Spain After the Golden Visa: The Residency Routes That Remain

On 3 April 2025, Spain’s residence-by-investment programme — the golden visa — ceased to exist. The headlines were loud, and many of them left the impression that Spain had shut its door to Americans who are not employees of a Spanish company. The legal text says something much narrower. One final provision of one law struck five articles from another law, and everything around those five articles is still standing. What follows is what the repeal actually removed, what it deliberately preserved, and how the surviving routes are built — including the design choice that explains why the income thresholds move every year.

What ended on 3 April 2025

The instrument was Ley Orgánica 1/2025, a judicial-efficiency law published in the BOE on 3 January 2025. Its twenty-first final provision — disposición final vigesimoprimera — rendered void articles 63 through 67 of Ley 14/2013, the entrepreneurs-support law that had housed the golden visa since 2013. Those five articles were the entire programme: article 63 defined the qualifying investments, article 64 set the documentation, article 65 gave the visa its residence effects, article 66 conditioned renewal on maintaining the investment, and article 67 fixed the durations. With a three-month lead-in from publication, the repeal took effect on 3 April 2025. Since that date there is no investment amount — in property, funds, government debt, or anything else — that produces Spanish residence by itself.

The repeal is not retroactive. Ley Orgánica 1/2025 added transitional rules to Ley 14/2013: applications filed before 3 April 2025 are processed under the rules in force when they were submitted, and permits already granted keep their validity and renew under the rules that applied when they were issued. An American who holds a golden visa granted in 2023 did not lose anything on 3 April 2025 — the route closed to new entrants, not to existing holders.

The framework the repeal left standing

Ley 14/2013 is still in force, and so is nearly all of its international-mobility section. The consolidated text on the BOE shows the surviving categories around the gap where the investor articles used to be:

• Entrepreneurs — articles 68 to 70, for founders of innovative activity with special economic interest for Spain
• Highly qualified professionals — article 71, for executives and specialists hired by a company in Spain
• Researchers and intra-company transferees — their own articles in the same section, untouched by the repeal
• International teleworkers — article 74 bis, the digital nomad route added by Ley 28/2022
• Family members — spouses, partners, and dependent children can be included under each of these categories

Outside Ley 14/2013 entirely sits the general immigration framework, whose regulation was rewritten by Real Decreto 1155/2024 — in force since 20 May 2025 — and which carries the route most retirees use: the non-lucrative residence authorization. Two overhauls therefore landed within weeks of each other in 2025, and neither touched the other’s territory. The golden visa died in April; the general regulation was replaced in May; the routes below are what the two changes left in place.

The non-lucrative route — funds, and no work of any kind

The non-lucrative authorization is Spain’s route for people who can support themselves without working in Spain — in practice, retirees and those living on investment or pension income. The consulates state the boundary without softening it: the visa does not allow any type of work or professional activity, including remote work performed online for an employer abroad. The economic bar is written as a multiple of IPREM, Spain’s public income index: 400% of IPREM for the main applicant, plus 100% of IPREM for each family member who comes along. The application also requires full private health coverage from an insurer authorized to operate in Spain and a clean criminal record. The initial authorization runs one year and is renewable — under the new regulation, renewal extends it in multi-year steps. Americans apply through the Spanish consulate serving their state of residence, most of which route the paperwork through external visa application centers.

The telework route — foreign income, Spanish residence

The international teleworker category — article 74 bis of Ley 14/2013, inserted by the startup law Ley 28/2022 — is the mirror image of the non-lucrative route. It exists precisely for remote work. Employees qualify if they work exclusively for companies located outside Spain; the self-employed may keep clients in Spain up to 20% of their total activity. The professional relationship must predate the application by at least three months, the company on the other end must have been operating for at least a year, and the applicant needs either a university or business-school qualification or at least three years of professional experience. The income bar is pegged to a different index: 200% of the SMI, Spain’s minimum wage, with an additional 75% for the first family member and 25% for each one after that. Applied for from the United States, the visa is issued for up to a year; applied for from inside Spain through the UGE — the large-business and strategic-sectors unit that processes Ley 14/2013 permits — the residence authorization can run longer, with renewals available while the conditions hold.

Entrepreneurs and employees

The entrepreneur authorization of articles 68 to 70 is the survivor closest in spirit to the golden visa, and it works on the opposite logic: instead of a passive investment, it requires an active project. The activity must be innovative or of special economic interest for Spain, and the assessment is qualitative — ENISA, the state innovation-finance company, issues the favorable report, weighing the applicant’s profile, the business plan, and the value the project adds to the Spanish economy. There is no minimum investment amount and no minimum job-creation figure in the criteria. For employees, the highly qualified professional permit of article 71 covers managerial and specialist hires by companies in Spain. Both run through the UGE rather than the general immigration offices.

Why the thresholds move every year

None of the figures above is a euro amount, and that is not an omission. Spanish immigration rules set their economic bars as multiples of two statutory indexes. IPREM — the Indicador Público de Renta de Efectos Múltiples, created by Real Decreto-ley 3/2004 — anchors the non-lucrative route. The SMI — the interprofesional minimum wage, fixed each year by royal decree, most recently Real Decreto 87/2025 for 2025 — anchors the telework route. When either index is reset, every threshold built on it moves automatically, with no change to the immigration rules themselves. This is why euro figures quoted around the web go stale within a year: the multiple is the rule, and the euro value is only this year’s output of it. The current conversion is always one multiplication away from the index value published in the BOE.

What the repeal did not change

Ley Orgánica 1/2025 changed who can acquire residence, not what residence costs at tax time. Spain’s special expatriate tax regime — the Beckham law — sits in the income tax statute and was untouched; so were Modelo 720 asset reporting and the wealth and solidarity taxes. Nothing changed for visitors either: Americans without residence still have the Schengen short-stay allowance of 90 days in any 180-day period. And property ownership was never the residence trigger by itself — after 3 April 2025 a home in Spain confers exactly the residence rights it conferred through the golden visa era for anyone who had not applied under it: none. The repeal deleted one admission route; the rest of the system — admission, taxation, and reporting — is where it was.

Sources

1. Boletín Oficial del Estado — Ley Orgánica 1/2025, de 2 de enero, disposición final vigesimoprimera — https://www.boe.es/buscar/act.php?id=BOE-A-2025-76 — checked 2026-08-26
2. Boletín Oficial del Estado — Ley 14/2013, de 27 de septiembre, texto consolidado — https://www.boe.es/buscar/act.php?id=BOE-A-2013-10074 — checked 2026-08-26
3. Boletín Oficial del Estado — Ley 28/2022, de 21 de diciembre, de fomento del ecosistema de las empresas emergentes — https://www.boe.es/buscar/act.php?id=BOE-A-2022-21739 — checked 2026-08-26
4. Boletín Oficial del Estado — Real Decreto 1155/2024, de 19 de noviembre, Reglamento de Extranjería — https://www.boe.es/buscar/act.php?id=BOE-A-2024-24099 — checked 2026-08-26
5. Boletín Oficial del Estado — Real Decreto-ley 3/2004, de 25 de junio (IPREM) — https://www.boe.es/buscar/act.php?id=BOE-A-2004-12010 — checked 2026-08-26
6. Boletín Oficial del Estado — Real Decreto 87/2025, de 11 de febrero, salario mínimo interprofesional para 2025 — https://www.boe.es/buscar/doc.php?id=BOE-A-2025-2576 — checked 2026-08-26
7. Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores — Consulate General of Spain in Washington, Non-lucrative residence visa — https://www.exteriores.gob.es/Consulados/washington/en/ServiciosConsulares/Paginas/Consular/Visado-de-residencia-no-lucrativa.aspx — checked 2026-08-26
8. Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores — Consulate General of Spain in New York, International telework visa — https://www.exteriores.gob.es/Consulados/nuevayork/en/ServiciosConsulares/Paginas/Consular/Visado-de-teletrabajo.aspx — checked 2026-08-26
9. Ministerio de Inclusión, Seguridad Social y Migraciones — UGE, Teletrabajadores de carácter internacional — https://www.inclusion.gob.es/en/web/unidadgrandesempresas/teletrabajadores — checked 2026-08-26
10. Ministerio de Inclusión, Seguridad Social y Migraciones — UGE, Emprendedores — https://www.inclusion.gob.es/en/web/unidadgrandesempresas/emprendedores — checked 2026-08-26