Pedro Sanchez, president of the Spanish government announced that the Spanish Cabinet is thinking of ruling out the Golden Visa law as per the EU recommendation.

What is a Golden Visa

The Golden Visa is an administrative tool currently operating in Spain since 2013, that enables a foreign citizen to apply for a residence permit in an easy procedure which can be achieved in a short period of time by means of different types of investments.

Spain was then Deep into the world economic crisis caused by the bursting of the EE. UU. housing bubble (Subprime mortgages), scenario aggravated by the own Spanish housing bubble. Since the big transnational capitals were distrusting our market, the government thought there was a need for motivation, and Golden Visa was one of the ideas carried out.

The law takes into account several assumptions by which an individual can obtain the residence permit for Spain, for a three year period extendable to two more, via express procedure.

One possibility would be supporting an rising company. This procedure applies also to over 1 million euro investment in deposits or buying shares of a Spanish capital corporation or over 2 million purchase of Treasury bonds.

Notwithstanding, the undisputed most common way to acquire the Golden Visa is via Real Estate. Buying a real estate property for over 500.000€ (either a house or any other dwelling or premises, and what’s more, it might be more than one property to reach the half a million euro amount).

There have been issued 11.464 residence permits for foreign investment since 2013 up to the end of 2022. The vast majority of these authorizations were caused for purchasing a dwelling.

 

The EC, and due to the Ukraine invasion, warned the members of the commission about these mechanisms to residence permit granting in exchange for money, and urged the countries to rule out these shortcuts that made possible to change one’s country of residence. It is since then that Portugal and Ireland proceeded to cancel the Golden Visa procedures. In Greece, the access to these process has been drastically toughened.

We will be anticipating any moves from the Spanish Government and will expeditiously inform our Friends via the Marbella 360 website news page.