The Spain Startup Visa is the residence route under Ley 28/2022 (the Startup Law) and Ley 14/2013, Art. 69-70, that lets non-EU founders relocate to Spain to run an innovative, scalable business. Eligibility turns on an ENISA favourable report confirming the company meets Ley 28/2022 Art. 3: under five years old (seven in strategic tech sectors), Spanish headquarters, no dividend distribution, turnover under 10 million euros, and at least 60 percent of the workforce on Spanish contracts. Certified companies get a 15 percent Corporation Tax rate for four fiscal years, against the 25 percent general rate, plus a stock-option exemption of up to 50,000 euros a year for employees. ENISA has a three-month statutory window to respond; if it does not, the application is approved by positive administrative silence.
What Is the Spain Startup Visa?
The "Startup Visa" is shorthand for a residence authorisation that does not exist as a single named visa in Spanish law. It is the entrepreneur route under Ley 14/2013, Art. 69-70, combined with the company-level benefits created by Ley 28/2022 for entities certified as an "empresa emergente." Together, they let a non-EU founder both live in Spain and run a company that qualifies for a more favourable tax position than an ordinary Spanish SL.
The legal basis — Ley 28/2022 and the entrepreneur route under Ley 14/2013
Article 69 of Ley 14/2013 is the operative provision for founders: it grants an initial three-year residence authorisation, renewable for two more years, with eligibility for permanent residence after five years. Article 70 defines what counts as "actividad emprendedora y empresarial" and assigns ENISA the job of confirming it. Ley 14/2013, de apoyo a los emprendedores y su internacionalización, created Spain's fast-track residence categories for investors, entrepreneurs, and highly qualified professionals back in 2013, and these two articles are the ones that apply specifically to founders.
Ley 28/2022, the Startup Law, arrived almost a decade later and added a separate but connected layer: a formal definition of "empresa emergente" and a set of tax and administrative benefits that apply once a company is certified. The two laws share the same evaluating body — ENISA — but they answer different questions. Ley 14/2013 asks whether you, the founder, can live and work in Spain. Ley 28/2022 asks whether your company qualifies for reduced taxation and lighter administrative friction.
Who this visa is for
This route is built for non-EU founders who are relocating to run or scale their own company in Spain, not for people taking a job at someone else's business. If you are the person deciding the product roadmap and signing the company's contracts, this is your route. If you are joining an existing Spanish company as an employee, even a highly skilled one, you are more likely looking at the highly qualified professional authorisation under a different chapter of Ley 14/2013, not this one.
Who Qualifies: ENISA Certification Requirements
To qualify for the Startup Visa route, your company has to meet the legal definition of an empresa emergente under Ley 28/2022, and ENISA has to be separately persuaded that the business is genuinely innovative and scalable, not just newly incorporated. These are two distinct tests, not one combined check.
Company-level requirements
Ley 28/2022, Art. 3 sets out the conditions a company must meet to be classified as an empresa emergente: under five years old, or under seven if it operates in a strategic sector such as biotechnology, energy, industry, or deep tech; not arising from a merger, spin-off, or transformation of another company that was not itself an empresa emergente; a registered office, domicile, or permanent establishment in Spain; no dividend distribution; not listed on a regulated market; and annual turnover under 10 million euros.
Under 5 years old, or under 7 in strategic sectors like biotech, energy, or deep tech — measured from incorporation, not from when the founder relocates.
Source: Ley 28/2022, Art. 3
None of these conditions are assessed informally. ENISA checks them against the company's actual registry filings, not against a pitch deck description of the business. A company that looks eligible on paper but cannot produce filed annual accounts matching its claimed turnover, age, or ownership structure will stall in review rather than be approved on the strength of its narrative.
The 60 percent Spanish-workforce contract requirement
One condition trips up founders more often than the others: at least 60 percent of the company's workforce has to be on Spanish labour contracts. For a two- or three-person founding team where most early hires are remote contractors abroad, this can be a binding constraint, not a formality. The threshold is measured across the company's total headcount at the time of certification, so it shifts as the team grows — a company that qualified at launch with two Spanish-contracted staff out of three can fall out of compliance if its next five hires are all international contractors rather than Spanish employees. It is worth modelling hiring plans against this threshold before, not after, applying for certification, and revisiting the calculation at each significant hiring round afterwards.
ENISA's innovation and scalability evaluation criteria
Beyond the structural conditions in Article 3, ENISA separately evaluates whether the business itself qualifies as an innovative entrepreneurship project with a scalable model. The criteria for this assessment come from Orden PCM/825/2023, which sets out how ENISA judges the degree of innovation and the degree of scalability of the proposed business, under Articles 4.3 and 5.2 respectively.
How ENISA evaluates your application
Submit your documentation
File your company documentation through the ENISA online certification portal, including registered accounts, not figures pulled from accounting software exports.
ENISA assesses innovation and scalability
Evaluation follows the criteria in Orden PCM/825/2023, Art. 4.3 and 5.2 — innovation and scalability are scored separately.
ENISA may request more documentation
If anything is unclear or incomplete, ENISA pauses the clock and asks for clarification before resuming the review.
Resolution or positive silence
ENISA must resolve within three months of receiving complete documentation. No response within that period means the application is approved by positive administrative silence.
Registro Mercantil notification
Once certification is granted, ENISA notifies the Commercial Registry directly, and the empresa emergente status is recorded on the company's registry sheet.
Common Misconceptions: Startup Visa vs Digital Nomad Visa
The Startup Visa and the Digital Nomad Visa both attract non-EU applicants who describe themselves as building something online, which is exactly why the two get conflated. The legal routes underneath them are not interchangeable: one is for founders running their own ENISA-certified company, the other is for remote employees or freelancers working for someone else.
"I'm a remote founder, so I qualify for either visa"
The Digital Nomad Visa exists for people working remotely for a foreign employer or foreign clients. The Startup Visa exists for people running their own ENISA-certified company. A founder who also happens to work remotely some days of the week is still applying as a founder, under Ley 14/2013 Art. 69-70, not as a remote worker under the separate teletrabajador provisions added by the 2022 reform.
The Startup Visa is a founder's route into their own company. The Digital Nomad Visa is a remote worker's route into someone else's payroll.
Misconception: ENISA certification is automatic for any incorporated company
Incorporating a Spanish SL does not make it an empresa emergente. ENISA certification is a separate, substantive review of innovation and scalability, not a registration formality layered on top of incorporation. Companies that present financials without registered annual accounts, or business plans without a coherent scalability argument, are the ones most likely to face a documentation request or an outright denial.
How to Apply: The Certification and Visa Process
The practical sequence runs in three stages: confirm your company meets the Article 3 conditions, get ENISA certification, and then apply for the residence authorisation itself.
Step 1 — Incorporate or confirm eligibility under Article 3
If the company already exists, the first task is checking it actually satisfies every condition in Article 3 — age, HQ location, turnover, dividend history, and the 60 percent workforce rule — before spending time on an ENISA application that is likely to be rejected or delayed. Founders who are not yet incorporated in Spain typically need to set up a Spanish entity at this stage, since Article 3 requires a registered office, domicile, or permanent establishment in Spain before certification can be evaluated.
Step 2 — Apply for ENISA certification
This follows the process described above: submission through ENISA's portal, evaluation against Orden PCM/825/2023, and a resolution within three months, or positive silence if that deadline passes without a response.
Step 3 — Apply for the entrepreneur residence authorisation
Once certification is in hand, the residence application itself is filed electronically with the Unidad de Grandes Empresas y Colectivos Estratégicos, the centralised body that handles all Ley 14/2013 Section 2 authorisations. UGE-CE requests the ENISA favourable report directly when reviewing the file. If the founder is outside Spain at the time of a favourable resolution, the visa is then issued by the Spanish consulate in their country of residence — the consulate executes the visa based on UGE-CE's decision, it does not run a separate parallel review.
UGE-CE resolves every Ley 14/2013 entrepreneur application centrally. If you are abroad, the consulate issues the visa once UGE-CE has approved it — it does not run its own separate review.
Source: Ley 14/2013, Art. 69
Specific Scenarios
Solo non-EU founder relocating an existing company
This is the cleanest case: one founder, one company, ENISA certification sought for the company itself, and a residence application filed once that certification is granted. The sequencing matters more than the paperwork volume — founders who file the residence application before certification is confirmed routinely lose time waiting on a dependency UGE-CE cannot resolve without ENISA's report already in hand.
| Dimension | Startup Visa | Digital Nomad Visa |
|---|---|---|
| Who it's for | Founder relocating to run or scale their own company | Remote worker or freelancer working for a foreign employer or clients |
| Core requirement | ENISA favourable report confirming an innovative, scalable business | Proof of an existing remote work relationship plus an income threshold |
| Tax access | 15 percent Corporation Tax for the company; Beckham Law Category 4 possible for the founder | Standard IRPF for freelancers; Beckham Law available only to employees |
| Approval body | ENISA certification, then UGE-CE | UGE-CE, no ENISA step |
| Legal basis | Ley 28/2022 plus Ley 14/2013, Art. 69-70 | Ley 14/2013, Capítulo V bis (teletrabajadores) |
Founder team where only one partner relocates to Spain
A two-founder team does not need both founders physically present in Spain for the company to be certified. The 60 percent workforce threshold is measured at company level, not against the founding team specifically, so a non-relocating co-founder abroad does not by itself disqualify the business — what matters is the overall mix of Spanish-contracted staff. In practice, this means a non-relocating co-founder can remain based abroad indefinitely, provided the company's broader hiring keeps the Spanish-contract ratio above the threshold.
Founder also wants Beckham Law access
A separately useful overlap exists for founders who also want to access Beckham Law's flat-rate tax regime as individuals, under Article 93.1.b, Category 4 — the "innovative entrepreneur" category. This requires its own ENISA report: an "informe de actividad emprendedora" requested individually by the taxpayer, evaluated under the same Orden PCM/825/2023 criteria, but filed as a separate procedure from the company's Ley 28/2022 certification. Founders pursuing both should not assume one ENISA filing covers both purposes — the company certification and the individual entrepreneurial-activity report are independent applications, each with its own documentation and its own three-month clock.
Real Numbers: What the Tax Benefits Mean in Practice
15 percent vs 25 percent Corporation Tax — a worked example
A company with 500,000 euros of taxable profit in its fourth certified year pays 75,000 euros in Corporation Tax at the 15 percent reduced rate, against 125,000 euros at the general 25 percent rate — a difference of 50,000 euros in that single year. The reduced rate applies for the first fiscal year with a positive tax base and the three years that follow, four years in total, and only for as long as the company keeps its empresa emergente status.
On 500,000 euros of profit in year four, the 15% reduced rate saves roughly 50,000 euros in Corporation Tax compared with the general 25% rate — but only while ENISA certification stays active.
Source: Ley 28/2022, Art. 7
The stock-option exemption
Certified companies can also deliver shares or stock options to their employees with an exemption of up to 50,000 euros a year, an amount raised specifically by Ley 28/2022. This benefit attaches to employees of the empresa emergente, which can include founders who hold a genuine employment relationship with the company, but it is not an automatic personal allowance separate from that employment status.
Common Mistakes
Founders most often lose time, not eligibility, on this route. The same three errors come up repeatedly: assuming "startup" carries automatic tax status, missing the 60 percent workforce threshold while hiring, and distributing dividends before certification is confirmed.
There is no fiscal category called "startup" in Spanish law. Without ENISA certification, a newly incorporated company is, for tax purposes, an ordinary Spanish SL, full stop.
Teams that lean heavily on remote contractors outside Spain in their first hiring round sometimes discover, only when preparing the ENISA file, that they no longer meet the 60 percent Spanish-workforce threshold.
Any dividend distribution prior to certification disqualifies the company outright under Article 3 — this is not a condition that can be cured retroactively once it has been triggered.
What Happens After: Maintaining or Losing Certification
Certification is not permanent by default. It lapses if the company stops meeting any of the Article 3 conditions, most commonly by exceeding the five- or seven-year age ceiling, crossing the 10 million euro turnover limit, being acquired by a non-empresa-emergente company, or — under environmental provisions tied to EU sustainable-investment regulation — engaging in an activity that causes significant environmental harm. Conviction of a founder or a 5 percent-plus shareholder for certain serious offences also ends certified status. None of these triggers happen quietly: losing certification means losing the reduced Corporation Tax rate and the stock-option exemption from that point forward, so it is worth tracking these conditions annually rather than assuming the certification, once granted, takes care of itself.
How ApexTax Helps Founders Relocating Under the Startup Visa Route
ApexTax works as a Cross-Border Relocation Strategist and Single Point of Contact for founders weighing the Startup Visa route against alternatives like the Digital Nomad Visa or a standard highly qualified professional authorisation. That means mapping which route actually fits your company structure and timeline, modelling what ENISA certification would mean for your tax position, and coordinating the independent qualified professionals — lawyers, tax advisors, and gestores — who handle the certification filing, the residence application, and the ongoing compliance once you are certified.
ApexTax does not submit the ENISA certification application, represent founders before ENISA or UGE-CE, or file Corporation Tax returns. Implementation of these procedures is delivered by independent qualified Spanish professionals selected and coordinated by ApexTax under a Strategy and Coordination engagement.