It’s been a while since I have talked about our move to Spain, so I thought it was a good time for an update and to share more about the details of what it takes to move there on a permanent basis.

TLDR: We missed the window to get an appointment with the consulate for this month, so the earliest we could actually submit our application won’t be until the end of November, and we probably won’t be able to move until mid-January at the earliest.

In order to move to Spain on a permanent basis on the non-lucrative visa — which is the visa we’re trying to get — one needs to apply at the most local consulate (through their contractor, BLS), which for us is San Francisco. Getting an appointment to submit that application is a significant challenge. The consulate releases only a handful of appointment slots each month (we hear it is 24 total slots per consulate), and they usually release them during the workday in Spain, which means early morning in California. Generally, the appointments are for 1½ to 2 months in the future. It really is a kind of lottery to get an appointment, and we need two of them in the same month. Quite the hurdle!

We were getting ready for our big trip at the end of July and early August, so while we did make an attempt, it wasn’t an earnest one. So we knew we would not have a September appointment. It would have been nice, because that would have allowed us to make the move on our original timeline.

We were more determined this month. We tried early in the day the last couple of days in August, but the slots had not opened up. My husband is the primary applicant, so he has to make the appointments, but he was dealing with sleep deprivation from a sleep study the previous evening and was not able to wake up as early today as he had hoped. Naturally, we learned today that the slots opened up at 1 AM our time and were gone by 7 AM. So we missed out again — no appointment in October.

So it’s looking like we won’t be moving this calendar year. We’re kind of bummed about that, but there’s nothing we can do. (Well, we can keep checking for appointments because sometimes people cancel and those slots open up. This is not something we are counting on, but we are hopeful.) We’ll try again at the end of September and early October, cross our fingers, and hopefully get an appointment for the end of November.

Of course, once we submit our application, it can take anywhere between two weeks and three months for the consulate to decide on it. They may also take longer if they decide our documents are deficient and we need to submit new ones. And since each bureaucrat working for Spain’s government is encouraged to use their own judgment in interpreting the official visa requirements, we won’t know what that particular consulate wants until they ask for it. All we can do is over-prepare and hope that we’ve thought of all the documents they are going to ask for.

As an idea of what we’re preparing for, I share this humorous (but I’m assured reasonably accurate) video:

And so, while we wait, we are continuing to gather the documents our visa preparation team thinks the San Francisco office will require:

  • ✔ Copies of our passports
  • ✔ Copies of our drivers licenses
  • ✔ Our official marriage license apostilled by the California secretary of state
  • FBI records for each of us, also apostilled (records obtained; waiting on the State Department to apostille them)
  • Bank statements for the past couple of years proving that we have enough liquid assets to support ourselves in the first year living there
  • Various letters issued by the banks (who often look at us perplexed when we ask for them in the way Spain requires) stating average balances and that the funds in the accounts can be withdrawn within 48 hours
  • ✔ Letters from our most recent employers with confirmation that we are no longer working there
  • Letters from ourselves affirming we will not seek employment while under the terms of the visa (we’ve written these letters and are just waiting for approval from our visa preparation team)
  • 3 years of tax returns
  • Current Health certificate signed by our physicians
  • Proof of having purchased a visa-compliant Spanish medical plan
  • Letters of intent from each of us

Many of those documents will need to be officially translated as well, and we are looking to our visa preparation team to help us get that done.

We are also making progress on deciding what we will be purging from the house and what we will be keeping. We’re not making as much progress on this as I had hoped, but now we have an extra month, I suppose. If you’re local and interested in books, TTRPG books, board games, art supplies, or who knows what else, keep an eye on my personal Facebook page.