013, as amended by Law 28/2022 with effect from 23 December 2022, defines entrepreneurial activity as activity that is innovative, or of special economic interest to Spain, or both, and that holds a favourable report issued by ENISA.

Money is still present in the file, but as an item of the business plan under assessment: the plan must state the investment needed and the expected sources of funding. It is not a minimum that must be met, and the full set of three assessment elements is recorded in the cost cell of this page.

Set beside the investor route of the same statute, the difference is plain. Article 63, the residence visa for investors, was the provision that once tied residence to a sum of money.

The consolidated text in the Official Gazette now records it as emptied of content with effect from 3 April 2025, by final provision 21.1 of Organic Law 1/2025 of 2 January 2025.

Within Law 14/2013 as it stands, the door opened by a sum of money is therefore closed, while the door opened by an assessed project remains open.

Article 69 of Law 14/2013 grants a residence authorisation for business activity, valid throughout the national territory and running for three years.

At the end of those three years the holder applies to renew for two more, and may reach permanent residence at the five-year mark.

The application is filed by the person concerned or by a legal representative, electronically, with the Large Enterprises and Strategic Groups Unit. That unit processes the file, while the authorisation is granted by the Directorate-General for Migration, under Article 76(1).

For an applicant outside Spain, Article 69(1) says the authorisation and the visa are applied for simultaneously in a single filing so that the two procedures run consecutively, but Article 70(1) says that once the authorisation has been granted the person applies for the corresponding residence visa. Current official guidance follows the second reading: the instructions of the Large Enterprises and Strategic Groups Unit have the criminal-record certificate presented at the consulate when applying for the visa after the authorisation has been obtained, and the Spanish Embassy in Hanoi requires a copy of the authorisation issued by that unit in the visa file.

It is worth noting that Article 68, on entry and stay to begin a business activity, was repealed by Law 28/2022 with effect from 23 December 2022, so that separate preparatory category no longer exists

Law 28/2022 carries two deadlines tied to ENISA, and they belong to two different procedures — reading them as one is the easiest mistake to make about this route.

The three-month deadline sits in Article 4(2), and it governs the procedure by which ENISA evaluates a company for certification as an innovative and scalable start-up — that is, the gate to the tax and social security benefits of that same law, not the gate to a residence permit.

The three months run from the date the complete application enters the electronic register.

If the deadline passes without an express notified decision, the applicant is entitled to treat it as granted by positive administrative silence, and the clock is suspended where the applicant is required to remedy defects or supply further documents, under Article 22 of Law 39/2015.

The second deadline is ten working days, in Article 70 of Law 14/2013 as rewritten by Law 28/2022 itself, and that is the deadline of the residence route: the application goes to the Large Companies and Strategic Groups Unit, which of its own motion asks ENISA, and that report must be issued within ten working days.

The other costs cell of this table carries that ten-day deadline.

The decision on the authorisation has its own clock: Article 76(1) of Law 14/2013 sets a maximum of twenty days from electronic filing, and if no decision is made within it the authorisation is deemed granted by administrative silence. That clock may be suspended while a mandatory report is awaited, for no more than three months, under Article 22(1)(d) of Law 39/2015, and if the report does not arrive within that time the procedure continues. At the visa stage, Article 75(5) requires applications to be decided and notified within 10 working days, save where the consultation under Article 22 of the EU Visa Code applies.

Article 62 lays down the general conditions: not being unlawfully present in Spanish territory.

The conditions are being over 18, and having no criminal record in Spain and in the countries of residence over the last two years, for offences provided for in Spanish law, accompanied by a responsible declaration of the absence of any criminal record over the last five years.

The applicant must also not be listed as rejectable in the territory of countries with which Spain has an agreement to that effect.

The authorisation and visa are revoked, refused or not renewed where the foreign national may represent a threat to public order, public security, public health or national security, on the basis of a report from the police, the National Intelligence Centre or the National Security Department.

On physical presence, the law sets no minimum number of days for this route. Additional provision six of Law 14/2013, which allows renewal despite absences of more than six months a year, names investors and workers of companies with their base of operations in Spain, not entrepreneurs. For long-term residence, Organic Law 4/2000 requires five years of continuous temporary residence, and under Royal Decree 1155/2024 continuity is not broken by absences of up to six consecutive months provided they total no more than ten months over the five years. For tax, a person present in Spain for more than 183 days in a calendar year, or whose main centre of activities or economic interests is in Spain, is tax resident

Article 62(4) allows a wider group than is usual to be brought in: the spouse, or a person in an analogous affective relationship; minor children, and adult children too where they depend economically on the holder and have not themselves formed a separate family unit; together with dependent ascendants.

These persons may either join or accompany the holder, and may apply for the authorisation and visa jointly, simultaneously or successively.

They must show that they meet the same general conditions in paragraph 3. And where the family applications are filed simultaneously with the holder, the authorisation and the visa are decided simultaneously as well

The status this programme grants, whether a visa or a residence permit, does not replace the holder's passport. The holder still travels on the passport of their own country, so the figure below belongs to the Spain passport and becomes the holder's only once they are issued a Spain passport.

According to the Passport Index of Prosperous Intelligence, on data dated 30 September 2026, the Spain passport reaches 204 destinations without applying for a consular visa in advance. The figure combines three forms of entry and does not count an e-Visa that must be obtained beforehand:

It is therefore a measure of how easily the holder travels, not a count of visa-free countries in the narrow sense.

For comparison, on the same source and the same method of counting, the Vietnamese passport reaches 44 destinations. The two lists of destinations do not nest inside one another, so the difference is an indication rather than a list of places newly opened.

Prosperous Intelligence dates its data and advises checking with the destination’s official authorities before travelling.

This is one of the few programmes where the residence route and the tax regime sit in the same statute:

Law 28/2022 of 21 December on promoting the ecosystem of emerging companies both amends Articles 69 and 70 of Law 14/2013 to create the entrepreneur residence route and amends Article 93 of the Personal Income Tax Law to open the inbound-expatriate tax regime.

Read closely, the two are tied more tightly than the wording of the Personal Income Tax Law suggests.

Article 93(1)(b)(3) allows the special regime to be elected where the move to Spain is a consequence of carrying on in Spain an economic activity qualified as an entrepreneurial activity under the procedure described in Article 70 of Law 14/2013.

The Personal Income Tax Regulation spells out the condition: Article 113(2) requires the activity to hold a favourable ENISA report under Article 70 of Law 14/2013 and, for a non-EU national, also requires the Article 69 residence authorisation for business activity before the move to Spain; only EU citizens and those enjoying EU free-movement and residence rights need the ENISA report alone.

For a non-EU national such as a Vietnamese citizen, the residence authorisation is therefore a prior condition of the tax regime rather than a separate status, and while under the regime the taxpayer may carry on only the entrepreneurial activity, services to emerging companies, or training, research, development and innovation activities.

The regime works as follows. The applicant must not have been tax resident in Spain during the five preceding tax periods; the regime then applies for the period of the change of residence and the five following periods.

The rates are 24% on taxable base up to EUR 600,000 and 47% above, with withholding on employment income following the same two rates.

Savings income referred to in Article 25(1)(f) of the Non-Residents' Income Tax Law follows its own scale in Article 93(2)(e)(2), in the wording in force from 1 January 2025 as amended by Law 7/2024: 19% to EUR 6,000, 21% to 50,000, 23% to 200,000, 27% from 200,000 to 300,000 and 30% above 300,000.

One point is rarely mentioned: a person electing this regime is subject to wealth tax on a real obligation basis. A spouse and children under 25, or of any age where disabled, may also elect the regime, provided their taxable base is lower than that of the principal.

On the corporate side, Article 7 taxes a company holding emerging-company status at 15% for the first period with a positive taxable base and the three following periods;

Article 8(1) permits deferral of the tax for the first two such periods, without security, for twelve and six months, with no late-payment interest; and Article 8(2) waives the obligation to make instalment payments.

Article 6 lists six ways the benefit is lost, and this is the part sellers of the programme rarely mention: expiry of the five or seven years from incorporation. Early termination of the company; acquisition by a company that is not an emerging company.

Annual turnover exceeding EUR 10 million; carrying on an activity that causes significant environmental harm under Regulation (EU) 2020/852; or a member holding 5% or more of capital, directly or indirectly, or a manager, being convicted by a final judgment of the offences listed in Article 3(3).

On the residence route, Article 69 of Law 14/2013 as amended grants a permit valid for three years, renewable for two, with permanent residence after five, filed electronically with the Large Companies and Strategic Groups Unit.

Read this cell within its scope: the statute does not set out the detailed procedure for electing the Article 93 regime, leaving it to the Minister of Finance, and it says nothing about local taxes, social security, or the ENISA certification criteria, which sit in Order PCM/825/2023

The entrepreneurial activity must carry a favourable report issued by ENISA. The application goes to the Large Enterprises and Strategic Groups Unit, which requests that report from ENISA of its own motion; the report is mandatory and must be delivered within ten working days.

ENISA weighs three things: the professional profile of the applicant and their involvement in the project, assessing, where there are several partners, the participation of each including those who need no visa.

The business plan, covering a description of the project, the product or service it develops and its financing, including the investment required and the possible sources of funding; and the elements generating added value for the Spanish economy, innovation or investment opportunities.

On costs and attached obligations: the applicant must hold public or private health insurance taken out with an insurer authorised to operate in Spain, must have sufficient financial resources for themselves and their family members throughout the period of residence, and must pay the processing fee.

The authorisation fee is paid on form 790 code 038, item 7, which applies to holders and family members alike; Order ESS/1571/2014 sets EUR 70.40 for an initial authorisation and EUR 75.60 for a renewal, amounts that are uprated at the start of each year by the state budget law, so the 2026 amount must be read from the payment form. The visa fee at the Spanish Embassy in Hanoi is VND 2,779,000 on the fee table printed on 17 December 2025, before the service fee of BLS International, the visa application centre.

On the level of resources, Article 62(3)(f) requires only sufficient resources for the applicant and family during residence, while additional provision twenty, paragraph 3, provides that the thresholds used to assess resources are referenced to the minimum interprofessional wage; the law itself states no figure on that basis for entrepreneurs. The Hanoi embassy checklist still uses the IPREM, 100% for the applicant plus 50% for each dependant, and the embassy's IPREM sheet gives only the 2023 figure of EUR 600 a month.

The Law is also explicit that it does not relieve anyone of the obligations on prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing under Law 10/2010, nor of the corresponding tax or social security obligations.

The visa stage carries one further clock: the diplomatic mission consults the Directorate-General of the Police on security risk, and the police must reply within a maximum of seven days, after which silence is taken as favourable