Question
Travel in and out of Spain question:I have dual citizenship US and UK. If I am in Spain for three months, entering with my US passport, can I then go outside the EU (Gibraltar, for instance) and come back in on my UK passport and stay another 3 months? Then rinse and repeat? I know someone who has done this at least once, anyone else used this workaround? Is it legal?
Answers
These are the answers of Spainguru’s Facebook group members:
“No it isn’t legal. It isn’t a workaround, it’s fraud. Whether or not you’d get caught is anybody’s guess, but the penalty will be a nailed on Schengen ban given the fraudulent nature of your stay.”
“It’s ‘each person’, not each passport. (Attached image with text: “The Schengen area policy is such that you can stay for a maximum of 90 days within a 180-days period. If you have more than one passport and none is of a Schengen state (listed above), the same rule applies. Each person has a 90 days stay limit within the 180-days period.”)”
“It’s not legal, but it can be done at the moment until they start collecting biometrics when entering Europe. I thought it was supposed to start the end of this year.”
“Probably not because whether you believe it or not when they scan either of those passports they are able to see that they are linked to the same person. No such thing as anonymity anymore.”
“Use a Schengen calculator. Generally speaking it’s 90 days in, 90 days out.”
“Legal? No. Does it seem to work? Yes. Do you risk being banned on both passports if caught? Yes. Are you likely to get caught, sooner or later? Probably. The EU and individual nations continue to improve their computer systems, and any halfway decent image recognition software or AI is likely to link your two identities.”
Conclusion
The consensus among the community members is that using multiple passports to extend a stay in Spain, or anywhere in the Schengen area, is not a legal method. It is considered fraudulent and can lead to a ban.
While some travelers may have managed to extend their stays in this way, the increasing sophistication of border control systems, including biometrics, makes getting caught more likely. Legal routes should be considered for long-term stays.
