Waypoint Sur residency desk
Work out where you actually stand on your residency renewal
Most renewal advice tells you the rules. It does not tell you whether your own window is open today, what your household has to prove, or which of the four filing routes is available to you without a digital certificate.
This check takes your permit type and the expiry date printed on your card, and returns your window with real dates, your document list, and where there is an income test, the threshold worked out for your household. Every line traces back to a dated official source. Where we cannot answer from a source, we say so instead of guessing.
Last verified: 28 August 2026.
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Three things this answers that a general guide cannot
- Your window, in dates. The Withdrawal Agreement card runs on a day count, 30 days before expiry and 90 days after. The general permits run on calendar months. Those are different arithmetic, and the check does yours from your own expiry date rather than describing the rule.
- The real income threshold. For a non-lucrative renewal the legal minimum is 400% of IPREM — the public income index for the main applicant, plus 100% for each dependant, across the 24 months the renewal covers. At the 2026 IPREM of 600 euros a month that is 3,000 euros a month, or 72,000 euros over the period, for a couple. The 80,000 euro figure in circulation has no official basis we can find.
- Whether you are stuck at all. If you have been told you cannot file because you cannot get Cl@ve — the state identity system, our read is that you are not stuck. There are four routes, and the paper route through any administrative registry needs no digital identity at all.
What it covers, and what it refuses to
The check adjudicates four permits fully: the Withdrawal Agreement card in both its five-year and Permanente forms, non-lucrative residence, and larga duración — long-term residence.
For the work and family permits it gives you the window, the filing routes and the renewal duration, and then stops at the document list, because we have not verified one against a source we trust. That covers cuenta ajena — employed residence and work, cuenta propia — self-employed residence and work, and reagrupación familiar — family reunification.
The digital nomad permit, teletrabajo internacional — international teleworking, sits outside what it covers. It runs on its own track under Ley 28/2022, filed with a different unit, on a different clock, and we have not source-verified any of it. Student stays, investor residence and the tarjeta de familiar de ciudadano de la Unión — EU family member card are outside it too. In each case the check names the permit and says it does not adjudicate it, rather than improvising an answer from rules that were written for something else.
If you hold an EU, EEA or Swiss certificado de registro — registration certificate, the check tells you that it does not expire the way a card does, and stops there. That is the answer, not a gap.
A closed door is logged. The gaps readers actually hit are the ones that get built next.
What the result is, and what it is not
It is our read of the official sources, each one linked and dated inside the result. It is not legal advice, and we are not lawyers.
Offices do not all read this the same way. In our experience the same file can be handled differently by different officials in different provinces, and sometimes at the same desk on a different day. Filing late is where they differ most: our read is that you remain admitted inside the grace period, but we have seen the same late file waved through at one counter and picked over at another.
Fees are never shown as a number here. Every fee is a link to the live 790 fee form, because a fee we typed out once is a fee that goes stale. Rules carry a re-check date, and when one passes it, that area stops being served rather than quietly ageing.
The five-minute version
- The Withdrawal Agreement window is 30 days before expiry and 90 days after. The general permits run on calendar months, so the two are not interchangeable.
- Filing itself extends your old authorisation until they resolve it. Keep the receipt they give you at registration.
- Silence works in your favour on these renewals at three months. Student permits are the exception, where it goes the other way.
- The non-lucrative legal minimum is 3,000 euros a month, or 72,000 euros across 24 months, for a couple at the 2026 IPREM. Pension income counts.
- Past three months beyond expiry the renewal route closes, and the route back the regulation designs for exactly this is arraigo de segunda oportunidad — second-chance residency.
- At five years of continuous legal residence the move is larga duración rather than another renewal, and the income test drops away.
Related guides
- Visa and TIE renewal timing in Spain: when to apply and what goes wrong
- TIE renewal in Spain 2026: what actually changed
- Renewing your non-lucrative visa in Spain: timeline, documents and pitfalls
- EU long-term residency vs permanent residency: which permit after five years
- TIE card Spain 2026: how to get your foreigner identity card
- Spanish residency: every visa route for expats in 2026
General information, not legal advice, current as of 28 August 2026. Primary sources: Real Decreto 1155/2024 arts. 125-127 and 183-185, Real Decreto 557/2011 arts. 62 and 64, Ley Orgánica 4/2000 arts. 52 and 55, Ley 31/2022 disposición adicional nonagésima for the IPREM, and the September 2024 Guía sobre el Acuerdo de Retirada.
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