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Spain Killed Its Golden Visa. Is the Digital Nomad Visa Next?

5 min readApr 10, 2025

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Photo by Ken Cheung on Unsplash

Were you dreaming of moving to Spain on a golden visa?

If so, I sincerely hope you’re in Spain, living it up, because if not, it’s time to pivot to plan B, as Spain has officially killed its golden visa.

It had a nice twelve-year run, and for a time, it and its Iberian Peninsula neighbor Portugal were some of the leading European destinations for golden visas. They offered relatively affordable opportunities for individuals looking to leave the United States (as well as the U.K. and Canada). Now, the buy-in real estate requirement of €500K in Spain wasn’t exactly cheap, but with the cost of living significantly lower than that in the U.S., it provided a desirable opportunity for tens of thousands of expats and emigrants.

But those days are over. As of April 3, Spain has discontinued its golden visa program.

The current Spanish government, in an attempt to look tough in the mindset of a housing crisis, has swung its weight around without doing much to fix the problem. With it’s anti-tourism mindset, the powers that be have focused its aggression on long-term visa holders, shifting the housing market blame onto long-stay digital nomad visa holders, visitors…

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Greyson Ferguson
Greyson Ferguson

Written by Greyson Ferguson

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