Practice note · October 2026 · 13 extranjeria offices
Nomad to cuenta propia: the office decides, not the law.
Updated
The same application, with the same documents, takes two days in Tarragona and more than a year in Girona. Both are Catalonia. Below is what we and the colleagues we work with are actually seeing in thirteen provincial offices, with the caveat that matters: you do not get to choose.
To resolve a cuenta propia authorisation. Silence is a refusal.
Observed fastest
2 days
Tarragona. Not a typographical error.
Observed slowest
12+ months
Girona, with no sign of movement.
A digital nomad residence under Ley 28/2022 is granted centrally, by the Unidad de Grandes Empresas y Colectivos Estrategicos. A cuenta propia authorisation is not: it runs through the general regime in the Reglamento approved by Real Decreto 1155/2024, and it is decided by the Oficina de Extranjeria of the province where you live. That single difference is the whole story of this page. One file goes to one desk in Madrid; the other goes to whichever of fifty provincial offices has your address.
You cannot file where it is fastest.
Competence follows your actual residence, not your preference. Tarragona is quick, but Tarragona is only available to you if you genuinely live in Tarragona. The table below is useful for planning a move, for setting expectations, and for knowing when a delay is normal and when it is not. It is not a menu.
What the law says, and what happens.
The published period for resolving an initial cuenta propia authorisation is three months from the day after the application enters the register of the competent body, and if nothing is notified in that time the application is taken to have been refused. So the three-month mark is not merely a target; past it, you are formally in refusal-by-silence territory and your position depends on the office eventually deciding anyway, which it usually does.
Set that against the column on the right of the table. Four of the thirteen offices decide inside a month. Two start above the legal period before anything goes wrong, and two more routinely run past it. The standard applied is national; the time taken is local, and so is the paperwork each office has decided it wants.
Thirteen offices, fastest first.
The rank in grey is the position in the original worst-to-best ranking this is drawn from. Filter by what you need.
No office in this group.
The three things offices now ask for.
One
Notification to UGE
Nine of the thirteen offices want it
You are leaving a regime that UGE granted; it expects to be told
Tarragona, Cantabria, Asturias and Castellon do not ask
Two
Proof the activity was real
Invoices, tax filings, social security contributions actually paid
Valencia, Tenerife, Galicia, Castellon and Girona apply this hardest
Malaga applies it with judgement — gaps have been accepted
Three
Why the nomad status ended
Barcelona now wants documentary proof of the dismissal or loss of income
Valencia wants the loss of conditions evidenced, not asserted
A written statement on its own no longer carries either office
And for family
Housing, unevenly
Asturias requires vivienda adecuada for dependants
Tarragona instead wants a collective padron for the address
Castellon asks for neither; Cantabria has no decided family case yet
What this changes in practice.
Before you apply
Find out which office yours is, then plan to its rhythm.A Madrid file and a Granada file are the same application with different calendars. Budget five months for one and six weeks for the other, and do not read a Madrid delay as a problem with your case.
If a move is already planned
The office is a real factor, among others.Nobody should move province for a residence permit alone. But if you are weighing two cities anyway, a two-week decision against a twelve-month one is a legitimate item on the list.
Assembling the file
Build for the strictest office, not yours.Invoices, filed returns and paid contributions cost nothing to include and turn a requerimiento into a non-event. Valencia issuing two or three requests on one file is usually a file that left gaps.
Past the three-month mark
Silence is a refusal, and it is still worth waiting.In most of these offices the decision eventually arrives and is positive. Knowing that the office routinely runs past the legal period is the difference between waiting calmly and filing an appeal you did not need.
Where these numbers come from. They are observed decision times from files handled by us and by colleagues we work with, current to October 2026. They are not published service standards, and no office commits to them. A sample from one practice is a sample, not a statistic: an office can change its approach in a month, and two of the thirteen have done so this year in opposite directions. Treat the figures as a planning expectation, not a promise. The legal framework is the Reglamento approved by Real Decreto 1155/2024, amended by Real Decreto 316/2026, and the ministry's own procedure sheets for the three-month resolution period and the effect of administrative silence.
Fixed quote, one business day
Moving from the nomad residence to cuenta propia?
Tell us which province you are in and where you are in the process. We come back with the realistic timetable for that office and what the file needs to survive it.
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