You have spent years understanding patients who cannot talk. Practising in Spain should not leave you without a voice.
Homologación of your foreign veterinary degree to the Spanish Grado en Veterinaria, before the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades. Veterinary medicine is a regulated profession: ANECA assesses the file against Orden ECI/333/2008, and that is where everything is decided. We prepare the file, anticipate any complementary training requirements, and stay with you to registration.
Spain does not only need clinical vets. It needs them in animal health, in abattoirs and in food safety. The only thing in the way is a properly assembled file.
The Ministry does not count the caesareans you did at three in the morning. It assesses your file. And one error sets it back months.
ANECA compares your training with the Spanish Grado en Veterinaria and looks for very specific things: at least 300 ECTS credits or 3,000 contact hours, five years of study, and the competences set out in Orden ECI/333/2008. If your transcript does not evidence those hours — or the degree is badly apostilled, or the translation was not done by a sworn translator recognised by the Foreign Ministry — the file does not fall over because of what you know: it falls over because of what you have not demonstrated. And here the clock works against you in a particular way: the legal period for a decision is six months, and silence is negative. If nobody answers, your application is deemed refused.
We do not file loose documents. We build a file that leaves ANECA no reason to ask you for more.
You are a vet, and here the paperwork is keeping you out of the practice.
- You have been waiting over a year and cannot tell whether the file is stalled or simply buried.
- Six months have passed, nobody has replied, and you do not know whether that harms you.
- Your transcript talks about credits and your assessor wants contact hours.
- You do not know whether your training covers animal health and food safety the way Spain expects.
- You have been handed complementary training requirements and do not know which option suits you.
- You did homologate, and you still cannot work, because nobody told you registration was the next step.
And almost all of this is decided before you press “submit” — if somebody reviews the file properly first.
From your degree to the practice: the real stages
Auditing the file
Before touching the system: degree, transcript, syllabus, contact hours, apostilles and translations. This is where the case is won or lost.
Application and assessment
Filed online with the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades. ANECA assesses your training against Orden ECI/333/2008. Legal period: 6 months, with negative silence. Real period today: 9 to 24 months.
Requerimientos or training requirements
If gaps are found they may ask for further documents or impose complementary training: placements, an aptitude test, a project or courses. Answered with a strategy, not in a hurry.
Credential and registration
With the credential you register with the Colegio Oficial de Veterinarios of your province. Without registration there is no practice, however good the credential.
What almost nobody explains about homologating a veterinary degree
This is what separates a file that goes through from one that comes back with requerimientos, with complementary training requirements, or refused outright by silence.
Worth knowing
- Why ANECA looks at credits and contact hours before it looks at your marks.
- Why animal health and food safety weigh as much in the assessment as clinical work.
- What it means that veterinary medicine is a regulated profession here.
What you gain
- A file aligned with Orden ECI/333/2008, competence by competence.
- A lower chance of being handed complementary training requirements.
- The six-month deadline actively monitored, so silence never answers for you.
Mistakes that delay your case
- Letting the six months run without realising that silence here is negative.
- Translating without a sworn translator recognised by the Foreign Ministry.
- Confusing a Hague Apostille with consular legalisation.
- Evidencing training with a certificate that states credits but never hours.
What you need to know
- ANECA’s reference for veterinary medicine: 300 ECTS or 3,000 contact hours, and five years of study.
- Whether your nationality means you need to evidence Spanish.
- That homologating is not practising: the veterinary council comes after.
Requirements for veterinary homologation in 2026
The file is submitted online to the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades, within the framework of RD 889/2022. These are the pillars.
Legalised veterinary degree
The original, apostilled under the Hague Convention or legalised through consular channels if your country is not a signatory. Scanned in the format, quality and file size the portal accepts.
Transcript and contact hours
Subjects, hours and content. ANECA works from a reference of at least 300 ECTS credits or 3,000 contact hours and five years of study: if your certificate does not demonstrate that, somebody has to make it demonstrate it.
Sworn translation
Every document not in Spanish needs translating by a traductor jurado recognised by the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Documents from Spanish-speaking countries do not.
Identity, fee and language
A valid passport, payment of the official fee and, for nationals of countries where Spanish is not an official language, the corresponding Spanish language certificate.
We audit your file, align it with Orden ECI/333/2008, and submit it without gaps.
First we read your syllabus the way ANECA is going to read it: looking for where the credits, the contact hours or the competences of Orden ECI/333/2008 do not add up. We tell you what is missing, what needs an apostille, what needs translating, and in what order. If a requerimiento has already arrived, or a decision imposing complementary training, or a refusal — express or by silence — we take the case over from wherever it is.
And we watch the six-month deadline for you, which in this procedure is not an administrative detail: it is the difference between a live application and one that was refused without anybody telling you.
We are not the administration and we do not act on its behalf: we are the ones who prepare your case so the administration has nowhere to stop it.
The questions people ask before they start
How long does veterinary homologation take?
The legal period for a decision is six months. In practice files currently move in 9 to 24 months, depending on the country of origin, the university, how complete the file is, and whether requerimientos appear along the way. A well-built file tends to the lower end; one with gaps, to the upper.
Six months have passed with no answer. What does that mean?
That legally your application is deemed refused: in this procedure administrative silence is negative. It is not a neutral wait, it is a presumed rejection, and the clock for reacting through an appeal is already running even though no letter has arrived. This is why the deadline is worth monitoring rather than trusting that "they will call". If you are in that position, the first step is to establish the real state of the file before deciding what to move.
What are complementary training requirements?
When the assessment finds gaps between your training and what Spain requires for the Grado en Veterinaria, the decision does not have to be a clean yes or no: it can recognise the homologation conditional on your completing complementary training — placements, an aptitude test, a project or courses. Choosing between the options offered is not trivial, and some decisions of this kind are worth arguing rather than simply accepting.
Does my clinical experience count if my degree was more clinically focused?
The assessment is of your degree, not your career, and the Spanish qualification covers more than clinical work: animal health, public health and food safety are part of it. That is why a strongly clinical training sometimes attracts complementary requirements in the areas it covered lightly. Knowing that in advance lets us evidence what you did cover, in the format the assessor can read, rather than discovering the gap in a resolution.
I have the homologation. Can I start working?
Not yet. The credential recognises your degree, but veterinary medicine is a regulated profession and practising requires registration with the Colegio Oficial de Veterinarios of your province. In parallel you need a residence and work status that lets you be here lawfully: two separate tracks worth synchronising, so you do not end up with the credential in hand and the permit half done.
What does it cost to homologate a veterinary degree?
The cost has three legs: 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, because a clean file does not cost the same as one carrying a requerimiento, an earlier refusal, or complementary training requirements that need arguing. We study your case and give you a fixed quotation before starting. Official amounts are set by the rules in force.
Not a doctor? We homologate all twelve regulated healthcare professions.
Each has its own ministerial order, its own professional body and its own traps. Pick yours and we will tell you how yours actually works, not “homologation” in the abstract.
Medicine
Medical degree homologation, plus work permit, colegiación and the MIR.
See detailsNursing
Nursing degree homologation, registration, and access to the EIR.
See detailsDentistry
Dental degree homologation and the registration you need to practise.
See detailsPhysiotherapy
Physiotherapy degree homologation and professional registration.
See detailsPsychology
Careful: the degree itself is not homologated. What is, is the Psicólogo General Sanitario.
See detailsPharmacy
Five years and 3,000 hours of clinical training: the two numbers ANECA looks at.
See detailsVeterinary medicine
Clinical work, yes. But also animal health and food safety.
You are hereSpeech and language therapy
If your country called it fonoaudiología, this is it: the same profession.
See detailsOptics and optometry
An optometrist is not an ophthalmologist: two different homologations.
See detailsPodiatry
In Spain this is a university healthcare profession, not a technical trade.
See detailsOccupational therapy
Four years and 1,000 placement hours. Plenty of demand, little competition.
See detailsNutrition and dietetics
Only the university degree is homologated. Nutrition courses are not.
See detailsEvery month of delay is a month not treating those who cannot ask for it.
We study your file, put it in order, submit it without gaps, watch the six-month deadline, and stay with you through to registration.
+34 667 77 02 19·+34 667 78 20 85
infoglobalextranjeria@gmail.com
Camino de Coín 14, 29640 Fuengirola (Málaga)
P.S. like the keeper in the story, you can be right for thirty years and still appear on nobody’s record. The difference between practising this year and practising in three is not your clinical eye — you already have that. It is filing the way Spain requires, and not letting silence answer on your behalf. That is the part we do.
Content reviewed by a lawyer
Reviewed by Alberto García López
Immigration lawyer · bar number 11.441 · ICA Málaga
We review every page against the rules currently in force. This information does not replace an individual assessment of your case.
The content of this page is for information only and does not constitute individual legal advice. Every immigration case requires its own assessment.
Globalium is an independent law firm: we are not a public administration and we are not affiliated with one. Homologation, equivalence and the recognition of qualifications are granted exclusively by the competent Ministry, and you may apply to it directly yourself. Our fees pay for legal advice and representation, and are separate from official fees and public charges.