You hold other people up every day. Practising in Spain should not be what overwhelms you.

On its own, no — and this is the single most important thing on this page. In Spain the regulated healthcare profession is Psicólogo General Sanitario, not the psychology degree. Homologating the degree recognises your academic qualification, but practising health psychology requires the regulated qualification, which is reached through the PGS master’s or, for the clinical specialty, through the PIR. People routinely discover this after homologating, which is exactly the wrong moment. We tell you at the first conversation which of those applies to you.

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, and how any requerimientos are answered. But in psychology the timeline that matters is usually the route, not the homologation: choosing the wrong one costs years that no amount of good paperwork buys back.

Two different doors to health practice. The PIR is the national resident examination leading to the clinical psychology specialty, competitive and with a limited number of places. The Máster en Psicología General Sanitaria is a university route to the general health qualification. Which fits you depends on your training, your goals and how long you can wait — and it is a decision worth taking with the file in front of you rather than from a forum thread.

Not to start. The procedure is online and can be filed from your home country. Legal residence becomes necessary later, to register and practise — and if your route involves a master’s or the PIR, physical presence becomes necessary sooner than most people plan for. That is why the immigration side and the academic side are worth planning together.

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 — with the psychology caveat above sitting on top of all of it.

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.