E-2 Visa for Spanish Citizens

The treaty between the United States and Spain has been in force since April 14, 1903 and applies to all Spanish territories. Eligibility rests on Spanish citizenship: the individual investor holds a Spanish passport, and an investing company qualifies when Spanish nationals own at least 50 percent of it. Spain's wide dual-citizenship arrangements with Latin America mean many applicants hold two passports; only Spanish (or another treaty) citizenship qualifies, and a dual citizen who is also a US citizen cannot use the E-2 at all.

Under the current reciprocity schedule, an approved Spanish E-2 applicant receives a visa valid for 60 months with multiple entries, subject to a 124 dollar reciprocity fee per issuance. The visa is renewable indefinitely while the business continues to meet the E-2 requirements, a spouse receives automatic work authorization under E-2S status, and children under 21 can live and study in the United States.

All E visas for Spain and Andorra are processed at the US Embassy in Madrid, and Madrid is known for the strictest brevity rules in the E-2 system: category-specific page caps and fixed PDF packaging govern the entire submission. The discipline changes how the file is built: summary exhibits replace bulk bank statements, and the business plan must make its case compactly.

Practitioners also note that with limited pre-screening, the interview itself carries unusual weight in Madrid, which makes interview preparation a larger share of the work than at most posts. Review typically runs several weeks once the file is submitted.

Spanish files lean on notarized and registry records that reconstruct fund origins well: the escritura for property sales, tax filings for salary accumulation, and formal documentation for family gifts. Because Madrid's page caps prevent submitting everything, the source-of-funds chain has to be told in curated summary form with the strongest documents selected. Spain imposes no currency controls on the transfer; standard bank documentation covers it, and the receiving side comes first: forming the US company and opening its bank account precedes the wire. Every Spanish document needs a certified English translation.

Spain and the United States have had a totalization agreement since 1988, so Spanish and US credits combine for benefit eligibility and double contributions are prevented. The Spanish-specific planning item is the breadth of what the exemption removes: stepping out of Spanish social security also ends sickness, unemployment, workers' compensation, and family-allowance coverage, which all need private replacements until US coverage matures. Once a Spanish E-2 holder becomes a US tax resident, US worldwide-income reporting typically begins, including FBAR filings when foreign accounts exceed 10,000 dollars in aggregate; Spanish accounts left open count toward that threshold.

At renewal the file shifts from projections to track record: revenue, US hires, and tax filings replace the business plan as the center of the evidence, still within Madrid's page discipline, so the curation skill built for the first filing stays useful.