Golden Visas

It was always a wrong policy IMO anyway so good riddance to it.

Also, can someone please explain to me what splurging €500k+ a property, or investing it in Spain, has to do with affordable housing?

So just wondering - what will happen to those people already here on Golden Visa, will they be able to renew it??    Or are those people now faced  with obtaining residency before their visa expires-  or even reverting to the 90/180:rule.

I believe it was used as a loophole for people to spend more than 90 days here in the winter,, obviously they still had a limit to the number of days allowed for tax purposes. 

Not retrospective, according to one Spanish paper. Probably means those with one will have them honoured. Just no new applications. 

Also not as popular as the histrionic press in UK is making out with "hundreds of thousands of Brits to be denied visa". In 2022 only 451 golden visas were issued to foreigners in all of Spain and that is only 0.7% of the total number of purchases made by non-residents. There were 19,225 visas issued last year so less than 2% of those were the Golden Visas. Of course, these drops could be due to the banning of Russians applying for them when they were banned due to embargos against Russia. From 2013 until now, just 5,400 golden visas have been granted and that includes when the Russians were allowed to do so. Since 2013, when they were introduced, 4.5 million houses have been sold to foreigners and just 0.1% of those were with golden visas. The highest user being Chinese.

Portugal has also stopped the purchase of property but continues to allow a golden visa on investment grounds. I haven't seen a report on the cabinet meeting in Spain today to check if the cancellation of these visas only applies to property purchase or whether it will also apply to investments (was 1 million in a Spanish company or 2 million in government bonds). 

Thanks Marcliff  - it’s just that I know of a British couple who have just recently  applied  ( in the last 6 weeks) for a golden visa and they were surprised that the turnaround from application to getting the visa was less than 10 days - I’ve never known  Spanish red tape to work so quickly before. But if they don’t grant that many that explains it. 

Lynn