Every spring the same question comes up in French families settled in Spain, and among students eyeing a faculty in Madrid, Barcelona or Valencia: does my bac open the doors of Spanish universities, and do I have to homologate and translate everything? The good news fits in one line: because France and Spain belong to the same European educational area, access is facilitated. The heavy recognition procedure is, in the vast majority of cases, unnecessary. Here is the exact map.
The bac grants access, with no homologation of the Bachiller
A holder of the French baccalauréat who meets the university-access requirements in their own system enters Spanish universities without homologating the diploma to the Spanish Bachiller. That is the rule for EU and EEA educational systems: a student from these systems "will not need to process the homologation of their qualifications to access Spanish universities." In its place, one central document: the UNEDasiss accreditation.
UNEDasiss: the access credential
UNEDasiss is the UNED service that translates — in the administrative sense — your French record into the codes of the Spanish system. It issues an accreditation that recognises your right of access and converts your bac grade onto the Spanish scale. The credential is valid for two years.
For EU candidates, access works by reciprocity: the bac grade is enough to set the base nota de acceso (out of 10). You can raise it by up to 4 further points — up to 14 — by sitting the Specific Competency Tests (PCE) tied to your target degree; at least two are recommended. Those points are what decide places in high-demand degrees such as Medicine. The document that carries your grade, and which UNEDasiss examines closely, is the relevé de notes (the bac transcript).
The Bachibac: you already hold both titles
A fortunate special case: if you followed a Bachibac track — the dual Bachiller / Baccalauréat qualification governed by Royal Decree 102/2010, born of the 2005 Franco-Spanish agreement — you already hold both diplomas. You enter a Spanish university like any Spanish bachiller: no homologation, no foreign credential, no translation. The mixed curriculum and the external test did the work upstream. If that is your case, stop reading here: nothing to translate.
When homologation is required after all
Homologation of the Bachiller has not disappeared. It becomes mandatory again if:
- you do not meet the university-access requirements in the French system (insufficient result, incomplete track);
- you come from a non-EU system with no reciprocity agreement;
- you want partial secondary studies recognised in order to continue them differently.
In those cases the route is secondary-school recognition, far slower than the simple credential — and one that always calls for a sworn translation of the file.
The translation question: let's be honest
This is where many go wrong, in both directions.
First, what makes life easier: between EU countries, legalisation and the apostille of your school documents are not required. No chasing stamps for your diploma.
Second, the limit, which we prefer to state plainly: Regulation (EU) 2016/1191, which waives translation for certain documents through multilingual forms, covers only civil-status documents (birth, being alive, marriage, residence, absence of a criminal record). Diplomas and academic transcripts are expressly excluded. That regulation will spare you translating a birth certificate, never your bac.
In practice, for UNEDasiss any document not in Spanish must be submitted with a translation into Spanish. The baccalauréat diploma and the relevé de notes therefore, as a rule, go through a sworn translation into Spanish, done by a translator accredited by the MAEC (the Spanish Foreign Ministry). What, by contrast, needs no translation: the Bachibac track (already Spanish) and the civil-status documents covered by the European multilingual form.
And beyond access? As soon as scholarships, professional recognition of a university degree already earned, or validation of partial higher studies come into play, you enter files where sworn translation — and sometimes degree recognition — become the norm again.
In short
For a French bachelier aiming at a Spanish faculty: no homologation, a UNEDasiss credential, a converted grade and — almost always — the sworn translation of the diploma and the relevé de notes into Spanish. The rest (apostille, homologation) is the exception. At Textualia we translate these school files FR→ES daily, with a MAEC-accredited translator: send us your diploma and your transcript, and before we begin we will tell you which pieces UNEDasiss really wants in Spanish, and which you can keep in French.