Spanish Youth Mobility Visa / Spanish Working Holiday Visa for Aussies — What I Wish I Knew.
First of all, I do want to acknowledge how off topic this article is. If you’re a regular reader of my blog you can probably skip this one. But, if you have just stumbled on this article while googling Spanish working holiday visas, then hola, bienvenido, esto es para ti.
The Spanish Youth Mobility visa was not easy to get. There were a lot of steps that weren’t exactly clearly laid out in the requirement lists that we were initially provided. The staff of the Spanish Consulate in Melbourne were helpful in answering our questions, but if I knew these few things I may have been able to email them less than 100 times before submitting my application.
A couple of things first.
As an Australian visiting the Schengen region with an Australian passport, we are only permitted to stay in Spain for 90 days in any 180 day period — unless of course you have a long stay visa.
Some countries in the Schengen zone seem to have visas that are easier to get and/or that don’t have a language requirement. Germany is an example of this. So if you just want to be in Europe for an extended period of time and don’t really care which country you choose as your base, there may be an easier option than Spain. We wanted to be able to live and work in Spain though, so here we are.
I’m writing this in November of 2022 and I have been approved in the year of 2022, so everything here is accurate as at the date of writing.
This is the eligibility requirements list that we were provided by the consulate at the time of our first enquiry. Perhaps by the time you read this, this list may have been expanded upon. The point of this article is to expand upon this specific eligibility criteria, that was for all intents and purposes hard to follow.
Spanish youth mobility visa eligibility criteria.
So, here is what I wish I knew before starting the process of getting a Spanish Youth Mobility Visa. And at the end of this article I’ve included what I would consider the actual “check list” of things required for your application.
You cannot have your questions answered at the consulate.
This is important. Have a heap of questions and want to be able to talk to a person? Too bad. You have to email. If you go to the consulate with questions you will be turned away. Don’t waste your time.
The DELE language exams are on set dates each year, and there aren’t a heap of dates available.
In 2022, there were four exam dates in Sydney but only one in Melbourne. Because of this, it would be wise to look up the exam dates as early as possible so you can plan your schedule accordingly. We started researching the visa in January, found an exam date in May, and received the exam results in August (more on that later). So if you are planning on sitting a DELE exam to prove your Spanish proficiency, best to get a handle on the dates sooner rather than later.
That said, there are options of how to meet the language requirement.
If you already speak Spanish fluently, you can just attend an interview at the consulate. Much easier.
If your Spanish is not strong or non existent, you can either sit a DELE exam once you’ve prepared or alternatively attend approved courses. These run for 24 weeks and start on specific dates, so like the DELE exam, if you’re going to take that route, get a wriggle on because it takes ages.
I managed to pass the DELE A1 with five months of preparation. It wasn’t easy and I scraped through, but it is possible to prepare within a couple of months.
The DELE results do take the full 12 weeks that they say to come back.
Don’t think that it’s gonna be a case of under promise + over deliver. Expect to wait 12 weeks and factor this in to your planning. Don’t book flights for a few weeks after your exam date and expect to have a visa by then.
Basically on the language stuff — if you don’t already have a solid grasp on the Spanish language, demonstrating proficiency will take time. So plan for that.
The police and fingerprint check cannot be completed at your local cop shop.
Only specific police stations offer these. And these are not the $40 name checks you can do online.
The police check part of the application bamboozled the hell out of us. We were given a lot of incorrect information
First of all, you want the “live scan” check; not the ink fingerprints. The consulate doesn’t need actual prints submitted with your application; they just need the formal results of the name and print check.
Unless you live in the ACT, this is done through your state police; not through the Federal Police, as linked to on the visa website.
At the time of writing, finger prints at The Victorian Police Centre in Melbourne were booked out months in advance. You might be able to get an appointment at a regional police station sooner. We managed to find a next day appointment in Bendigo when hope was all but lost searching for a metro location. Search various regional postcodes on this page if you cannot find a suitable appointment near you.
Also at the time of writing, you have to pay for the police check via bank cheque(?!) Make sure you attend your appointment prepared with an accepted payment method.
Evidence of travel insurance to cover the length of your stay is required to be submitted with your visa application.
If your visa is not approved, you can’t get a refund on your travel insurance (at least with any insurance providers that I contacted). But, you can add other countries to your policy up until the date of travel. This final point was some comfort to me. Our travel insurance for 12 months in Spain was almost $2000 for the two of us, and I was extremely anxious parting with that cash in case of the event that our visa application was declined. We were always going to travel for a year anyway though so if we were denied, I was comforted by the knowledge that we could just add other countries to the policy and travel around instead. If you are feeling nervous about purchasing travel insurance before having your visa approved, enquire with travel insurance providers about the possibility of this for you.
You need to submit your passport with your application.
They’ll hold this until your visa has been approved or declined and will send your visa back with your passport via post. Worth knowing so you don’t book a three week Philippines trip a few weeks before your planned departure 🤪
Your doctor needs to sign a letter written in English and Spanish that declares that you don’t have any illnesses that could be a burden to Spain.
Your best bet will be to draft up a letter yourself. This is the template that we used and which was accepted. If you provide a template to your doctor, you should be able to get away with not finding a Spanish speaking doctor — as long as they trust that what you’ve written is the same passage in both English and Spanish.
We did have quite a hard time getting this signed off on. Our doctor felt it was a huge responsibility and did not sign the form exceptionally enthusiastically. The first doctor we saw actually completely refused us; the second sent us for bloods and then was willing. Allow some time for this just in case.
This text was provided to us by the consulate, which we just made in to a PDF and gave to the doctor to sign once he was satisfied we were clear. Please feel welcome to use this template yourself.
The visa application form is not specific to the youth mobility visa.
— so there are a number of questions and fields that will seem irrelevant or that are unclear on how to answer. I included a letter in my application to clarify some things that I wasn’t sure about. This was received just fine. IE,
There is nowhere on the form to indicate what type of visa you are applying for.
It asks for your purpose for applying. Part of the eligibility criteria for the youth mobility visa is that you are visiting Spain primarily for travel, and secondarily for work; but this is not an option on the form. Because of this, I didn’t answer the question about the purpose of my visit to Spain, and instead just wrote this in my letter.
It asks for your NIE, but you won’t have that at the time of completing this form. You are applying for your NIE as part of your visa application.
The application process was in total, not cheap.
Visa application fee $485
A1 DELE exam $160
Police check $198
Bank cheque for the police check $15
Money order for the visa application fee $13
Passport photos $15
Travel insurance $900
$1786, before you’ve booked flights to the other side of the world. Factor this in to your travel budget.
Basically, everything took longer than we expected.
January: we decided to pursue this specific visa
May: we sat our language exams
August: we received our results — which gave us the green light to proceed with the rest of the application.
September: took a trip to Bendigo for our fingerprint checks
Also September: took us four appointments each to get a doctors certificate signed
Then there’s a lot of running around with petty admin — bank cheques, money orders, bank statements, finding a working passport photo printer (fuck you Officeworks), etc. So please allow enough time.
Your actual Youth Mobility Visa Checklist.
So all that said, this is what I would consider your actual Youth Mobility Visa Checklist. I had almost this exact text as a note in my phone to work through in the final weeks of assembling the application. I would encourage you to do the same.
Passport
Bank statement proving evidence of funds to support yourself and to get home
Comprehensive travel insurance certificate
Proof of functional level of Spanish
Proof of 2x years of higher education
Signed clearance letter from your doctor
“Live scan” police name and fingerprint check
Printed visa application form completed (Formulario Visado Nacional)
2x passport photos
NIE application forms completed: TASA 790 and EX15
$21 cash for your NIE application
Money order for $485 for your visa application
Proof of flights
Proof of accomodation (we just booked our first five weeks and used this for the address on the application)
A4 registered and pre-paid return envelope (to have your passport and documents sent back)
Once you submit your application.
We were told and read everywhere available that the visa would be turned around in 4-6 weeks from the date of our submission. Our visa took seven weeks to be ready from the date we posted it off and we ended up picking it up on the way to the airport. It was extremely anxiety inducing. (To be clear, I am not usually a last minute person, we just needed our passports to get to the Philippines only a few months earlier).
You can only submit your application within three months of your scheduled departure. I would say, submit your application as early as possible within that window. Everything was slow and stressful. Give yourself time.
To anyone who has gotten this far, I can probably assume you’re not a regular reader of my blog since this is far from my regular content. If you do have questions about the visa or the application process please feel invited to message me. I would have been very grateful for some help during our application and would be more than happy to provide that for someone else.
Billie x