Practice
Invest in Spain
Buying a company, a building or a stake in Spain is rarely difficult in itself. What catches foreign buyers out is what sits underneath: who really owns the asset, what it owes, which authorisation the purchase needs, and how the price will be taxed on the way in and on the way out.
What we handle
- Acquiring a Spanish company — share purchase or asset purchase, legal due diligence, SPA, warranties and escrow, and the shareholder arrangements that follow.
- Real estate and hotel investment — title and registry checks, urban-planning and licence status, tenancies, purchase structure, and transfer taxation.
- Foreign-investment authorisation — whether your acquisition falls inside Spain’s prior-authorisation regime for non-EU investors, and how to file if it does.
- Joint ventures with Spanish partners — governance, deadlock, exit, and what a minority position is actually worth under Spanish company law.
- Holding structures — how the asset should be held for tax, succession and future sale, including the Spanish tax cost of getting it wrong.
The authorisation question, first
Since 2020 Spain screens certain foreign investments before they can complete. The regime sits in article 7 bis of Act 19/2003 and its implementing rules, and it bites where a non-EU or non-EFTA investor takes control or a significant stake in a company operating in a strategic sector — energy, critical infrastructure, dual-use technology, communications, and others.
Getting this wrong is expensive: an acquisition made without a required authorisation is void and exposes the parties to penalties. It is the first thing to check, not the last.
How we price it
Fixed fees where the scope can be fixed, hourly where it cannot. Every engagement starts with a written scope and an estimate; you approve the next stage before it is billed. Figures below exclude VAT and third-party costs (notary, registry, translation, taxes).
| Engagement | Scope | Fee |
|---|---|---|
| Scoping call | What Spanish law requires for what you are planning, and what the next step costs | No charge |
| Investment assessment | Written legal review of one target: title or shareholding, liabilities, authorisations, tax exposure | From €1,800 |
| Real estate acquisition | Due diligence, contract, deposit agreement, completion at notary, post-completion filings | From €3,500 |
| Company acquisition | Due diligence, structure, SPA and ancillary documents, completion | From €7,500 |
| Foreign-investment filing | Analysis and, where required, preparation and filing of the authorisation request | From €2,500 |
Fees are indicative and depend on the size and complexity of the transaction. No outcome is promised or implied; the figures above describe work, not results.
Submit your project — tell us what you are looking at and roughly what it is worth.