Applying for Digital Nomad or Golden Visa

Hi

We are currently just starting to look into applying for the Digital visa as we would like to move across permanently in August of this year. It is very expensive to apply here in the UK as you say so we were hoping to apply in Spain. However we have spoken to the solicitors who dealt with our house purchase, and they have given us very different information compared to what I have read online. A few things I found odd, he said we would need to be on the Padron first and that we would need 11,000 euros in our Spanish bank account on average for at least 6 months? We were hoping to sort the application while we were there at Easter but from your post, it looks like that will be too early?

Kind regards

Lorna

My first bit of advice is *DON’T* use the same solicitors you use for house purchase.  There seems to be a certain idea here that if you ask a professional - particularly a solicitor - a question to which they are not certain of the answer, they won’t say “I don’t know but I’ll check”, they will instead either guess, tell you what they *think* might be the answer or worse tell you what they think you want to hear!

The information supplied came from Migration Agents here in Spain and to pose your question you really need to deal with a specialist migration lawyer, someone who talks with Extranjeria on a regular basis and who is up on the ever-changing rules!

You CANNOT (well … you can, but you really shouldn’t for a variety of reasons) go on the Padrón until you are resident as the Padrón is a declaration to the Ayuntamiento of habitual residency, and this is not the first time I have heard of such erroneous advice being given by solicitors involved in house purchase.  They may be brilliant at conveyancing and all ins and outs of house purchase - but useless when it comes to migration / residential law.

I would seek out migration lawyers and ask them - I can recommend Mundi Abogados at Las Buganvillas - solely because they really seem to be up on the requirements.

Hi, 

Thanks so much for the in depth reply.

We had actually contacted Maria at Mundi also ( we had spoken with her several years ago when we initially started looking at houses at Vera but we ended up in a different part of Almeria (Chirivel) hence the solicitors that we used recently at Albox). We really liked her but she has said that she can only help us once we have applied in the UK and can then help us to sort residency once we’re in Spain with the digital visas but she would not be able to help us apply in the first instance. I thought that rather odd but that was her reply. With the other odd response from the Albox solicitors, it’s now feeling like a much more complex (and expensive) process than it initially looked but I’ll take your advice and look for a solicitor in this particular area of law first of all. I saw the person you advised on another post (Mark @ sun lawyers?) so I'll drop him an email and hopefully get back on track. 

Thanks

Lorna 

The information I provided was also lifted straight from Sun Lawyers so it may also be worth contacting them

Hello, I can recommend Emma Randle, a British solicitor based in Almeria.  She sorted our non lucrative visa after the solicitor we had in the UK messed up, she has also looked after the nomad visa for a friend of ours, our visa renewal, driving licences and we've been very satisfied. 

Take a look at her website, she does almost everything remotely so unlikely to need to travel to almeria. 

Good Luck

https://www.emmarandlesolicitor.com/

Hi,

thanks very much for this. I’ll have a look at the website. Much appreciated :)