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BREXIT

Why Britons can’t move easily to Spain after Brexit

Following news that a British football coach was denied a dream move to Real Madrid due to work permit rules, we look at why Britons can't move to Spain so easily after Brexit and the options they now have.

Published: 11 September 2024 13:29 CEST
Why Britons can't move easily to Spain after Brexit
Post-Brexit rules mean that British nationals must be accepted for a work permit or visa in order to move to Spain. Photo: Hanna/Unsplash.

A British football coach was recently denied a career-changing move to Spanish giants Real Madrid due to post-Brexit rules meaning his work permit application was denied.

38-year-old Andy Mangan, currently assistant coach at English club Stockport County in League One (the third tier of English football) was all set for a dream move to Madrid after being approached by Los Blancos, arguably the biggest club in world football.

The Sunday Times reports that an agreement had been reached between the two clubs and that Mangan was all set to join the Madrid coaching staff. He even began learning Spanish and looking for schools for his children in preparation for the move.

READ ALSO: How much money do Britons need to move to Spain?

However his dream was shattered when his application for a work permit was denied by the Spanish authorities. It’s still unclear exactly why Mangan’s application was turned down, with reports in both the British and Spanish press referring vaguely to it being ‘denied’ or ‘rejected’ due to ‘Brexit rules’.

There could be several reasons for this, however, including the need for non-EU nationals to satisfy permit and visa requirements such as, for example, finding jobs on Spain’s ‘Shortage Occupation’ list. Any potential employer must prove that there are no other suitable candidates in the whole of the EU with that skillset, something that seems very unlikely for an assistant football coach in Spain.

That Mangan wouldn’t have had the financial resources to support himself in Spain with a contract at a club like Madrid, something Brits and other non-EU nationals now must be able to demonstrate, also seems implausible. 

Mangan’s unfortunate story is not the first example of Brexit rules complicating footballing matters in Spain. Both Jude Bellingham, himself a Madrid player, and Conor Gallagher, a recent signing for cross town rivals Atlético Madrid, took Irish passports in order to bypass rules that limit La Liga teams a total of five non-EU players in their squad and three in match day squads.

READ ALSO: Reader question: Does a passport renewal restart the 90-day clock for visiting Spain?

Post-Brexit rules

As third-country nationals, Brits are now only able to stay up to 90 days in 180 days in Spain, meaning that if you want to be able to live in Spain any longer than three months, you’ll need to have a work visa or residency card.

As Mangan found out, however, getting a work permit to live in Spain is now quite tricky, especially for young Brits, who will need to prove that they’re highly skilled while employers must demonstrate that there are no other suitable candidates.

There are also various income and tax requirements to consider depending on the type of visa or permit you want.

Visas

Though there are several visas available for non-EU nationals, satisfying the criteria is far from easy. Under Spain’s immigration framework, there are several types of work permits available: 

Long-term work visa: This is dependent on a job offer, which it must be on shortage occupation list. 

Self-employed work visa: You’ll need to prove your qualifications, proof of investment and need to submit a business plan showing financial stability.

EU Blue Card: This is a fairly new visa available in Spain. It’s essentially a specialist residency permit similar to the US green card in that it’s geared towards drawing highly qualified professionals and talented foreigners, so not applicable for most people. Read all the details here.  

Digital nomad visa: Perhaps the easiest way for Brits to move to Spain is now with the digital nomad visa. This allows you to work remotely from Spain but has certain requirements regarding income and tax commitments.

You can find all The Local’s coverage and explainers on the digital nomad visa, as well as all the other types of visas and permits available to Britons, here. 

READ ALSO:

And if you want to get an entrepreneur visa to set up your own business, you will have to prove that your business is innovative and has a special economic interest for Spain. You will also have several hoops to jump through, including submitting your business plan to the authorities for approval.

Again, this is one way of moving to Spain but far from a simple one and definitely not one available to everyone.

READ MORE: The pros and cons of Spain’s digital nomad visa

Other work permits available to Britons include the seasonal work visa, the au pair visa and residency permits that give the right to work such as the Family Member of EU citizen card, long-term residency permit and the student visa.

There’s also the non-lucrative visa, which is largely a luxury reserved for those with enough savings to be able to afford to not work – the very wealthy and retirees, in other words.

A non-lucrative visa is an authorisation that allows non-EU foreigners to stay in Spain for a period of more than 90 days without working or carrying out professional activities in Spain, by demonstrating that they have sufficient financial means for themselves and, if applicable, their family.

Marriage

Moving to a new country isn’t all about work permits and minimum incomes and occupation shortage lists, however. Sometimes it’s also about love, and for Britons, this is actually one of the easiest ways to move to Spain.

If you’ve met a Spanish partner and are ready to move to Spain, you could marry them. Be warned, however, you’ll need to submit quite a bit of paperwork and go through an interview process to check that your relationship is genuine.

Once you are married and have your marriage certificate, you can apply for a residence card as a family member of an EU citizen. 

READ ALSO: What are the pros and cons of Spain’s non-lucrative visa?

Member comments

  1. More Brexit “winning”. I was jealous of the Brits who lived here because it was so easy for them compared to what we had to go through as Americans. The paperwork and requirements were a nightmare. We managed, but it would have been so much easier as EU citizens. British citizens, many living here, shot themselves in the foot when they voted to leave. Now they have to go through all the same PIA steps we do because they are now also a third nation. Honestly I can’t help but laugh.

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For members

GIBRALTAR

Why has Gibraltar still not reached a Brexit deal with Spain?

With yet another round of Spain-UK negotiations set to begin more than eight years since the Brexit referendum, Gibraltar is still without a deal and a November deadline looms over any treaty. Why has it proven so hard to break the deadlock?

Published: 17 September 2024 13:38 CEST
Why has Gibraltar still not reached a Brexit deal with Spain?

On Thursday September 19th, Spain and the UK resume talks on Gibraltar’s post-Brexit status, and has been the case since 2016, uncertainty is still the prevailing feeling.

The British Foreign Secretary David Lammy recently received his Spanish counterpart, José Manuel Albares in London. Both did their diplomatic duties and talked up the prospects of a deal, with Lammy stating he hoped for an agreement that would ensure greater “prosperity and security for the people of Gibraltar.”

Albares, for his part, understandably centred any hypothetical deal on a “shared prosperity between Gibraltar and the 300,000 Andalusians connected every day in their normal lives”.

READ ALSO: Gibraltar demands Spain return stolen concrete block in new diplomatic spat

Though Lammy and Albares discussed the Rock, no formal negotiations or deal can be struck without EU oversight, so the meeting also included discussion of bilateral issues and international concerns such as the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.

The meeting between the two Ministers was therefore a preamble to yet more formal treaty negotiations in Brussels on Thursday. Since Brexit came into effect at the end of 2020, Gibraltar has essentially existed in legal limbo with no formal treaty.

Border controls have been fudged ever since, leaving locals and Spaniards across the border faced with inconsistent rules and forcing travellers to find creative ways to bypass rules and get over ‘La Línea’. 

Why hasn’t a deal been reached?

So why all the meetings and pre-meetings and endless rounds of negotiations? How is it possible that Gibraltar is still without a Brexit deal all these years later?

A recent piece in El País by Rafa de Miguel, the daily’s UK and Ireland correspondent, perhaps put it best: “The amount of warm words in any political statement is inversely proportional to the progress in the negotiations.”

The reality is that, however many handshakes and photo opportunities and positive attitudes expressed between Spain and the UK on a bilateral level, these are ultimately irrelevant as nothing can be signed without the EU’s approval. 

This is further complicated by the fact that this makes any deal dependent on four way negotiations between Spain, the UK, the EU, and Gibraltar.

Each of these parties has their own individual set of needs, preferences and motivations. The EU won’t want to be seen to give Gibraltar, and by extension the UK, any special treatment for fear of emboldening other member states who desire bespoke arrangements when it comes to border controls and customs checks.

In light of Germany recently reimplementing land border checks, something some say is a direct violation of Schengen rules, this will be especially sensitive in these latest rounds of negotiations. 

Spain has long made territorial claims on Gibraltar dating back to the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, when the overseas territory was first ceded to the UK, and will want to come out of negotiations with something that can be perceived as a political victory, likely an increased Spanish role in border patrols.

Fabian Picardo, Gibraltar’s Chief Minister, has ruled this out definitively over the last few years, citing concerns about British sovereignty.

The UK government in London will also have worries about British sovereignty, but will balance this with the knowledge that Gibraltar negotiations are also an opportunity to reset relations with Europe more widely, something the new Starmer government has repeatedly stated since coming into power.

READ ALSO: ‘It’s time to reset Britain’s relations with Europe’, says UK foreign secretary

Some reports, however, suggest that despite the positive musings coming from London, negotiations have stalled and that Lammy has no intention of signing anything that would deviate from Gibraltar’s needs and concerns.

Political tensions were increased recently when Gibraltar demanded Spanish far-right party Vox return a concrete block stolen from British waters, and the Euro 2024 winning Spanish football team made international headlines when it celebrating by singing ‘Gibraltar es Español’ (Gibraltar is Spanish).

READ ALSO: ‘Gibraltar is Spanish!’: How Spain celebrated Euro 2024 heroes

Despite wanting to improve relations with the EU, Lammy is expected to reiterate the Labour government’s unwavering commitment to the “double lock” on sovereignty, sources told El País.

Perhaps most pressingly, however, is the fact that these new negotiations now have a deadline: the enforcement of new Schengen Area border rules come into force on November 10th and a treaty must be finalised before then. 

READ MORE: Hard border? What we know so far about new Gibraltar-Spain checks

Schengen Zone rules mean that there are two major outstanding points in treaty negotiations: firstly, the sore point of Spanish border guards on British soil, something Gibraltar rejects outright, and also the question of who would run Gibraltar’s airport, which is located on the isthmus between Spain and the British territory, an area Madrid claims was never included in Treaty of Utrecht.

The most contested aspect of negotiations is Madrid’s demand that Spanish agents should be allowed to carry out checks on passengers arriving at Gibraltar airport and that they should be armed and in uniform.

For many Llanitos (Gibraltar locals) this is an intolerable idea and one Picardo rejects outright: “There will be no Spanish boots on the ground,” he has said repeatedly.

On the other hand, Spain argues that no specific protocol can be designed for Gibraltar and that if it wants to join the border-free European area, it must accept Schengen rules.

Spanish boots on British soil is a particularly visceral point for many Gibraltarians of a certain age. In June 1969, Spanish dictator Francisco Franco closed the border gate between Gibraltar and La Línea de la Concepción, cutting the tiny overseas territory off from the world, separating Spanish-British families and forcing Gibraltar to source food from elsewhere on the planet. 

It was eventually reopened in December in 1982 but those 13 years have taken deep root in Gibraltar’s historical memory and is now embedded into the Llanito collective imagination and identity.

For many on ‘The Rock’, the idea of Spanish border guards on British soil, whether it be in the airport or elsewhere, is simply unacceptable under any circumstances. 

Tax could also prove to be a sticking point. Gibraltar has no VAT, but Madrid has argued that if it wants to benefit from fluid border movement, its tax rules must be brought into line with EU rules.

Of course, there’s also both the domestic and international geopolitical contexts to consider here too. All parties – Spain, the UK, Gibraltar and the EU – have been distracted by other events in recent years.

Spain has been preoccupied by political tension, snap elections and the Catalan amnesty, while Britain suffered the almost cartoonish political instability of the outgoing Conservative government and treaty talks were postponed after the general election in July.

Added to this is the fact that the mediating party, the EU, has had its hands full with the war in Ukraine and surging far-right parties across member states, a trend that interestingly both the UK and Spain buck as the only major European states with centre-left governments.

Talks resume on Thursday September 19th, over 8 years since the Brexit referendum.

In British politics, the UK’s exit from the EU now seems strangely absent from debate, as though the issue is over and the country has finally begun to move on — but for Gibraltarians and the thousands of Spaniards who cross the border and work there everyday, Brexit is still an open-ended question.

READ ALSO: ‘Starting now’: New UK govt wastes no time in Gibraltar post-Brexit talks with Spain

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