Retiring to the Costa del Sol: residency, healthcare, your pension and the home, in order

How to move to the Costa del Sol for retirement from the United Kingdom, the United States or anywhere else outside Spain. The move has four parts, and they are best taken in order: the right to live here, the day you become tax resident, healthcare, and the taxation of your pension. The home comes last, because the choice of home is easier once the first four are settled. This guide takes each in turn, with the law or the official guidance behind it linked where it applies, and points to the guides that go deeper on each. The visa figures themselves are in Spain’s non-lucrative visa and the day-count rules for a second home in the 90/180-day rule.

The right to live here

A citizen of a European Union state needs no visa. You register as a resident after arrival, obtain the residence certificate and the foreigner’s identity number, and the rest of this guide applies to you from there.

A citizen of a country outside the EU needs a residence visa before moving, and the one designed for people who will not work in Spain is the non-lucrative visa. It is granted on proof of passive income above a threshold tied to the IPREM index, €2,400 a month in 2026, health insurance (a private policy with an insurer authorised in Spain, or for a UK State Pensioner a registered S1 form), a clean criminal record and a medical certificate, and it is applied for at the Spanish consulate in your own country. It is issued for one year and renewed for two years at a time. The current thresholds and the documents are set out in Spain’s non-lucrative visa: the 2026 requirements, and the routes that replaced the golden visa in the golden visa is gone.

Without residency, the limit is the Schengen rule of 90 days in any 180, which suits an owner who winters here and returns home, but does not permit living here. How the count works, and how a couple can plan a long winter within it, is in the 90/180-day rule, explained.

The day you become tax resident

The two things, residency and tax residency, are separate and are often confused. Residency is the right to live in Spain. Tax residency is decided by article 9 of the Spanish personal income tax law: you are tax resident in Spain in any calendar year in which you spend more than 183 days here, counting short absences unless you can show tax residence in another country, or in which the main base of your activities or economic interests is in Spain. The law also presumes you are resident where your spouse and dependent children habitually live here.

From the first year that applies, Spain taxes you on your worldwide income, and you file a Spanish return each spring for the year before. In practice a retiree who moves in the second half of a year is usually tax resident in Spain from the following year, and one who moves in the first half is resident from the year of the move. The date matters for the pension, below, and for the sale of a home in your own country, which is generally better completed while you are still tax resident there. That is a question for an adviser who handles both countries, and it is worth asking before you fix the moving date rather than after.

Healthcare

Everyone living in Spain registers with the health service in the region where they live, and how you qualify depends on where your pension comes from.

• A UK state pensioner applies for an S1 form from the NHS Business Services Authority, registers it with the Spanish social security office (INSS) and is then treated by the Spanish health service, with the United Kingdom meeting the cost. The UK government’s guidance on healthcare in Spain sets out who is eligible and the steps.
• A retiree with no such entitlement, which includes most people from the United States, Canada and Australia and UK citizens below state pension age, can join the Spanish system through the convenio especial, the state’s own paid scheme. Real Decreto 576/2013 opens it to anyone who has been legally resident in Spain for a continuous year and is not otherwise covered, at a flat monthly fee of €60 under the age of 65 and €157 at 65 and over, for the basic common portfolio of the health service. Prescriptions are not included.
• Until then, private insurance. For anyone without an S1, the non-lucrative visa requires a policy with an insurer authorised in Spain that covers everything the public system covers, and it remains the cover for the first year of residence before the convenio especial opens. Many retirees keep it afterwards for the shorter waiting times.

Your pension

Once you are tax resident in Spain your pension is Spanish taxable income, and the treaty between Spain and the country paying it decides which of the two may tax it. The pattern is the same in most treaties and is worth knowing before you plan the move.

For a UK pension, article 17 of the UK–Spain double taxation convention provides that pensions paid to a resident of one state are taxable only in that state, so an occupational or personal pension paid to a Spanish resident is taxed in Spain and not in the United Kingdom. Article 18 makes the exception: a pension for government service (the civil service, the armed forces, the NHS, local government and similar) is taxable only in the United Kingdom, unless the recipient is both resident in Spain and a Spanish national. A UK state pension falls under article 17 and is taxed in Spain.

For a US pension, article 20 of the US–Spain income tax treaty provides that pensions in consideration of past employment paid to a resident of one state are taxable only in that state, so a private or occupational pension paid to a Spanish resident is taxed in Spain. Social security benefits are different: the treaty allows them to be taxed by the paying state, so US social security may be taxed in the United States as well as in Spain, with the treaty then providing relief so the same income is not taxed twice in full. A US citizen also continues to file a US return each year wherever they live.

The rates Spain applies are the ordinary personal income tax scale, which rises with income, with an allowance for the over-65s. What that comes to on your own pension is a calculation for a Spanish tax adviser, and it is one to run before you commit, because it and the healthcare position between them decide what the move costs each year.

The home

The choice of home is easier once the four points above are settled, because they decide how long you will be here each year, whether you need to be near a hospital, and what you can spend. Three things I would say to anyone retiring here.

Rent a winter first where you have not lived on the coast before. The coast in January is a different place from the coast in August, and the difference decides whether a seafront apartment, a hillside villa or a house in a village suits you. Buying after that winter is done with knowledge rather than hope.

Choose the town for what is around it. For a retiree that means the hospital and the health centre, a walkable centre, the train or a short road to the airport for family coming out, and a community that is there all year rather than only in summer. Fuengirola and Benalmádena have the coast’s flat seafront and the train to the airport. Estepona has a working town with a restored old centre. Nerja and Torrox are the quiet eastern end, 45 to 55 minutes from the airport. Marbella has the widest choice of higher-value homes. The six stretches are compared in where to buy on the Costa del Sol, and what each town costs per square metre in what your money buys, town by town.

Know the full cost before the search. A resale carries 7% transfer tax in Andalucía and a new build 10% IVA plus 1.2% stamp duty, and the notary, registry and lawyer come on top, all worked in what a €350,000 apartment really costs. The yearly costs of owning are in what it costs to own a home in Spain. And once you own here, a Spanish will and an understanding of how the home passes on are worth putting in place early, which is the subject of wills and inheritance for a Spanish home.

How I handle it

My approach is the same for every buyer: proper research on the property and its area, a straight assessment of what it is genuinely worth, and careful negotiation on your behalf. For someone retiring here that means working out the budget from the pension and the costs above before the first viewing, so that the search is real from the start, and weighting the search towards the things that matter more at this stage of life, the hospital, the walk to the shops, the flat street, the year-round neighbours. I am not an immigration lawyer or a tax adviser, and I will say so when a question needs one. What I can do is introduce you to the lawyer, the tax adviser and the currency specialist I work with, and hold the timetable from the visa to the keys alongside them. That sits within the buying service. To talk it through, book a call.

General guidance, not legal, tax or immigration advice. The residency rule is that of the Spanish personal income tax law, the healthcare fees those of Real Decreto 576/2013, the pension provisions those of the UK–Spain convention of 2013 and the US–Spain treaty of 1990, and the UK healthcare route that published by the UK government, all last checked on 18 September 2026. Your own position depends on your nationality, your pensions and your family, so take advice from a Spanish lawyer and a tax adviser who handles both countries before you fix a date.

Common questions

The same subject, for buyers abroad

Pages written for buyers in other countries, in their own language, covering what changes for them.

• United States: How long Americans can stay in Spain
• Netherlands: Verblijf en residentie in Spanje voor EU-burgers
• Germany: Länger bleiben: Anmeldung in Spanien und der deutsche Wohnsitz
• Poland: NIE, rejestracja i pobyt w Hiszpanii dla obywateli Polski
• Sweden: NIE-nummer och residencia för svenskar
• Norway: Opphold, NIE og registrering for nordmenn i Spania