Sun Family in Spain

When we decided to move to Spain in April, it started the clock ticking because we knew we needed to start getting ready for a move in September. We also had a pre-planned trip in June to Spain and Italy. We contacted a couple of immigration attorneys and decided to go with a group Move To Spain that specialize in Digital Nomad Visas. The other immigration attorney we spoke to didn’t even know what a Digital Nomad Visa was and she thought we were talking about a Highly Skilled Visa.

Because of past experiences living abroad and with our distillery Sol and I are both pretty good at navigating bureaucracy. I did a lot of reading on Reddit, Facebook, Immigration Websites and on YouTube channels. Before we decided to pull the trigger I had good information about what visa we qualified for and what was the best course of action for our situation.

I knew that we needed specific paperwork that was time sensitive and would take some time to get. Most documents can’t be more than six months old at the time of application. We ordered a notarized copy of Sol’s diploma because he was the primary on our Digital Nomad Visa and we got our FBI finger prints taken and submitted for Apostilles before we left. Those documents took the longest to get so we needed to order them early. I had also ordered a certified copy of my birth certificate for my British Citizenship application and that took a while to get from out of State. I didn’t end up needing it for our DNV application though. Most of your documents need apostilles for Spain, which are verifications from the secretary of state that the documents are authentic. Some documents need notaries and Apostilles and the FBI check gets an Apostille from the US State Department. We were fortunate that most of our life has taken place in Colorado so other than the FBI Check we were able to get marriage certificates, letters from employers, our kids birth certificates, etc and I walked everything into the Secretary of State’s office for the Apostilles. There are services that will do this for you and if we had moved a lot or needed documents from multiple states, I might have hired one.

Even doing it myself was pretty expensive. Most certified copies of documents cost between $15 and $35 per document. I ordered two copies of some things in case I needed extras when I got to Spain. The Apostilles cost $5 for regular orders and $15 for rush orders per document in Colorado.. I also ended up going to one county to get our marriage certificate and a name change document, another for a certificate that my daughter had never been married, vital records for birth certificates. Documents are held in different areas depending on what you are looking for, so it all took quite a bit of leg work. I got laid off of work in March so being unemployed gave me the time during working hours to get everything.

We went to Spain to “practice living there and to figure out where we would live and where Aftan would go to school. Once we arrived in Spain we visited schools, looked at apartments and opened a bank account. Sol also worked part of the time we were there so he could see how his day would look with the new time zone. We rented an condo with a kitchen so we shopped and cooked and spent our days doing normal things. I think this gives you an idea of what life is like rather than staying ina hotel and just doing touristy things. It probably would have been better to have spent more time, but we did what we were able to do. The trip helped us solidify our plans about where we were going to live once we moved. We also visited another region just to make sure we were making the right decision. We had spent some time in the Marbella area before and my family had lived here so we were pretty sure this was where we would move. We have also traveled in a few other parts of Spain which helped in our decision.

Had we been more prepared it would have been better to have applied for our visa when we were on our trip but we weren’t ready. It was a little scary packing up our lives and our animals and moving without knowing for sure that our Visa would be approved.

When we returned to the US we frantically started compiling the rest of the documents we needed for our Digital Nomad Application. In addition to getting the documents they also needed to be translated. The Move to Spain group has translators because they have to be licensed translators so I couldn’t just have my brother do it for us. They also had templates for the letters we needed about employment and the work we were doing. We just followed their directions and sent emails with questions. Sol and I are both pretty good with forms and check lists, but I still wouldn’t want to do it without the help of someone in Spain who does this all the time. Some people do it themselves but it was too risky to possibly mess stuff up after you move your family across the globe. Some people also hire attorneys who don’t know a lot about the Digital Nomad Visas and have some problems.

We arrived in Spain on September 4rh and had originally wanted to turn our visa application in on the 5th but we were issued a NIE number when we got our certificate of entrance stamped but the number wasn’t authenticated. This caused some confusion and we had to go to the National Police to figure out what to do. They told us to apply for our visa and that the number that we were given couldn’t be changed but also wasn’t authorized it was more of a place holder. It was very confusing. We submitted our Visa on the 9th of September and we got notice of our approval on September 30th. Our NIA numbers were the numbers issued at the National Police when we arrived so thankfully that didn’t cause any problems. We already registered at city hall that we are residents and we need to register our business as self employed so we can then get our residency cards.

People complain about the bureaucracy in Spain but I had to jump through similar hoops at home to get a correction for my Son’s social security card and to get all the notaries, certified copies and apostilles for the documents we needed here. It is easier at home because I speak the language but there are still often multiple offices you need to go to, not everything is digitized, they may need additional documentation.