Spain digital nomad visa: the foreign-company & work-seniority requirements

Most people preparing a Spain digital nomad visa focus on the money: the income threshold, the bank statements, the savings. Those matter, but they are not where applications quietly fail. The conditions that catch people out are the ones about the company you work for and the relationship you have with it. The remote worker must work for one or more companies located abroad; that company must have been constituted and in genuine activity for at least one year before the application; and you must prove an employment or professional relationship of at least three months with it, backed by a formal authorisation to work remotely from Spain. This guide unpacks each of those requirements, the documents that actually satisfy them, and the traps — brand-new companies, shell entities, verbal arrangements — that turn an otherwise strong file into a refusal.

"Your income and qualifications are only half the story on this visa; it also asks who you work for, how long that company has truly been trading, and how long you have worked with it. Evidence the seniority and the company’s track record carefully, because that is where these applications most often come unstuck."

The core rule: your work must sit abroad

The digital nomad visa exists to let people live in Spain while their working life stays anchored somewhere else. The foundational condition, therefore, is that you work for one or more companies located outside Spain. This applies whether you are a remote employee on a foreign payroll (working por cuenta ajena) or a self-employed freelancer (an autónomo) whose clients are based abroad. In both cases the economic activity that supports you must be foreign; Spain is where you live, not where the money is generated.

That single principle drives everything else on this page. Because the whole permission rests on a genuine foreign working relationship, the authorities need to see that the relationship is real, that it is not a recent fabrication built for the visa, and that the entity behind it is a functioning business rather than a name on a certificate. The three requirements that follow — company age, work seniority, and express authorisation — are simply the concrete tests through which that genuineness is proven.

The company requirement: one year of real activity

The foreign company you work for must have been constituted and in real activity for at least one year before you file the application. Both halves of that sentence matter. "Constituted" means legally incorporated, which is easy to evidence. "In real activity" is the harder part: the company must have been genuinely trading — invoicing, employing, operating — throughout that period, not simply registered and dormant.

This is deliberately designed to exclude companies created to manufacture eligibility. A business incorporated a few weeks before the application, however legitimate on paper, cannot show a year of real trading and will not satisfy the condition. The same is true of an entity that exists formally but has never really operated. When we assess a file, the one-year activity test is one of the first things we pressure-test, because it is fixed by the facts of the company and cannot be improved by better paperwork once the application is imminent.

What actually proves company age and activity

Age is the simple part; activity is where files are won or lost. A convincing company file usually combines several of the following:

• Certificate of incorporation (or the equivalent constitution document), establishing when the company was legally formed.
• An extract from the commercial registry of the country of incorporation, confirming the company remains active and in good standing.
• Evidence of real trading over the year — this is the decisive layer. Depending on the business it can include financial statements or accounts, tax filings, VAT returns, a client or contract history, or payroll records showing the company has employed people. The aim is to show continuous operation, not a single transaction.
• Foreign public documents generally need to be legalised or apostilled and officially translated into Spanish where required, so that the Spanish authority can rely on them.

Think of it as answering two questions with paper: when was this company born? and has it genuinely been alive for the past year? A file that answers only the first is incomplete.

The seniority requirement: three months with the company

Separate from the company's age is your tenure with it. You must prove an employment or professional relationship of at least three months prior to the application with the foreign company or companies you rely on. This ensures the relationship is settled rather than freshly minted for immigration purposes: a contract signed the day before you apply does not demonstrate an established working life abroad.

Three months is a minimum, not a target, and it is measured against the specific company that underpins the application. That distinction becomes important the moment someone has recently changed jobs.

How the three months is evidenced

The evidence mirrors the type of relationship. A remote employee typically proves seniority through the employment contract (with its start date) supported by payslips covering the qualifying months. A freelancer proves it through a service or engagement contract with the foreign client and a run of invoices spanning the period, ideally matched by incoming payments. In each case the goal is a coherent, dated trail showing that the relationship existed and was active for at least three months before the filing date.

What happens if you recently switched employers

This is one of the most common practical problems, and it catches experienced professionals off guard. Because the three-month relationship is tested against the company you base the application on, joining a new foreign employer resets that particular clock — even if your overall career spans a decade. If you moved to a new company last month, you may not yet meet the seniority requirement with that company, regardless of how long you worked for the previous one.

There are usually sensible ways to handle this: waiting until the three months has accrued, or, where the facts allow, structuring the file around more than one qualifying foreign relationship, since the requirement refers to "one or more companies." What you should not do is assume that seniority carries over automatically from a prior employer. A recent job change is exactly the kind of detail worth raising early, so the application is timed correctly rather than filed prematurely and refused.

The express remote-work authorisation

The third pillar is the express authorisation: a formal document from the company that explicitly permits you to perform your work remotely from Spain. It is not enough for remote work to be implied or informally accepted; the authorities want a written statement that the company knows about — and consents to — the arrangement.

A well-drafted authorisation letter typically identifies both you and the company, describes your role and confirms that it can be carried out entirely remotely, and states clearly that the company authorises you to perform that role from Spanish territory. Where relevant it can confirm that the working relationship is ongoing and that remote working does not alter its terms. For a freelancer, the equivalent is the foreign client's consent that the contracted services may be delivered from Spain. As with other foreign documents, translation and legalisation may be needed so the statement is usable before the Spanish authority.

Employee vs freelancer: the same conditions, different proof

The visa recognises two profiles, and both must satisfy the same three conditions — foreign company with a year of activity, three months of seniority, and an express remote-work authorisation. What changes is the paperwork each uses to get there. The table below sets out how a remote employee and a freelancer each prove the identical requirements.

The practical takeaway is that neither profile has an easier path — they simply document the same truths in different formats. A freelancer relying on several clients has to demonstrate the year of activity and consent for each client they lean on, while an employee concentrates the whole story into one employer. Your digital nomad visa lawyer can help you decide which relationships to build the file around before you gather a single document.

Common evidence pitfalls

Most refusals on these grounds are foreseeable, and nearly all trace back to a short list of recurring problems:

• The brand-new company. An entity incorporated shortly before the application cannot show a year of real activity. This is the single most common company-side failure.
• The shell entity. A company that exists on paper but has never genuinely traded — no accounts, no filings, no operational footprint — fails the "real activity" test even if it is a year old.
• Verbal or informal remote-work arrangements. Consent that exists only in conversation, chat or implication, with no formal authorisation document, leaves a gap the authorities cannot overlook.
• Seniority reset by a recent job change. Applying immediately after joining a new foreign employer, on the assumption that past tenure counts, when the three months has not accrued with the current company.
• Missing legalisation or translation. Foreign incorporation and registry documents that are not apostilled or officially translated, so the Spanish authority cannot rely on them.
• Activity assumed rather than shown. Providing the certificate of incorporation alone and treating the year of trading as self-evident, instead of evidencing it with accounts, filings or a contract history.

These company-side failures sit inside a wider picture. For how they combine with income, Social Security, qualification and procedural risks — and what to do if a refusal letter arrives — see why Spain refuses digital nomad visa applications.

A note on qualifications and experience

These company and seniority rules sit alongside a separate condition about you as a professional: you must generally hold a relevant university or postgraduate degree, or demonstrate at least three years of analogous professional experience in your field. It is a distinct requirement from the ones covered here and it has its own evidentiary quirks, so rather than treat it briefly and risk being incomplete, we cover it in full on the dedicated page. See our companion guide on the income and eligibility requirements, which sets out the qualification and financial thresholds in detail.

Where this fits in the wider application

The foreign-company, seniority and authorisation conditions are three of several moving parts. They interlock with the income threshold, the limit on how much of your work can come from Spanish clients, and — later — with renewals, where the same conditions must still hold. If you are mapping the whole route, start with the pillar guide to applying for the digital nomad visa in Spain, then read the sibling pages on the income requirements and the limit on Spanish clients. When it is time to extend, our guide on renewing the digital nomad visa explains how these same conditions are re-verified at each renewal.