Samantha was one of the first applicants to file for Spain’s Digital Nomad Visa after the route opened in late December 2022. UK-based, working remotely for a Latvian company, paid through the platform EasyStaff — her case ran into a friction point that has tripped up many freelancers since: when payments arrive through a third-party platform, the bank statement no longer reads like a clean salary trail. UGE refused her case. We won on appeal. This is what happened, and what we would do differently next time.
The client
Samantha is a UK-based remote-working professional, contracted to a single Latvian client, paid in monthly fixed instalments. Her client is a Latvian bank; rather than paying her directly, the bank routes the payment through EasyStaff — a Cyprus-registered platform-of-record commonly used in the Baltics and Eastern Europe to handle cross-border freelancer payments and tax withholding. EasyStaff receives the gross amount, deducts a fee, transfers the net sum into a UK clearing account, and from there it lands in Samantha’s UK personal account.
By late 2022 Samantha had been working in this arrangement for over a year and wanted to move to Spain under the newly-announced Digital Nomad Visa.
The challenge: proving where the money comes from
The Digital Nomad Visa, processed centrally by the Unidad de Grandes Empresas (UGE) in Madrid, requires applicants to evidence stable income at or above 200% of the Spanish minimum wage (SMI). The default proof — and the one UGE caseworkers expect to see — is a bank statement showing the client’s payments arriving regularly into the applicant’s account.
That evidence pattern works cleanly when the client pays the freelancer directly. It does not work cleanly through a platform-of-record:
- The sender on the bank statement is the platform, not the client.
- The amount arriving is net of platform fees, so it does not match the gross figure on any contract or invoice.
- The payment trail spans three or four jurisdictions before it reaches the applicant.
Samantha was uncomfortable submitting a statement she felt did not “tell the right story”. She asked us to file the case using EasyStaff payment screenshots and a letter from the Latvian client instead.
Where this case turned. We advised against omitting the bank statement and warned that UGE was likely to ask for one anyway. Samantha chose to proceed without it. We respected the instruction and filed accordingly. The decision shaped the rest of the case.
What we filed initially
- Employer letter from the Latvian client, confirming the working relationship, the monthly amount, and the open-ended contract.
- EasyStaff payment screenshots for the previous three months.
- Standard DNV file — passport, criminal record certificate (apostilled, sworn-translated), private medical insurance (no co-payment, full Spain coverage), and the qualifications evidence required under the route.
The refusal — and the supplementary requests behind it
UGE issued a requerimiento (formal request for additional evidence) before refusing. Three points:
- Bank statement. The case officer wanted to see the income land in a real account, not just a platform interface.
- Clarity on EasyStaff’s role. From the file, it was reasonable for the officer to read EasyStaff as a second employer. UGE asked for proof that the platform was a payment intermediary, not Samantha’s contracting party.
- Remaining funds. The officer asked for evidence of liquid funds in Samantha’s account at the date of the request.
By the time the requerimiento arrived, Samantha had already moved most of her UK savings out of the country in preparation for the move. The remaining balance was below the threshold UGE typically expects to see. She could not respond meaningfully on point 3, and the file as submitted did not satisfy points 1 and 2 either. The case was refused.
The appeal
We filed an appeal (recurso de reposición) within the statutory window. This time, with Samantha’s agreement, we built the file the way it should have been built originally:
- Twelve-month bank statement showing the monthly EasyStaff payments arriving on a stable cadence.
- Updated employer letter from the Latvian client, written specifically to address the platform question — explaining why EasyStaff was used, the fee retained per payment, and confirming that the contracting party for all purposes was the Latvian bank.
- EasyStaff platform documentation confirming its role as a paying agent, with company registration details.
- Reconciliation note linking each contract amount to the corresponding net deposit, showing the platform fee as the difference.
- Updated proof of liquid funds — Samantha had topped up her UK account in the interim.
The appeal letter walked the case officer through the payment chain step by step, rather than asking them to reconstruct it from the file.
Outcome
The appeal was upheld in part: UGE annulled the refusal and re-examined the file under the standard procedure. Samantha received the residence permit in June, with validity backdated to 19 January — the date the appeal was filed. From her perspective the timeline was longer than a clean first-instance grant would have been, but the residence start date was preserved.
She is now living in Spain on her DNV permit and renewed it on the standard cycle.
What this case shows
If you are a freelancer paid through any kind of platform-of-record — EasyStaff, Deel, Remote, Oyster, Papaya, or a smaller regional equivalent — the lesson from Samantha’s file is the same: file the bank statement, and pre-empt the platform question in your covering letter. UGE will see the platform name on the statement before they see anything else; if the file does not explain the relationship, the case officer will assume the platform is a counterparty. Ambiguity costs months.
The other lesson is on liquid funds. The Digital Nomad Visa does not have a published savings threshold the way some other Spanish routes do, but UGE checks balance evidence in practice. If you are mid-relocation and your UK account is being drained, time the application before the drain or rebuild a minimum balance for the supporting evidence.
Last updated: 1 May 2026. Legal basis (unchanged): Ley 14/2013, article 74 quinquies (added by Ley 28/2022 of 21 December 2022); applications processed by Unidad de Grandes Empresas (UGE). Practice update: UGE’s documentation expectations for DNV cases have tightened materially since 2024 — particularly around income evidence and the clarity of the employment relationship. The file we would build today is heavier than the one described above.