Digital Nomad Visa Salary Requirements in Spain: The Notarial Income Deed
Table of Contents (7)
- What Is the Spain Digital Nomad Visa?
- What's Changed in the Digital Nomad Visa Income Requirements in Spain?
- Who Is Tightening the Spain Digital Nomad Visa Salary Requirements?
- A Review Can End Your Permanence Under the Spain Digital Nomad Visa
- The Income Deed for the Spain Digital Nomad Visa: Your Safeguard Against Scrutiny
- Required Documents for the Notarial Income Deed for the Spain Digital Nomad Visa
- JLA Notarios Helping Digital Nomads Protect Their Stay in Spain
More and more digital nomads are turning to our notary office on Diagonal Avenue in Barcelona to draw up a notarial income deed that meets the digital nomad visa salary requirements in Spain. In doing so, they protect their file against the tightening measures adopted by the UGE-CE (Unit for Large Companies and Strategic Groups).
In this article, we explain the problems that self-employed professionals and freelancers who arrived in Spain under the digital nomad visa are now facing.
What Is the Spain Digital Nomad Visa?
The Spain digital nomad visa allows a non-EU, non-EEA, non-Swiss national to live in Spain while working remotely for a company or clients based outside the country.
Barcelona is one of Spain's leading digital nomad hubs, together with Madrid and Valencia, and this visa category has grown fast since it was approved in 2023. We're seeing more and more enquiries from people already living here under this visa who want to understand what's changing.
What's Changed in the Digital Nomad Visa Income Requirements in Spain?
What's really changing is how strictly the administration reviews the digital nomad visa income requirements in Spain, not just when you enter, but for as long as you stay.
More and more self-employed freelancers doing remote work are responding to this tightening by reinforcing their file with a notarial income deed.
Who Is Tightening the Spain Digital Nomad Visa Salary Requirements?
The body responsible is the Unit for Large Companies and Strategic Groups (UGE-CE), the administrative authority that resolves these applications when filed directly in Spain.
This body still accepts "any means of proof" that teleworkers meet Spain digital nomad visa salary requirements (200% of the Spanish minimum wage, or SMI, at €2,849/month in 2026) in order to keep legally residing in Spain.
What has changed is the criteria the UGE-CE uses to assess this condition, likely driven by the volume of "ad hoc" commercial contracts (drafted solely to satisfy the paperwork) that it has been detecting.
Several immigration law firms agree that, since 2026, the UGE-CE has been requiring these three documents to align with each other:
| Document | What it proves |
|---|---|
| Commercial or service provision contract | The professional relationship with the foreign company |
| Invoices issued in recent months | That the activity generates real, recent income |
| Stamped bank certificate | That this income has actually been colleted |
Beyond requiring these three documents, the UGE-CE has also tightened its scrutiny of the invoices themselves. It's not enough to submit them: they must be sequential, detailed, and match the dates and amounts on the commercial contract and bank statements. In fact, imprecise invoices and date discrepancies between these documents have become one of the most common reasons for a file to be rejected.
A Review Can End Your Permanence Under the Spain Digital Nomad Visa
Getting the visa approved doesn't close the file. The UGE-CE can check again that you still meet the requirements at three different points:
- randomly, at any point during the permit's validity,
- when you apply for family reunification for your spouse, children, or dependent relatives,
- and at renewal (which is where past non-compliance most often comes to light).
The most common reasons an already-granted authorization is revoked or cancelled are that the declared income isn't sustained over time, that you didn't register with Social Security when required, or that the declared professional activity turns out not to be real.
That's why, for this group, the digital nomad visa Spain financial requirements are no longer a one-off step on application day, they're something you need to be able to demonstrate throughout your entire stay in the country.
The Income Deed for the Spain Digital Nomad Visa: Your Safeguard Against Scrutiny
Precisely because of this climate of ongoing auditing, more and more self-employed remote workers (and their immigration lawyers) are choosing to place their income on notarial record ahead of filing, through a deed of statement.
It's a notarial document in which the notary doesn't verify or certify that what you declare is true: they attest that, on a specific date, you stated certain facts before them (in this case, your income and its source) together with the supporting documents.
In practice, the deed usually records the last four months of sufficient income, ready to be submitted to the immigration authorities.
That certain date and reinforced evidentiary value provide an extra layer of security compared with a plain invoice or bank statement, both when filing your initial application and if one of the reviews described above comes your way later on.
This deed is an additional safeguard for people who have already obtained a Spain digital nomad visa and want to protect their stay against growing administrative scrutiny. It's also becoming increasingly common for it to be requested to keep the visa in force.
A notarial income deed isn't the only deed of statement we handle in immigration matters. You can see other cases in this related article:
Required Documents for the Notarial Income Deed for the Spain Digital Nomad Visa
These are the documents that back up the digital nomad visa Spain income requirements in the deed. You will need:
- Applicant's identity document (passport, NIE, or TIE)
- Commercial or service-provision contract
- Invoices issued over the last 4 months
- Bank certificate proving the income
JLA Notarios Helping Digital Nomads Protect Their Stay in Spain
At our notary in Barcelona, we help self-employed professionals and international remote workers prepare their notarial income deed to meet the digital nomad visa salary requirements in Spain.
If you want to protect your file, book an appointment and we'll help you get your notarial deed drawn up in Barcelona.
