NLV health insurance requirements
Spain's Non-Lucrative Visa requires private health insurance arranged for the application, with a Spanish-authorised insurer and full cover for the stay. The exact wording is set by the consulate handling your case, and it varies — so the job is to know what to check, and to check it against your own consulate's current list.
What the visa asks you to prove
That you hold health insurance covering you in Spain for the period of your stay, arranged for the residence application rather than as travel cover. Anything more specific — whether the policy must be private, and what the insurer must be authorised to do — comes from your consulate's checklist rather than from the regulation, and private cover is not quite the only route. Check the insurance instructions published by the consulate handling your application before choosing cover.
Primary source: Real Decreto 1155/2024, art. 61.2(b) — an initial non-lucrative residence authorisation requires “Contar con un seguro de enfermedad”. That sentence is the whole of the statutory requirement: the current regulation does not say the cover must be private, and does not qualify the insurer. Anything more specific you are asked for comes from the consulate handling your case, so work from its current checklist. This regulation replaced Real Decreto 557/2011, which was repealed with effect from 20 May 2025.Beyond that, the detail lives in your consulate's own checklist. The Spanish Consulate in Washington DC expressly addresses copayments in its published checklist (checked 7 November 2026). Where another office's checklist is silent on a point, that silence is not evidence that the point is permitted or excluded — read the instructions published by the consulate handling your application.
What to check on the policy you are offered
- The insurer is authorised in Spain. Sanitas, S.A. de Seguros is a Spanish insurer registered with the Directorate General for Insurance and Pension Funds under code C-320.
- It is the visa version of the product. Sanitas issues a separate Visado variant with its own conditions. Confirm your documentation names it.
- Copayments. Both Sanitas Visado products are arranged without copayments — no separate per-use charge for covered services. What that covers.
- Waiting periods. Residents Visado has none. Platinum Visado has none on its core health-insurance cover, and some supplementary covers carry their own qualification periods. The detail per product.
- Cover runs for the period you need. The policy runs for a minimum of one year and renews on the terms set out in the contract.
- The dates work. Cover begins once the first premium is paid, so the start date needs choosing deliberately. Choosing a start date.
- Everyone who needs cover is named. An application is built person by person. What you will be asked for.
Consular wording varies
There is no single national checklist you can work from. Requirements are published by the consulate handling your application, and the same point can appear in different words — or not appear at all.
What we can tell you
Exactly how the two Sanitas Visado products are built: the cover, the age each is open to, the copayment position, and the waiting-period position per product.
What only your consulate can
Whether that satisfies its requirements. We make no claim that either product meets any particular consulate's conditions — that is decided by the body that sets them.
Two things worth holding onto. A checklist that does not mention copayments has not approved them; and a checklist that does not mention a point has not required it either. Work from the current list published by your own consulate, print or save it with the date, and take independent immigration advice where you need it.
Three decisions, three different decision-makers
Applications get planned as if this were one approval. It is three, taken by three different parties, and keeping them apart makes the process far easier to manage.
- Choosing the policy — us, with you. We help you identify and arrange an insurance option designed for your circumstances and your intended visa route. That is a question about the product, not about you.
- Accepting the insurance — Sanitas. The insurer assesses your application and decides whether, and on what terms, it can be accepted. That decision is the insurer’s, based on your declarations and its own rules. How that assessment works.
- Accepting the evidence — the competent Spanish authority. Whether the insurance evidence you submit satisfies the current requirements is decided by the authority handling your application, against its own instructions.
A policy can clear the first and still need work at the second. Clearing both says nothing about the third, which is why we make no claim about what any authority will accept.
Where an application centre fits
If your consulate instructs you to lodge the application through an external application centre rather than at the consulate counter, follow the document and appointment instructions provided for that route. That centre may receive and check your documents, but the visa decision remains the competent Spanish authority’s. The Consulate General of Spain in London puts it plainly in its own published checklist: the leaflet “stipulates the legal requirements requested by this Consulate” and is “carried out in cooperation with BLS to facilitate your visa application”. The requirements are the consulate’s; the centre facilitates.
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Check which Sanitas option is open to you
Send the dates of birth and the start date you have in mind. An adviser will confirm which policies are available to each person and prepare a quote, subject to eligibility and underwriting. No medical questions at this stage.
Rather ask a question first? Contact an adviser.
NLV Insurance Requirements FAQs
A common question at this point is whether an existing travel policy will serve instead — travel insurance vs NLV health insurance explains why the two are built for different situations.
If you are working through the requirements for the first time, the guide library sets out the documentation, product and timing questions in the order they arise.