How do non EU members obtain Spanish residency with the new “Golden Visa”

The Golden Visa scenario sounded like a great idea but in practice it does not seem to be as good as reported and open to much interpretation, especially between Spanish & Russian officials depending upon which source you speak to.

I have some Russian clients and there experience is proving to be really difficult, even having consulted various Spanish lawyers, Embassies and Consulates in both countries, they all seem to have little hands on experience as to how the actual process works and can not guarantee anything, consequently my clients have been knocked from pillar to post by the system both in Spain and in Russia which is most unfortunate for them as they have wealth which the new law was said to attract!  The main problem is that you can not find any official information and the Spanish consulate does not have any of the actual requirements on their website regarding Golden Visas. If they did it would save a lot of time for both Applicants and consulate staff. The whole situation forces the applicant to work with private agencies, whom apparently have access to the information and people within the consulate that know about it.

The Spanish rules to obtain a Golden Visa say that if you spend 500,000 euros on real estate of a certain surface area and value they will give a non EU member residency in Spain. But according to my clients, they are advised by the Spanish authorities that this amount is per person, so man and wife need to spend 1,000,000 and it doesn’t give residencia but only visado for residencia (provisional) for them and any of their children providing you can provide  adequate proof of income and savings.

Apparently, the requirements per adult person applying for residency is said to be 70,000 annual wage but did not advise they needed extra savings per child.

However, in addition to this the Spanish Consulate in Russia say that you must also provide an additional 50,000 euros savings in your bank account per adult and 30,000 per child. We are not sure if this is fact or incorrect interpretation.

Even if all of these requirements are met, the Spanish authorities have said that they  will not give a work permit, especially for the first year because of the enormous unemployment level in Spain, so you can live in Spain but you can’t work and that the residency when issued is only valid for one year, upon which you have to re-apply and then you get another for two years and then three. After this they may decide to give you a five year residency. As for a work permit it is very unclear when they will allow you to work but you may get one after twelve months. 

It would be most helpful to know the exact requirements to obtain the Golden Visa including the whole load of documents, in Russian and Spanish, legalised with the apostilles.

We get the impression that they create these extra difficulties to diminish the number of applicants. 

If there are any officials or lawyers reading this that would like to help, we would be delighted to pass on your advice and contact details.