From Auxiliar de Conversación to Teletrabajador (Digital Nomad)

The link to apply is here: https://www.inclusion.gob.es/web/unidadgrandesempresas/solicitudes

I was inspired to write this by a couple of former auxiliares who wrote about their transition to becoming a freelancer (autonomo) in Spain. This was before the Spanish government announced the new visa for digital nomads. So I want to shout out Sarah la Viajera and Meagan from SpainGuru.es, thanks for writing that, it was very useful. Now for the Digital Nomad visa, applying for this visa is easier (no business plan) and you can do it yourself if you have a good Spanish level. For auxs, you already have a NIE (and hopefully the certificado digital), which puts you one step ahead of most other digital nomads.

If you don’t have the certificado digital click here: https://www.sede.fnmt.gob.es/certificados/persona-fisica
Cl@ve is similar and you can get it here: https://clave.gob.es/clave_Home/clave.html

This visa is really only for auxs who were also working online at the same time. If you have private students, that isn’t enough to get the visa. You have to be working for a company from outside of Spain. I had been teaching English online while working as an aux to supplement the 700 euro stipend from the government. You also have to earn at least double the Spanish minimum wage which is 1050 euros per month. I also uploaded bank statements to show my savings.

The process itself is not that time consuming, it’s just getting the documents together and translated that takes the most amount of time.

Here are the documents you need:

In Spanish from the official ministry website:

As you can see some docs must be translated by a certified translator they are:
1) Your work contract

2) Proof that the foreign company you work for has existed for at least one year

3) Your degree/diploma/certificate related to the work you do

A simple translation of these documents are required, so you can translate these documents yourself or your company can:

1) CV

2) Letter from your company authorizing you to work abroad

You can find official translators here, although I none of the translators on the list responded to my emails, I had better luck finding a translator by Googling “traductor jurado, Cordoba”.

I used my criminal record from Spain as I had been living here for more than 2 years. You can get your Spanish criminal record here. It costs 3 or 4 euros for the apostille version.

Other documents I submitted were bank statements (translated in Spanish by the bank website) and my empadronamiento.

Timeline: The whole process took me about 5 months. I didn’t apply for the visa until I finished the school year, where I then had 90 days to submit the application. I submitted in June and was approved about 30 business days later.

They told me to expect a response within 20 days, after I didn’t hear back after 20 days I submitted a request for a favorable resolution based on administrative silence and I was approved about 10 days after I submitted that. I am not sure if it helped my application to be approved or not. They also might ask you to submit additional documents while they are checking, but they didn’t ask for any from me.

Approval Letter:

Hopefully this was helpful, the links at least should be and if you still use Facebook, these groups were great at answering questions.

So, best of luck and feel free to write comments or questions below.