Retiring to the Canary Islands: residency, healthcare, taxes

Up to three months, and beyond three months

This guide follows the route that applies to EU and EEA citizens; other nationalities follow a different, visa-based route that this guide does not cover. The line itself is clear-cut. If your stay lasts less than three months, whatever its purpose, all you need is the valid passport or ID card you entered with: that period doesn't count as residency. Past three months everything changes, and Spanish law lists the cases in which an EU citizen has the right to reside: working as an employee or self-employed, studying, being a family member of someone in one of those cases, or — the door almost every retiree walks through — having sufficient resources, for yourself and your family, not to become a burden on Spanish social assistance, plus health insurance covering all risks in Spain.

Nobody stops you at the border to ask: Spain has no checks on people arriving from another EU country. But the day you need a doctor, an electricity contract in your own name or a tax return, the paperwork you never did catches up with you all at once.

The registration certificate: where, when, with what

You apply in person at the Oficina de Extranjeros for the province where you intend to live or, failing that, at the relevant Comisaría de Policía, within three months of the date you entered Spain. The certificate is issued on the spot and shows your name, nationality and address, your foreigner identity number — the well-known NIE — and the date of registration. It isn't a residence card with a photo: it's a small card, and it's valid.

• With the application you submit your valid passport or ID card and the documents proving whichever ground you're relying on.
• You use the official forms EX-18 and EX-19, and you pay the fee first (form 790, code 012).
• For the resources requirement, no fixed amount can be set: your personal situation is what's assessed, and in any case the amount required never exceeds the level of resources below which social assistance is granted to Spaniards, or the amount of the minimum Seguridad Social pension.
• Afterwards, any change of nationality, marital status or address must be reported to the Oficina de Extranjeros: it's the part everyone forgets when they move house.

Don't expect a table for the financial requirement: the law says exactly the opposite, that a fixed amount can't be set. People living on a pension turn up at the counter with their pension payslip, their bank statement and their health insurance policy, and that is usually the whole package.

Healthcare: the right first, the card second

Here the order matters, and it's the thing I explain most often. The Canary Islands tarjeta sanitaria, the public health card, isn't a document the Servicio Canario de la Salud issues just on request: the service issues it to people whose right to healthcare has already been recognised by the competent body of the national administration. Recognising and checking that right falls to the State, for anyone with legal, habitual residence in Spain; the regional government comes afterwards, with the card.

In practice that means two different offices, one after the other. Once the right is recognised, to actually get the card the Servicio Canario de la Salud tells you to go to your centro de salud, the local health centre: that's where you get registered and assigned a family doctor. In the meantime, the health insurance you showed for your residency application keeps doing its job, and I'd recommend not cancelling it the day after you submit your application.

Your pension and double-taxation agreements

From the moment you move, the right to tax your pension is divided between Spain and the country you're leaving, under the double-taxation agreement between the two states, where one exists. Spain has agreements of this kind with most countries. Which state actually taxes your pension depends on the agreement with your own country and on the type of pension: a private one, or one paid by a public body. I can't generalise beyond that: every country's agreement with Spain is different, and this is exactly the question to take to an adviser before you move.

As you can see, the real issue isn't the tax rate: it's where you're resident. Every country also sets its own conditions for treating you as no longer tax resident there, and deregistering is often not enough on its own: check those conditions with your own country's tax authority or an adviser before you go.

One last thing that matters directly to anyone buying a property here: income from property can be taxed in the state where the property is located. A house in the Canary Islands stays tied to the Spanish tax system, however the residency question turns out.

The house: buy straight away, or rent first?

My advice to anyone arriving to retire is almost always the same: rent for a winter before you buy. Not out of general caution, but because on these islands the differences that matter are local — the wind, the cloud cover, the distance to the hospital, the drive you'll do for groceries — and you only understand them by living there, not from a week of viewings. Anyone who's already settled on the island and the area can skip this step; anyone still choosing between the north and south of Tenerife shouldn't.

On the practical side, it's worth moving early on two fronts regardless: your NIE, which you need to buy a property just as you do for anything else, and a Spanish bank account. Both can be sorted before you have a house.

This is general guidance, not tax or legal advice. Tax residency, how your pension is treated and the formalities in both the country you're leaving and in Spain depend on your own situation: before you move, get advice from a qualified professional in both countries.