Process of getting non lucrative visa and suggestions about villages/towns

    We are in the process of getting our non lucrative visas. Looking at the area inland from Malaga within a 20 minute drive to the coast. Can anyone suggest some towns/villages that would be worth looking at please?
We are going to rent for a year before we decide whether we want to buy there.
   

    -@Bevclarke

Why not visit the area first?

@Bevclarke

Hi,

My partner and I spent several months looking for a place to live in Andalucía, and finally settled on a property in Alhaurin de la Torre, we moved in during March of this year, and love it.  We rented various properties in a number of towns and villages, including Ronda, which is of course beautiful, but it is to far from the airport, we thought that Competa is very nice, with an awful lot of English people if that is what you want, the same with Alhaurin de la Grande.  Antequera is a fantastic place, just could not find the right property, the country villages of Villanueva de la Trabuco, and Villanueva de la Concepcion are also very nice, we thought so anyway, there are so many others, but they are generally rather remote.   We have not shipped our furniture, our lawyer said we can only legally do so once we have our visas.  We are actually in the UK now and going to the Embassy tomorrow with the applications.  Apparently they can take 3 months to process, we are really hoping that they don't keep our passports whilst doing so. 

Hope this helps you, meanwhile Best of luck with your search.

Neil & Kath

They don't keep your passports but allow another month, you will need a medical and a police check, that you could get done to save time,

@compel

Hi, not sure where you gathered this information,  however, we have been to London today to submit our applications for the Spanish visas.

They have kept our passports along with the applications. The visas will be stamped into the passports if our applications are successful.

The process will take between 30 and 90 days, the passports will then be returned to us with or without the visa if the applications are refused.

Neil

I don't know why they kept your passport, I did my application online with the Spanish consulate in Paris, I then visited in the morning to give them my passport, I had to return in the afternoon and they gave me back my passport with the visa inside. Whole process took about 4 months.

That's interesting, so, it appears then that it varies from country to country.

Our Spanish lawyer informed us that we had to go through the process by visiting the Spanish embassy/consulate in London, and they would keep our passports, and that is exactly what happened.  We did ask if we could have our passports back, they said that it is standard practice to hold them until the process was complete, and that there was no alternative.

We have bought a house in Spain and wish to live there, so it's rather painful being stuck in the uk waiting.

Just completed the visa process from the U.S., and the consulate kept my passport until

my visa was ready for pick up (roughly 3 weeks).

@rdruby699

Hi, I would be interested to know which consulate you used, and where its located. 

Thanks Neil

I do hope ours comes back as quickly, although I think I forgot to mention, we have applied for a non-lucrative visa so that we can live in Spain, as we have bought a property their.

Hi @ neilfrost38,

I obtained my non-lucrative visa from the Los Angeles (California) Spanish consulate.

It's my understanding that it is common practice for any of the consulates

to keep your passport until a determination is made.

@neilfrost38

I am considering this process too, via London consulate.

Does everything submitted for application need to be translated to Spanish?

Would it be ok to ask how much you paid for full health insurance, healthy insurance which is accepted for your application?

Gracias senor.

Hi. If you haven't done it, may I suggest, the starting point is to get the check list,  you can download from the Spanish consulate.  The price of health insurance depends on what you include. We got ours from ASSSA but be aware of the 12 month rule where they want the insurance to run for 12 months when you get to Spain which means for us taking out a longer policy. We got our medical certificate in Spain so it wasn't translated. It took us quite a while to pull everything together with the legalisations and translations

Good luck