Hi,
I’m in Spain staying with a Spanish friend on a 90 days tourist visa. I work for an online company based in Australia, which means i can work anywhere in the world as long as i have internet connection. I love it here in Spain and I want to stay here. What should I do? What do I need?

So basically I have a place to stay here, steady income - so i don’t need to find a job here - but i just don’t have any paperwork for Spain.

I am also bound to return to Australia in a month’s time. I read here that I can get an NIE from my embassy in Australia - should I do this when I am back there? I want to return ASAP. What kind of Visa should I apply for [if any]?

Please help - reading all the horror stories of long queues & third world bureaucracy has depressed me slightly but I am still determined.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

lost-aussie

what company???

Here are the Visa rules…...........

VISAS INFORMATION

LEGAL STATUS OF FOREIGNERS IN SPAIN

http://extranjeros.mtas.es/es/general/Folletos_informativos.html

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Hi,

I’m actually doing what you want to do—working for my company back home while living in Spain. As far as I know, you’ve got just three options if you want to do this legally:

1) Convince your company to open up an office in Spain and then hire you to work there! The only problems are, of course, this requires a lot of money and effort from your company and there’s always the risk that they can’t get authority to hire you in Spain anyways…

2) Apply for a Residence Visa for Self Employment. Here the catch is that you need to have $100,000 (US) in a bank account in Spain.

3) Your friend (or any other Spanish person) could try to get you working papers by offering you a job that appears in the
Cat?lago de Ocupaciones de Dif?cil Cobertura. Most of these jobs are for things like cleaning lady, dishwasher, etc. The gov’t publishes the list for each trimester, by province. If, for example, your friend lives in Granada and the job “cleaning lady” appears for Granada, your friend could request permission from the govt to hire you as a cleaning lady. If all is approved, you come to Spain, work online for your company in Australia, and give your friend/employer money each month to cover the taxes they are paying for you.

And then there’s the fourth option:

Just come here and work, pay your taxes in Australia, and hope you don’t get caught!  😊

fropie - 22 May 2008 11:47 AM

1) Convince your company to open up an office in Spain and then hire you to work there! The only problems are, of course, this requires a lot of money and effort from your company and there’s always the risk that they can’t get authority to hire you in Spain anyways…

2) Apply for a Residence Visa for Self Employment. Here the catch is that you need to have $100,000 (US) in a bank account in Spain.

I don’t believe that you need to have $100k to get your self employment visa. It only requires about ?3000 to start your own SL which one can use to sponsor themself.

Hi,

There’s a difference between the self employment visa, being autonomo, and starting your own company.

1) A person who is not legal in Spain can not be autonomo. In order to be autonomo, you need a NIE. In order to get a NIE, you need to be legal.

2) That’s why a non-EU citizen who wants to come to Spain and be self-employed has to apply for a special visa (called the residence visa for self-employment) in order to be able to legally work for themselves in Spain. According to the Spanish Consulate in Chicago, you need to show that you have $100,000 invested in Spain (among many other things) to be eligible for this visa.

3) Even if you set up your own business in Spain, you are NOT legal to work for it if you do not have Spanish residency/work permit. You can set up a limited society for about 450-600 euros in costs. You need to have another 3000 euros in a Spanish bank account as well, but this is not a cost—you can take the money out once the notary has signed off on a copy of the bank statement, if you really want. If you set up your own business in Spain, you have to have a respresentative who IS legal to work/live in Spain run the company for you “in your absence”. Now, a lot of people set up a business and work for it themselves—the risk is that if you get caught, since you are in Spain illegally, you could be deported. What you can do is set up a business and after making money with it and paying taxes for 9 months or so, apply for a work/residency visa to go to Spain and run the business yourself.

Hope that helps!

fropie - 23 May 2008 12:01 AM

1) A person who is not legal in Spain can not be autonomo. In order to be autonomo, you need a NIE. In order to get a NIE, you need to be legal.

Well thats just false. Any extranjero can get an NIE even before they get to Spain.

Oh and I guess I should tell my friends who started SLs with only 3k in assets that theyir visas are invalid. Frogpie said so.

Well. this is the first I’ve heard of foreigners being able to get NIEs before entering Spain without actually getting a visa. I tried getting one in Spain (while on a tourist visa) and was told that I couldn’t get one unless I had a residency visa. I was told this by both a lawyer and the people at hacienda.

I’d also note that your own Web site says: NIE (N?mero de Identidad/Identificaci?n de Extranjero): The immigration service issues this number to you once you obtain residency (you will find the number on your Resident Card).

As for the SL, again, I met with lawyers and spoke to the people at hacienda as well as researching this endlessly on the Web. Source after source informed me that the SL would need to have 3000 euros in the company’s bank account, but that once the sources are proven (i.e., the statement is notarized and submitted to the appropriate authorities), the money can be taken out. It can also be left in, but as there are some people who borrow money off their family to start the business, it’s convenient to know that this money can be promptly returned if not needed for the actual running of the business.

As for the visa thing, I think you misunderstood me. Yes, you can get a visa (eventually) to run a profitable business that has been paying its taxes in Spain. But initially, from day one of setting up the company, you can not. At least this is, again, what the people at hacienda and the lawyers told me. A lot of people set up a business and work for it illegally for some time before applying for the actual visa.