Question
I’ve been trying to convince my company to allow me to work in Spain on the Spanish Digital Nomad Visa.
After some review of the existing documentation, however, HR responded that I wouldn’t qualify for the DNV because, while I am employed at an office in the USA, the company has offices in Spain and therefore wouldn’t qualify as a “company not based in Spain”. They’re insisting that I would have to transfer to a Spanish office to legally work there. Does anybody know if this is true or not and if there is any documentation that would clear this up? My company is headquartered in the USA but has a couple offices in Spain.
An internal transfer is an option, but I’ll have to take a pay cut and I may have to drop many of the jobs I’m currently doing for my home office.
Answers
These are the answers of some Facebook group members:
“Yes, this is true”
“What your HR said agrees with what I read.”
“Not true but maybe more complicated as it will require some stipulations in your documentation to indicate you’re working from the US office. I think there’s room to push for the DNV if you have zero involvement in local spain operations.”
“I’m doing the same, my company’s HQ is in Spain but I’m from the Singapore office. My job in general allows me to work remotely though, so I am working remotely while being employed outside of Spain…
I am hired in Singapore and not in Spain, this shouldn’t pose any issue”
“With an office in Spain, you might need to be registered with the Seguridad Social through that office if there is no social security agreement in place….”
“It’ll be important to show you have a contract with the American company and also that you’re not going to be going into the Spanish offices etc. Otherwise, people from multinationals could never apply for this, which I doubt is the intention. But I suspect it’s something that the administration didn’t see coming (among many other things), and will work itself out.”
“I think It could be true, as you could apply for a different visa in that situation. Also, social Security angle, they might find out that way, that the company has a permant establishment in Spain. The visas would be Highly Qualified Professional, or Traslado Intraempresarial perhaps.”
