Hola Diego! I did this in Valencia last year. The registration itself was one morning. The hardest part was everything after: understanding which invoices needed which tax, and the quarterly declarations. My advice is to get a gestor, sorry, an accountant, from the first month. I tried to do it alone for one quarter and spent more time on it than on my actual work. Ojalá someone had told me that before.
Diego Fernandez 🏆 Community expert
7 Sept 2026, 10:47
Now that I'm thinking about moving from the nomad visa to regular residence, I'm also looking at registering properly as self-employed in Spain. I've read the steps and they look manageable on paper: register with the tax office, register with social security, choose the activity code, start invoicing properly.
But I know from experience that "manageable on paper" means very little. For those who registered as self-employed in a new country, which part was actually the hardest? The registration itself, the quarterly obligations, finding an accountant who understood foreign clients, or something else entirely?