Of all the requirements for the digital nomad visa, this is the only one where the law gives you a choice. And as always when there are two roads, almost nobody stops to work out which one suits them: they take whichever is closest to hand and find out later it was the expensive one.
The official wording runs like this: qualified professionals who can show they are graduates or postgraduates of universities of recognised prestige, vocational training or business schools of recognised prestige, or who can evidence at least three years of professional experience.
Two doors. Let's look at what each one costs.
At a glance
| Degree route | Experience route | |
|---|---|---|
| What you submit | One certificate | A set of documents |
| Number of documents | Usually 1 | Between 2 and 6, depending on your history |
| Apostille | Yes, unless EU-exempt | Depends on the document and country |
| Sworn translation | Yes | Yes, for every foreign document |
| Translation cost | Low and predictable | Variable: grows with each document |
| Risk of a request for more evidence | Low | Medium: depends on the wording |
| Suits | Anyone with the degree to hand | Anyone without one, or whose country makes apostilles painful |
The degree route: shorter, nearly always
If you hold a university, vocational or business school qualification, this is the sensible route. You submit one document, and a document is a document: apostille it, translate it, done.
There is one misunderstanding worth clearing up straight away, because it costs months and real money: for this visa the degree is not homologated. Homologation is the procedure by which Spain recognises your foreign qualification as equivalent to a Spanish one and licenses you to practise a regulated profession — medicine, nursing, architecture, law. You are not asking to practise any of those in Spain: you are showing that you are qualified. For that, an apostille and a sworn translation are enough.
Put another way: if your plan is to work remotely for a company abroad, you do not need to homologate anything. If you also intend to register with a professional body and practise in Spain, that is a separate procedure with its own timetable, and it is worth starting early and separately.
The other recurring worry is what "recognised prestige" means. The rule publishes no closed list, which unsettles people unnecessarily: an official degree from a recognised university system rarely causes problems. If your institution is little known outside its own country, send the degree together with documentation from the institution itself proving its official status — accreditation, registration with the relevant ministry — translated as well.
The experience route: more flexible, more work
Three years. There is no mandatory format for proving them, and that freedom is both the advantage and the trap. What works in practice:
- Employer letters with start and end dates, job title and duties. This is the document that carries the most weight.
- Employment contracts, which prove the relationship but sometimes not the actual duties.
- Payslips or tax returns, which confirm continuity when the letter is thin.
- Client letters, if you are self-employed and there is no employer to certify anything.
Two pieces of advice that save grief. First: ask for letters that say what you do, not just that you work. One saying "provided services from January 2021 to date" proves time but not qualification. One saying "performs software development duties within the backend team" proves both, with the same signature and the same effort.
Second, and this is the detail most people miss: the UGE has been paying attention to the consistency between the qualification you claim and the work you will be doing remotely. Three years in hospitality do not sit well under an application to work remotely as a data analyst. Qualification is not filler: it is the answer to "why can this person do this job from a distance?".
What this means for translation
This is where the two routes stop resembling each other. All documentation in a foreign language must be submitted translated into Spanish, and in a visa file that means a sworn translation by a translator accredited by the MAEC.
On the degree route you translate one document, usually a single page. On the experience route you translate as many as you need to cover three years: three employer letters are three translations. That is not a problem — it happens every day — but it is better known in advance than afterwards, because it changes the budget and, above all, the timetable.
One point of sequence that is worth its weight in gold: apostille first, translate second. The apostille is part of the document and gets translated too. Translate before apostilling and your sworn translation will not include it, so it has to be done again. It is the single most repeated mistake in the whole file, and the easiest to avoid.
And one on timing: employer letters come from HR, and HR is slow. If you are going the experience route, ask on day one, not on the last day. While they arrive, you can be dealing with everything else.
So which one?
If you have the degree, use the degree. One document, a predictable cost and a reading nobody can argue with.
The experience route makes sense in two cases: when there is no degree, and when there is one but getting it apostilled in your country is an ordeal — more common than you would think — while three recent employer letters take a week.
And if you have both, nothing stops you submitting degree and experience. It is not required, but it reinforces exactly where the scrutiny falls: the fit between who you are professionally and what you will be doing from Spain.
This guide reflects standard practice at the date of publication. Every file is different, and your consulate's own checklist or the UGE's criteria override any summary. Once you know which documents you will be filing, you can check the price of their sworn translation before you order them.