Types of Arraigo in Spain: The Five Current Routes and Which One Fits Your Situation

A good part of the information circulating about arraigo is out of date. The Immigration Regulations in force since May 20, 2025 reorganized this route completely: there are five types of arraigo today, labor arraigo ceased to be a standalone route, and the required period of presence dropped from three years to two.

There’s one change worth being clear about from the start, because it causes many avoidable denials: social arraigo is no longer based on an employment contract. Anyone with a job offer has to go through socio-labor arraigo. Anyone who can prove financial means and integration goes through the social one. They’re separate routes and they can’t be redirected halfway through the file.

In this guide you have the requirements for each of the five categories, how the application is filed, what it costs, how long it takes to be resolved, and what happens after you get the first card.

What Arraigo Is and What Every Category Requires

Arraigo is a temporary residence authorization for exceptional circumstances that allows you to regularize your situation without leaving Spain and without applying for a visa, based on the ties the person has already built in the country. It’s governed by Title VII of Royal Decree 1155/2024, implementing Organic Law 4/2000.

These requirements are common to all the types:

• Two years of continued presence in Spain, with absences that don’t exceed 90 calendar days. Family arraigo is the exception and requires no minimum period.
• No relevant criminal record in Spain or in the countries where you have lived in recent years.
• No other authorization in force and no other arraigo file in process.
• All of them allow you to work as an employee and as a self-employed worker in any sector and anywhere in the country, with an hourly limit in the socio-educational one.
• After the grant you have one month to apply for the Foreigner Identity Card.

Presence is what decides the most files. The Immigration Office assesses the documentary trail as a whole, not a single piece of paper: historical municipal registration, health card, school and course enrollments, rental agreements, invoices, bank statements, and any dated record that places the person in the country month by month. Municipal registration is the centerpiece of that set, and we explain how to obtain it and why it matters so much in this guide on municipal registration in Spain.

A simple example to place the dates: if your first municipal registration is from March and you haven’t been outside Spain for more than 90 days, your window to apply opens in March two years later. Any long interruption in that period restarts the count and has to be documented properly.

The Five Types of Arraigo at a Glance

Type	Presence	Distinguishing requirement	Validity
Social.	2 years.	Sufficient financial means plus family ties with legal residents or an integration report.	1 year.
Socio-labor.	2 years.	A contract or contracts of at least 20 hours a week with a proportional minimum wage.	1 year.
Socio-educational.	2 years.	Enrollment in formal or job-oriented training, with an integration report.	1 year.
Second chance.	2 years.	Having held an authorization in the previous two years and having been unable to renew it.	1 year.
Family.	Not required.	Being the parent or guardian of a minor who is a national of the EU, the EEA, or Switzerland, or the caregiver of a person with a disability of those nationalities.	5 years.

Social Arraigo

It’s still the best-known route, although today it works differently. It rests on two requirements that go together. The first is proving integration, and there are two ways to do it: through family ties with a spouse, registered partner, or first-degree ascendants or descendants who reside legally in Spain, or through the social integration report issued by the autonomous community. The second is proving sufficient financial means, referenced to the IPREM, with a base threshold for the applicant that increases if there are dependents.

The employment contract is no longer the backbone of this category. Since the IPREM percentages and their increases are set out in the applicable instructions and updated every year, check the figure in force before preparing the file and don’t take it as valid just because you read it in an old guide.

Socio-Labor Arraigo

It replaces the former labor arraigo, which required proving a past irregular employment relationship through a court ruling or a Labor Inspectorate report. That was hard evidence to obtain and very few people cleared it. The current category asks for something different: one or more employment contracts adding up to at least 20 hours a week, with pay no lower than the minimum wage in proportion to the working hours. It requires no integration report.

The 20 hours are counted in the aggregate, and that detail changes many cases. A single 18-hour contract falls short. Two contracts of 12 and 10 hours with different employers add up to 22 and do work. Another recent improvement, introduced by the April reform of the regulations: you can work from the moment the start of processing is reported, without waiting for the decision, which prevents the company from withdrawing the offer during the wait.

Socio-Educational Arraigo

This is the route for someone who has no contract but can commit to a course of study. You have to be enrolled in valid training: vocational training programs, professional certificates, adult secondary education, or recognized job-oriented training. It requires a social integration report and allows you to work as an employee up to 30 hours a week, so that the job doesn’t get in the way of the course.

It replaced the former arraigo through training, and those who held that authorization were able to modify or extend it under the transitional rules laid down for the change of regime.

Second-Chance Arraigo

This is the newest figure and the least known. It’s designed for anyone who held a valid residence authorization in the previous two years and couldn’t renew it for reasons beyond their control: they lost their job, didn’t reach the required contributions, or missed the deadline because of a documentary problem.

Previously, this profile fell into irregular status and had to wait years to re-enter the system through social arraigo. Now it has a door of its own, with no integration report and no need for an employment contract. If you’ve lost a card in the last two years, start by checking whether you fit here before looking at any other category.

Family Arraigo

It’s the only one that requires no prior presence and the only one that grants five years of authorization, but also the one that has been restricted the most. Today it’s aimed at parents or guardians of minors who are nationals of a European Union State, the European Economic Area, or Switzerland, and at those who care for people with disabilities of those nationalities.

Family members of Spanish citizens no longer regularize through this route: they have their own, more favorable regime. The April reform added a relevant improvement, which is that adult children and first-degree ascendants can file their application from within Spain when both parties are on Spanish soil. That circuit is detailed in the guide to the residence card for family members in Spain.

What No Longer Exists and Is Still Being Published

• Labor arraigo as a route based on proving past irregular work. Its place is taken by the socio-labor one.
• The three years of presence. It’s now two, one of the highest-impact changes of the new Regulations, which we review along with the rest of the new rules in the new residency rules in Spain.
• The employment contract as a requirement of social arraigo. It appears in dozens of articles and remains the origin of many badly framed files.
• Family arraigo for parents of Spanish minors as a general route.

How to Apply for Arraigo, Step by Step

1. Choose the category by analyzing what you can actually prove: presence, means, a contract, enrollment, or a family tie. This decision conditions everything else.
2. Request the social integration report from your autonomous community if your route requires it. It’s issued within one month and, if it doesn’t arrive in time, you can prove the same points through other forms of evidence.
3. Gather the documentation: complete passport, proof of continued presence, criminal record certificates from the country or countries of previous residence, duly legalized and translated, and the specific documentation for your category.
4. File form EX-10 with the competent Immigration Office, usually electronically.
5. Pay the fee with form 790 code 052 within ten business days of the file being admitted for processing. Without proof of payment the file doesn’t move forward.
6. Respond to any request for further documentation within the stated deadline. It’s the most frequent cause of shelving.
7. Apply for the TIE within one month of being notified of the grant, with an appointment at the police station and fingerprinting.

What Arraigo Costs and How Long It Takes

The processing fee is 38.28 euros, corresponding to heading 2.3.1 of form 790 code 052, which covers the five arraigo categories and is always paid by the foreign national. To that amount you have to add the TIE issuance fee, paid separately with form 790 code 012. The amounts are updated by ministerial order, so it’s worth confirming them on the electronic office before paying and downloading the payment slip right there, as indicated by the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration.

The rest of the budget isn’t in the fees, but in the documentation: criminal record certificates from the country of origin with their legalization or apostille, sworn translations when the documents aren’t in Spanish, and professional fees where applicable.

The resolution period is three months from the moment the application enters the register of the competent body. If that period passes with no notification, the application is understood to be dismissed by negative administrative silence, which opens the way to an appeal. In practice many offices exceed that period, so it’s worth being clear from the start about what to do if month three arrives with no answer, instead of waiting indefinitely.

The Extraordinary Regularization Window Is Now Closed

This point deserves clarity, because many pages are still announcing it as if it were open. Royal Decree 316/2026 created an extraordinary and temporary arraigo route for people who were in Spain before January 1, 2026, with two scenarios: one for applicants for international protection and another based on employment or family ties or a situation of vulnerability. The window closed on June 30, 2026 and could not be extended.

Two things from that rule remain alive. The files submitted within the deadline, which are still being processed with a three-month resolution period and negative silence, so anyone who hasn’t received an answer should consider an appeal. And the permanent amendments it introduced into the Regulations, which do affect anyone applying today: the authorization to work from the start of processing in socio-labor arraigo, the one-month deadline for the social integration report, the relaxation of extensions on grounds of illness or disability, and the option for certain family members of Spanish nationals to apply from within Spain. The full context is in our analysis of the new immigration regularization law.

If you didn’t make it in time, the five ordinary routes remain open and with more accessible requirements than two years ago.

What Happens After Arraigo

• The modification. Before the initial year expires, the usual step is to change the arraigo authorization for an ordinary residence and work permit. The procedure is explained in the guide to immigration status modification in Spain.
• The renewals. The current Regulations extended the renewals of temporary authorizations to four years, which spaces out the paperwork considerably. You have the requirements and deadlines for renewing in this guide on renewing your residence card.
• Long-term residency after five years of legal and continued residency, which stabilizes your situation and removes the need to prove means at each renewal.
• Spanish citizenship, for which time held under an arraigo authorization counts as legal residency, with the period corresponding to your profile: two years for Ibero-American nationals and other groups, ten as a general rule. The details are in the requirements for Spanish citizenship.

Choosing the right category is the decision that most conditions the outcome of the file, because each one requires a different set of evidence and they can’t be redirected along the way: a 15-hour-a-week contract doesn’t sustain a socio-labor arraigo, and an integration report doesn’t replace financial means in a social one. As immigration lawyers in Spain, at ILLAY Legal we first study what each person can actually prove and then prepare the file accordingly: which category fits, what evidence of presence genuinely exists, what documentation should be reinforced, and in what order to submit it. Our immigration in Spain service covers the complete process fully online, from the initial assessment to the TIE and the renewals. Tell us how long you’ve been in Spain and what your employment and family situation is, and we’ll tell you which arraigo applies to you and what you need to put together.

Frequently Asked Questions About Types of Arraigo in Spain