Retiring in Spain as an American: Income Proof, Healthcare, Taxes

For most Americans, retiring in Spain runs through the non-lucrative visa, the permit for living on unearned income. Spanish law sets its money test at 400 percent of IPREM, Spain’s public income index, or 2,400 euros a month in 2026. Each U.S. consulate decides which pensions, annuities and accounts prove it, and their pages differ. Your health coverage changes after the first year, Medicare mostly stops at the border, and the more than 183 days a year in Spain your renewal asks for also make you a Spanish tax resident. This article is for informational purposes only and is not immigration, tax, financial or medical advice; verify current requirements with the relevant Spanish authority or a licensed professional.

How much income do you need to retire in Spain, and could the consulate reject it?

The non-lucrative visa asks a retiree for 400 percent of IPREM under Royal Decree 1155/2024, or 2,400 euros a month in 2026. Pensions, annuities and cash count, while IRA, 401(k) and brokerage balances depend on the consulate you apply to.

The regulation adds 100 percent of IPREM for each family member, and you can show the money either as funds covering the whole permit or as a regular income, with any lawful evidence. For 2026, both SEPE, the public employment service, and the Los Angeles consulate’s table put IPREM at 600 euros a month, unchanged since 2023. IPREM, short for indicador público de renta de efectos múltiples, still rests on the 2023 budget law, per SEPE: the Constitution extends a budget automatically until a new one passes, and the budget office publishes the 2026 budget as that extension.

A couple on one file therefore needs 3,000 euros a month. Which consulate is yours follows your state of residence, on the embassy’s list; Los Angeles also claims Inyo County, California, which that list leaves out. Beyond pensions and cash, the nine pages go their separate ways:

• Los Angeles (dated February 11, 2026) accepts investment accounts for retirees, and it is the only one to bar applicants who have or leave loans or mortgages in the United States.
• San Francisco (dated July 30, 2025) accepts investment accounts in one sentence, then refuses them in its list for retirees.
• Washington asks for investment account statements but does not say whether those balances count.
• Boston is alone in naming IRA and 401(k) plans, and it refuses them as proof for anyone not officially retired, a term it never defines.
• Houston names only checking and savings statements.
• Chicago (dated February 10, 2026) and New York (undated) accept a periodic income or an estate that guarantees one.
• Miami and San Juan state only the general rule.

The short version: build your file so that pensions and cash reach the minimum on their own, and let the checklist for moving to Spain from the U.S. walk you through the rest of the file.

Which retirement income counts for the visa, and how is it taxed?

Social Security and private or public pensions count for the non-lucrative visa at Washington when shown to continue for at least 12 months. Boston refuses IRA and 401(k) plans from applicants not officially retired, and the U.S.-Spain treaty decides which country taxes each stream.

Article 21 gives government pensions to the U.S. unless you are also a Spanish national. Yet Article 1(4)(b) keeps Spain from taxing them only if you have no immigrant status in Spain, and the treaty’s 1990 technical explanation defines that term only for the United States, as permanent residence.

How do you retire in Spain from the U.S., step by step?

Retiring in Spain from the U.S. means applying in person to your state’s consulate; Washington takes it at the BLS center and allows 3 months, extendable, to decide, while the regulation gives the immigration office 1 month, then the consulate 1 more for the visa.

1. 12 months before. Read your consulate’s page and set each income stream against the table. Savings count by the December 31 balance of the year before you apply and by the last year’s average, so the money needs to sit in your account well before the appointment.
2. 3 to 5 months before. Washington also wants a certificate from each bank showing both balances, plus your latest tax return. Download your SSA benefit letter online, because once you live abroad the SSA cannot mail it to you.
3. Before you book. Buy the private health policy described below. Since January 1, 2026, Washington has charged U.S. citizens $140 for the visa and $13 for the permit, amounts it revises quarterly.
4. After the decision. You have 1 month from notification to collect the visa, or the regulation treats it as renounced. Washington says it is valid 1 year and Houston and San Juan 365 days, as article 37 of the regulation allows. The six other mainland pages say 90 days, and Hoja 6, the migration ministry’s information sheet, says 3 months at most. The dates printed on your visa are the ones to go by.
5. Before you fly. Give the SSA your new address, as its instructions for beneficiaries leaving the U.S. ask, even when your payments go to a bank.
6. Entry. Your permit runs 1 year from the day you enter, per Hoja 6. Apply in person for the TIE, the foreigner’s identity card, within 1 month.
7. First weeks: the padrón. Register on the padrón, the town’s list of who lives there: its certificate is one proof of the year of residence that the convenio especial requires, the public health coverage you can pay into.
8. First weeks: pension deposits. Your Social Security can be paid into a euro account at a Spanish bank with form SSA-1199-SP, and the Federal Benefits Unit in Madrid serves Spain. Military retirees enroll with DFAS on form SF 1199-I and should allow 45 to 60 days. For a civil service annuity, Treasury names OPM among the agencies offering international direct deposit, but OPM’s annuity payments page does not confirm it for Spain.
9. May or June. The SSA mails its foreign enforcement questionnaire every year or every 2 years; answer it within 60 days, because after a second notice benefits can be suspended.
10. 2 months before expiry. File the renewal. Hoja 7, the renewal sheet, asks for more than 183 days of real residence in the calendar year, means for the renewal period and insurance kept throughout. You pay the fee on form 790 code 052, heading 2.2.1. Article 64 accepts filing up to 3 months late, with a possible sanction; the renewed permit lasts 2 years, and silence after 3 months means approval.
11. After 12 months in Spain. The convenio especial opens to you.

How does healthcare work for retirees in Spain, and does Medicare pay?

A retiree in Spain needs health insurance for the visa, copayment-free at mainland consulates, can later join the public convenio especial at 60 euros a month under 65 and 157 at 65 or over, and should expect Medicare to pay nothing in most situations.

Year one: a policy written to your consulate’s wording

For year one, the law itself asks little: article 61 of the regulation requires only health insurance, and Hoja 6 a public or private policy with an insurer authorized in Spain, with no word on copayments. The consulates go further. All eight mainland consulate pages rule out copayments, and each adds its own extras, such as no coverage limit, no waiting period at Los Angeles or no pre-existing condition exclusion at San Francisco. Travel insurance is refused by Washington, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, Miami and Boston. Buy to your own consulate’s wording; health insurance for Americans in Spain compares the pages side by side.

After a year: the convenio especial

Once a year of residence is behind you, the convenio especial comes within reach. Under Royal Decree 576/2013, it is a paid agreement with your region’s health service, and it needs one continuous year of effective residence in Spain just before you apply, a padrón registration in the region and no public coverage by any other right. The Ministry of Health also counts residence in another EU or EEA state, Switzerland or the UK toward that year. You pay 60 euros a month under 65 and 157 euros at 65 or over, more where a region adds services. The Ministry of Health lists the basic public services without copayments, but you pay 100 percent of outpatient drugs yourself.

The renewal is where the answer is still missing. Article 64 of the regulation and Hoja 7 ask only that you kept your health insurance and continue it, and no official page says whether an Oficina de Extranjería, the provincial immigration office, accepts the convenio. The Ministry of Health aims it at inactive foreigners who need insurance to reside, but its page cites Royal Decree 557/2011, which the current regulation repealed from May 20, 2025. Keep your private policy until your office answers; how to join the convenio especial goes region by region.

Medicare: what it pays, and the Part B choice

Once you are in Spain, Medicare does not pay for your care in most situations, says its April 2026 fact sheet. Its drug plans do not cover prescriptions bought abroad, per Medicare’s travel page, and the U.S.-Spain Social Security agreement does not cover Medicare. Abroad, the SSA sets up Part A only, so Part B is not automatic at 65, per its manual on the Medicare program. If you want Part B from abroad in your initial period, you mail form CMS-40B to the SSA’s Division of International Operations, per its manual on enrolling beneficiaries abroad.

Here is what the official pages say follows from keeping or dropping Part B:

• Keeping it. You pay a standard $202.90 a month in 2026, more at higher incomes, and a $283 deductible, per CMS.
• Dropping it. When you come back, you enroll in the General Enrollment Period, January 1 to March 31, with coverage from the next month. No Part A or Part B special enrollment period on that page covers a return from abroad, except for certain volunteers serving in a foreign country. A 10 percent penalty applies for each full 12-month period without Part B, usually for life. In the SSA’s own example, a beneficiary living in France who enrolled shortly before moving back paid 10 percent more.
• Part D. Drug plans are told by the CMS guidance for 2026 not to count the days you lived in a foreign country toward the penalty. After moving back, you have 2 full months after the month of the move to join a plan (Medicare.gov).
• Medigap. For emergency care abroad, most plans pay 80 percent after a $250 yearly deductible, up to $50,000 per lifetime, and only for care that begins in the first 60 days of a trip, per the fact sheet.

When does Spain tax your U.S. retirement income?

Spain’s tax on retirement income starts with tax residence: more than 183 days in Spain in a calendar year make a retiree resident, sporadic absences counted unless tax residence in another country is proven, and the Agencia Tributaria applies that residence to the whole year.

Under article 9 of the income tax law, a center of economic interests in Spain also makes you resident. If your spouse, not legally separated, and your dependent minor children live in Spain, the law presumes you are resident too, a presumption you can rebut.

Your pensions, Social Security included, go into the income tax’s general base, taxed half on the state scale and half on the scale of the region where you spend the most days, under article 28 of Ley 22/2009; where to live in Spain compares four regions.

On the U.S. side, the saving clause in Article 1(3) of the treaty lets the United States tax its citizens as if the treaty did not exist, and Article 1(4) makes no exception for private pensions or annuities. Under Article 24, Spain deducts U.S. tax only where the U.S. taxes for a reason other than citizenship, as it does with Social Security; otherwise the U.S. credits the Spanish tax. The foreign earned income exclusion does not reach pensions, annuities or Social Security.

Two declarations may follow as well. Modelo 720 is due once your foreign accounts, securities or real estate exceed 50,000 euros as a block, and again after a block grows by more than 20,000 euros or after you sell or close an asset already reported. A wealth tax return is due when tax is payable, with a general exempt minimum of 700,000 euros where the region sets none, or when gross assets exceed 2 million euros.

How many days a year must you live in Spain to renew your permit?

A non-lucrative renewal requires more than 183 days of real and effective residence in Spain in the calendar year, under article 64 of the regulation, which sets a day count rather than a limit on time away.

The six-month figure you may hear quoted belongs to a different rule, an absence limit the current regulation sets only for long-term residence, where absences of up to 6 consecutive months, and 10 months in total over 5 years, keep your continuity.

Neither text says how a first permit that starts mid-year is counted, and a September arrival cannot reach 183 days by December 31. Before a long absence in your first 2 years, ask the Oficina de Extranjería, and keep dated proof of your days in Spain.

Your next step: set your streams against your consulate’s page

This week, open your consulate’s non-lucrative page, write each of your income streams and accounts beside the table above, and mark what that page accepts. If your consulate asks for bank certificates, as Washington does, request one from each bank showing both balances.

A retiree whose pensions alone reach 2,400 euros a month, or 3,000 euros for a couple, can usually put this file together alone. You will want a licensed professional if the test rests on IRA, 401(k) or brokerage balances at a consulate that limits them, if you hold a U.S. government pension, or if your assets abroad come close to the Modelo 720 or wealth tax thresholds. Before any Part B decision, talk to the SSA and Medicare. From the visa to settling in, the Spain Navigator puts every step of your move to Spain in order.