Student visa for internships in Spain — your path to professional experience abroad.

The student visa applies to any non-EU/EEA/Swiss citizen whose stay in Spain will exceed 90 days within a 180-day period for purposes of study, internship, vocational training, or volunteering with an educational component. EU, EEA, and Swiss citizens are fully exempt from this requirement, though they are still required to register at the local town hall (padrón) and obtain a NIE number within three months of arrival. Non-EU citizens on Erasmus+ programmes are not exempt and must apply for the student visa even for mobility periods of 91 days or slightly more.

The application must be submitted in person at the Spanish consulate or embassy serving your region of residence — not the region where you happen to be studying if you're already abroad. You cannot submit it by post or through a third party in most countries, though a handful of consulates (London, Berlin, Paris) accept applications via a designated visa outsourcing partner such as BLS or TLScontact. The first step is always to secure your internship or Learning Agreement — without this, no consulate will process your file. Once you have this document, book your cita previa (consulate appointment) as early as possible, as waiting times can stretch to several weeks in busy periods. Gather all documents before your appointment date and have everything apostilled and translated in advance — consulates rarely grant a second chance to submit missing paperwork.

At the appointment itself, you'll be asked to hand over the entire document pack in a specific order, provide biometric fingerprints, and answer a short interview about the purpose of your stay, the host company, your funding, and your accommodation. A calm, well-rehearsed answer here matters more than most applicants realise: consular officers are trained to spot inconsistencies between the interview and the paperwork. After the interview you'll receive a resguardo (receipt) that lets you track the file status online. Most consulates now publish weekly status batches; do not call the consulate before day 15, as pre-decision enquiries are rarely answered.

If your application is approved, you'll be asked to return to the consulate in person to collect your passport with the visa vignette affixed. The visa is valid for a single entry to Spain within 90 days of issue, and gives you an initial 90 days of legal stay inside the country — during which you must complete your empadronamiento, apply for your TIE, and register with social security if your internship requires it. If your application is refused, you'll receive a written decision citing the specific article of the Reglamento de Extranjería that motivated the refusal. Refusals can be appealed within one month (recurso de reposición) or challenged in the administrative courts within two months.

Spain runs a single national visa policy, but every consulate interprets the checklist slightly differently — the format they accept for a criminal record, the age threshold for a medical certificate, whether they want a certified copy of your passport bio page, and how strictly they enforce the €700/month IPREM threshold all vary. Applying to the wrong consulate for your region of residence is one of the fastest routes to a rejection. The snapshot below reflects consulate behaviour we've observed with our student cohorts in 2025–2026; always cross-check the current cita previa portal for your consulate before booking.

The visa fee itself is only a fraction of what a full student visa file actually costs. Between apostilles, sworn translations, medical certificates, private health insurance for the duration of the stay, and the €16.08 TIE fee once you arrive in Spain, most single applicants for a six-month internship should budget between €500 and €900 in official fees and mandatory paperwork — before flights, deposits, or accommodation. Applicants from countries with a reciprocity surcharge (notably the United States) pay materially more; Erasmus+ scholarship holders can offset most of the health insurance line with the OLS/insurance component of their grant.

Consular refusals are almost never arbitrary: they cite a specific defect in the file. We've reviewed hundreds of rejection letters over the past decade, and the same six issues account for roughly 90% of them. The reassuring news is that all six are avoidable with careful preparation, and most rejected applicants who correct the underlying issue and re-file (or appeal) are approved on the second attempt. Never assume a rejection is fatal — but never assume you can talk your way past a documentary defect at the counter either.

Getting the visa stamped in your passport is only the first half of the process. Within your first 30 days in Spain you need to complete four separate administrative steps that together give you full legal residency, access to public services, and — where relevant — the right to work part-time or receive a paid internship stipend. Each of these steps requires its own cita previa, its own document set, and, in some autonomous communities, its own waiting time of several weeks. Booking the citas before you fly to Spain is the single biggest time-saver most students overlook.

Empadronamiento is your registration at the town hall (ayuntamiento) of the municipality where you live; it's the document that proves your Spanish address and unlocks almost everything else. NIE (Número de Identificación de Extranjero) is your unique tax and identification number, embedded in the TIE card. TIE (Tarjeta de Identidad de Extranjero) is the biometric residency card required for any stay over 180 days. Social Security registration (Número de Seguridad Social) is only required if your internship is paid or if your Training Agreement includes it as a condition — most companies will process this on your behalf.