You have spent years looking after other people. Practising in Spain should not cost you your own health.

The current range runs from roughly 9 to 24 months, depending on the country that issued the degree, the university, how complete the file is — placement hours above all — and how any requerimientos are answered. A well-prepared file tends towards the lower end of that range; one with errors tends towards the upper end, or beyond it.

Not to start. The procedure is online and can be filed from your home country, so you do not need to be in Spain to begin. Legal residence becomes necessary later, when it is time to register with the nursing council and actually work — which is why the two are worth planning together rather than one after the other.

Yes. The credencial de homologación qualifies you to sit the EIR, the national examination for resident nurse training, which has a quota for professionals from outside the EU. Nationals of countries where Spanish is not an official language must also hold a Spanish C1 certificate (DELE or SIELE). The practical difficulty is rarely eligibility — it is arriving in time for the call, which is why the timing of the file matters as much as its content.

No, and this is where expectations most often go wrong. Homologation recognises your qualification as equivalent to the Spanish Grado en Enfermería. Becoming a midwife, or a specialist nurse in mental health, paediatrics or geriatrics, is a separate recognition and in many cases requires completing the EIR in Spain. A midwife of twenty years standing elsewhere can find herself able to work as a general nurse here while the specialty still has to be earned through the Spanish system.

It depends on your country. In Spain, homologación means declaring your foreign degree equivalent to the Spanish one; convalidación is the partial recognition of individual subjects, not of the whole degree. What Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Argentina or Mexico call convalidación, revalidación or reválida corresponds, for the purpose of practising here, to homologación. If your aim is to work as a nurse in Spain, homologation of the degree is the procedure you need.

In essence: the nursing degree apostilled, or legalised through consular channels; the academic transcript with subjects and the evidence of clinical placement hours; a sworn translation of anything not in Spanish; a valid passport; and, for countries where Spanish is not an official language, a Spanish C1 certificate. We check them one by one before filing — and in nursing files the placement hours are almost always the piece that needs work.

The cost combines the official Ministry fee, the expense of apostilles or legalisation and sworn translation, and our fees for preparing and defending the file. There is no single tariff: it depends on the country of origin, the state of your documentation, and whether you are carrying a requerimiento or an earlier refusal. Once we have studied your case we give you a fixed quotation. Official amounts are set by the rules in force at the time of filing.