Nathan is a British CEO of small US companies who applied for the Spanish Digital Nomad Visa via the freelance / service-contract track — the path within the DNV designed for self-employed founders and owner-operators rather than salaried remote employees. The case is useful because it exposes the documentation gap that catches most owner-CEO applicants: an income that is technically real but does not look like a payroll slip on the case officer’s screen.
The client
Nathan and his wife lived part-time in London while he ran two US-incorporated businesses providing tax audit and financial consulting work to clients in the US and the UK. He is the sole shareholder of both entities and serves as their CEO. His income arrives in mixed form — consulting fees, expense reimbursements, retained earnings, and occasional dividends — paid by the US entities into his accounts as the owner-operator. There is no fixed-salary employment contract because there is no third-party employer. He is the company.
This profile is increasingly common among UK-based remote founders, and it is the profile most likely to receive a Requerimiento (a formal request from UGE for additional documentation) on a first submission of the DNV.
Why the freelance track, not the employee track
The DNV under the Startups Law has two scenarios. The employee track is for applicants who are employed by a non-Spanish company on a payroll, with an employment contract and evidence of an ongoing employment relationship. The freelance track is for self-employed founders, freelancers, and owner-operators who provide services to clients (or are themselves clients of their own incorporated entity) outside Spain under service contracts.
The mistake we see most often in owner-CEO files: applicants try to bend their facts into the employee shape, attaching a manufactured employment contract from their own company, with a notional fixed salary. UGE case officers read the structure quickly and identify the conflict. The route to take is the freelance track, with documentation that fits the freelance track.
The legal foundation. Under Spanish social-security law, a person who works for a company and also holds a controlling stake in it — broadly 50% or more of the share capital, or 25% or more combined with an effective management role — is treated as self-employed by definition rather than as an employee, and registers with the RETA autónomo regime. UGE applies the same logic to the DNV: a controlling shareholder who actively works through their own foreign company cannot use the employee track, even with a perfectly drafted employment contract — they must use the freelance track. The case officer is not exercising discretion; they are following the rule. (A founder who only receives passive dividends, without working for the company, sits in a different category altogether — the rule does not pull them into RETA, and the right Spanish residence route is the Non-Lucrative Visa rather than the DNV.)
The freelance track is not the employee track. Owner-founders filing as if they were employees of their own company create an evidentiary tangle the case officer can resolve only by asking for everything twice. Pick the right path on day one and the file holds together. Pick the wrong path and you almost guarantee a Requerimiento. (Note: the DNV’s freelance track is distinct from a separate Spanish residence permit — autorización de residencia y trabajo por cuenta propia, the autónomo residence — but the two are not interchangeable. The cuenta-propia permit is the route for foreigners who intend to set up and operate a business inside Spain, serving Spanish clients. It is not the route for owners of foreign companies. For a founder of a non-Spanish company the right route depends on the level of activity: a founder who actively works through the company — consulting, managing operations, billing for services — fits the DNV freelance track; a founder whose only income from the company is passive dividends, without an active operational role, fits the Non-Lucrative Visa instead.)
The first submission and the Requerimiento
Nathan’s first file documented his role, his ownership, and the companies’ income — but the case officer wanted more granularity on six points specifically. The Requerimiento asked for:
- Confirmation of Nathan’s ownership in each US entity, with a corporate registry certificate;
- The most recent corporate tax returns for each US company;
- Evidence of productive activity and recurring income — not a one-off contract, but a pattern;
- Registry certificates from each US state in which Nathan’s entities were registered;
- Evidence of formal qualifications or relevant prior experience;
- A written plan to register with the Spanish RETA system upon approval.
Each of these is something an employee-track file would not need to supply, and each is something an unprepared freelance-track file will not have ready.
The subsanación
We assembled the subsanación (the formal response to the Requerimiento) as a single, narrated package rather than a stack of attachments. The key elements:
- Ownership. Corporate registry certificates showing 100% ownership in each entity, with corroborating evidence from the most recent US tax filings.
- Recurring income. A signed services agreement between Nathan’s primary US company and a long-standing US client showing monthly invoicing across the past two years — the productive-activity evidence the case officer specifically wanted.
- Bank statements. Colour-coded by category — software subscriptions, client tools, payroll-equivalent draws — to make the cash-flow story legible at a glance.
- Tax filings. Most recent US corporate returns, with a brief explanation of why a paper-loss year (reinvestment) does not undermine the productive-activity claim.
- Qualifications. Relevant US professional licences and a CV evidencing the consulting practice.
- RETA commitment. A signed undertaking to register with the Spanish self-employed social security regime within the first month after the residence permit was issued.
- Apostille and sworn translation. Every US-origin document apostilled at source and translated into Spanish by a Traductor Jurado before submission.
What UGE actually wants to see on the freelance track. The two phrases that appear in nearly every successful freelance-track file are actividad productiva (productive activity) and ingresos recurrentes (recurring income). The case officer is not satisfied by a healthy bank balance. They want the contracts, the invoicing pattern, the client relationships, and the entity’s legal continuity.
Outcome
Nathan’s residence permit was approved on the second pass. He registered with RETA within the first month, his wife followed on a dependent permit, and the family settled into Barcelona. The DNV is initially three years, extendable for a further two — a five-year route to permanent residency.
What this case shows
Three lessons from Nathan’s file for any UK-based founder considering the same route:
- File for the right track. The freelance / service-contract track is the correct DNV path for owner-CEOs of foreign companies. Don’t try to wedge a founder’s facts into the employee shape — the case officer will see the seams and ask for documentation on both tracks simultaneously.
- Recurring income, not snapshot wealth. UGE evaluates productive activity, not bank balance. Lead with the contracts, the invoicing history, and the multi-year client relationships. The savings figure is supporting evidence, not the headline.
- Apostille and translate before submission. A second-round file with missing apostilles costs weeks. Public documents (corporate registries, tax returns, professional licences) should arrive in Spain already apostilled and already in sworn Spanish translation.
Last updated: 1 May 2026. Legal basis (unchanged): Digital Nomad Visa under Ley 14/2013, article 74 quinquies (added by Ley 28/2022 of 21 December 2022); freelance-track applications processed by Unidad de Grandes Empresas (UGE). Practice update: UGE’s documentation expectations for freelance-track DNV cases have tightened materially since 2024 — particularly around the productive-activity test and the structural clarity of the founder–entity relationship. The file we would build today is heavier than the one described above.