Tell us about your case
Six offices in Spain
More than 40 lawyers
All areas of law
In person or remote
Barcelona is home to very different profiles: students from all over the world who finish their studies and want to stay, couples with a citizen of the European Union, workers who have lived in the city for years without papers, and professionals who arrive with a job offer. Each of them needs a different authorisation, with its own requirements, deadlines and documents. Choosing the wrong route is a common cause of refusal.
R. Sánchez Abogados has an office on Rambla de Catalunya and more than 40 lawyers in six cities. Our immigration team handles every kind of file and does more than process paperwork: we give legal advice and deal with you directly. We analyse your case, explain which strategy makes the most sense and what risks it carries, prepare the file, submit it online and follow it until a decision is issued. The aim is for your application to arrive complete and well argued. If the answer is negative, we appeal. We tell you clearly what we can do and what we cannot.
If you have other matters pending besides your immigration procedure, the same law firm has lawyers in Barcelona for the other areas of law.
These are the immigration procedures and residence permits we handle most often from our Barcelona office, for people living in the city and the rest of the province. If your case is different, get in touch anyway.
For people who have lived in Spain for at least two years without authorisation and who have a work contract, training or family ties. These are the social roots (arraigo social), employment roots (arraigo sociolaboral) and training roots (arraigo socioformativo) residence permits. We review how to prove your time in Spain and which type fits your situation.
The family roots permit (arraigo familiar) is for people who have a minor or a person with a disability in their care, citizens of another EU member state. The second chance roots permit (arraigo de segunda oportunidad) is for people who held residence and lost it by not renewing it.
Initial authorisations for employed or self-employed work, including when a company in Barcelona hires you, renewals and long-term residence. Also the move from student status to residence and work.
Stays for study or research, extensions, a work permit compatible with your studies, and the change to residence and work or to a job-search permit when you finish.
The EU family member residence card (tarjeta comunitaria) for the spouse or registered partner of a citizen of the European Union, and residence for family members of a Spanish citizen.
Applying for authorisation to bring over your spouse or partner, your children and your parents or grandparents, and preparing the visa at the consulate.
Spanish citizenship (also called Spanish nationality) by residence and by option, preparation for the required exams, the full file, and appeals if the decision is delayed or refused.
Non-lucrative residence, the authorisation for highly qualified professionals and international remote work (the digital nomad visa).
Legal assistance with applications for international protection, defence against expulsion orders and immigration penalty proceedings.
Do you need an immigration lawyer in Barcelona?
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Catalonia has particularities that do not exist in other autonomous communities. These are the authorities we work with:
The Immigration Regulations approved by Royal Decree 1155/2024 have been in force since 20 May 2025. They cut the required time in Spain for roots permits to two years and organised them into five types: employment, training, social, family and second chance. The social roots permit relies on family ties or an integration report. The family roots permit is for people who have a minor or a person with a disability in their care, citizens of another EU member state. Family members of Spanish citizens follow a separate authorisation of their own. For all of them you must prove your time in Spain with reliable documents (municipal register or padrón, medical history, receipts, course enrolment) and have no criminal record.
The spouse or registered partner of a citizen of the European Union living in Spain can apply for the EU family member residence card, which becomes permanent after five years. In Catalonia, stable partnerships are regulated by the Catalan Civil Code and can be formalised, among other routes, in a public deed. You need to check which document the Immigration Office asks for to prove the relationship. If the relationship ends and there are children or shared property, our family lawyers in Barcelona take care of that part.
A criminal record can block a roots permit or a renewal and weigh on the assessment of the good civic conduct required for citizenship. Before filing, it is worth checking whether the record is still active or can already be cancelled, because once cancelled it should not be taken into account. If you have lived in other countries, we also review the certificates from there, because the Immigration Office takes them into account.
The general rule is 10 years of legal and continuous residence in Spain. It is 2 years for nationals of Ibero-American countries, Andorra, the Philippines, Equatorial Guinea and Portugal and for Sephardic Jews, and 1 year, among other cases, for someone who has been married for a year to a Spanish citizen and is not separated. The application is submitted online to the Ministry of Justice, together with the Instituto Cervantes exams (DELE A2 and CCSE, unless exempt). If a year passes without an answer, the application is deemed refused and you can appeal.
Under the current Regulations, a study stay lets you work up to 30 hours a week, as long as the work is compatible with your studies. When you finish, you can apply to change to a residence and work authorisation if you have a job offer or self-employed activity, or to a residence permit to look for work. You should prepare the change before your stay expires: if the date is missed, your options narrow considerably.
Almost every procedure requires a complete, valid passport, your municipal registration, a criminal record certificate and the documents that prove the specific requirement (contract, financial means, marriage certificate, enrolment, health insurance). Foreign certificates must be legalised or apostilled and, if they are not in Spanish, translated. An expired or unapostilled document is one of the most common causes of requests for further documents and of refusals.
For most residence authorisations the law sets a maximum of three months for a decision, although in practice it varies with the workload of the Barcelona Immigration Office. For renewals, no answer within the deadline is generally treated as approval. If your application is refused, you have one month to lodge an administrative appeal for reconsideration (recurso de reposición) and two months for a judicial appeal before the administrative courts (recurso contencioso-administrativo). If you are served with a fast-track expulsion procedure (procedimiento preferente), the deadline to submit your arguments is only 48 hours.
The sooner you tell us, the more room we have
Plenty of websites promise the top immigration lawyers in Barcelona. Before you hire anyone, check this:
To submit an application to the Immigration Office it is not compulsory. To appeal before an administrative court you do need a lawyer. In practice, preparing the file properly from the start avoids many refusals.
It depends on the procedure and the moment. The legal deadline for most authorisations is three months, and citizenship has a deadline of one year. If your file goes beyond those deadlines, we explain the options you have.
It depends on how long you have been in Spain and on your circumstances. With two years in Spain you can apply for one of the roots permits if you meet the other requirements. We study your case and tell you which route is most likely to succeed.
It varies a lot by procedure: a renewal is nothing like a judicial appeal or an expulsion. We give you a written proposal after studying your case and before we start.
Yes. The application is submitted online to the Ministry of Justice, wherever you live. If it is refused, the judicial appeal is lodged before the National High Court (Audiencia Nacional) and we handle that too.
It can, especially for roots permits and citizenship. Before filing anything we check whether your record is still active or can be cancelled, and how it affects your application.
Normally the residence card for family members of EU citizens, known as the tarjeta comunitaria. If your partner is Spanish, the procedure is residence for family members of a Spanish citizen. We help you prove the relationship.
Yes. We act for clients from across the province of Barcelona and the rest of Catalonia, and the Barcelona Immigration Office is the one that processes most files in the province.
