Spanish passport holders have travelled visa-free to the United States since 1991, provided an ESTA is approved first. Here is how it works with two surnames, an ñ, and a passport that lasts five or ten years depending on your age.
90 days
Maximum stay per visit
2 years
ESTA validity
Multiple
Entries permitted
72 hours
Apply at least this far ahead
100% online
No embassy visit
Overview
The United States is the long-haul trip Spaniards take most readily: New York over the December puente, Florida's parks with the children in August, a fly-drive through California, or a visit to relatives in Miami, where Spanish is heard as often as English.
Spain was designated into the Visa Waiver Program in 1991, so for more than three decades a Spanish passport has been enough for a short stay without a consular visa. What it has not been enough for, on its own, is boarding: Spanish citizens travelling visa-free must hold an approved ESTA, the electronic authorisation run by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, before they check in.
This page looks at the ESTA from a Spanish point of view: how two surnames and an ñ should be entered, why the under-30 passport term matters, what a holiday in Cuba does to your eligibility, and how far ahead of Semana Santa or the summer exodus you should apply.
At a glance
Eligibility
Yes. A Spanish citizen flying to the United States for a holiday, a business meeting, a medical appointment or a connection to another country needs an ESTA rather than a visa, provided the stay is 90 days or less. Cruise arrivals and road crossings from Canada or Mexico fall under the same requirement.
It is the pasaporte that counts, not the DNI. The national identity card that takes Spaniards across the European Union has no role on a transatlantic trip, and the authorisation is tied to the passport number alone. Each member of the family needs their own, which includes the baby travelling on a parent's lap to meet the grandparents in Florida.
Cuba is where Spanish applicants most often lose eligibility. The island is a long-standing favourite for Spanish holidaymakers and business travellers, yet anyone who has been there on or after 12 January 2021 falls outside the Visa Waiver Program and must apply for a visitor visa instead. So must Spaniards who also hold Cuban nationality.
An ESTA is the wrong document for some plans. A semester at an American university for credit, a paid job, or reporting for a Spanish newspaper or broadcaster all require a visa, and anyone previously refused a US visa or turned back at the border should expect to be directed to the B-1/B-2 route at the embassy in Madrid.
Stay & validity
Once granted, the authorisation generally runs for two years and covers as many trips as you like, each of up to 90 days. For a Spaniard who goes to New York one winter and Orlando the following summer, one application does for both, as long as the passport is the same.
The passport is the catch. Spain issues ten-year passports only to citizens aged 30 and over; those under 30 receive five years, and children under five just two. An ESTA dies with the passport it is tied to, so a student whose passport runs out next spring will get an authorisation that lasts months rather than two years.
The 90 days are counted strictly. A side trip to Cancún, Toronto or the Bahamas in the middle of an American holiday does not pause the clock, and the stay cannot be lengthened once you are there. If you replace a lost or stolen passport, or anything in your answers to the eligibility questions changes, a fresh ESTA is needed before the next flight.
Pricing
Live fees for Spanish passport holders, shown all-in — the US government charge and our service fee together, with nothing added later.
Your nationality is pre-selected as Spain
Requirements
Everything Spanish passport holders need before starting an application. The first five items apply to every applicant; the rest are specific to your nationality.
A biometric e-passport from a Visa Waiver Program country, carrying the chip symbol on its cover
A valid email address, which is where the decision is sent and which you should keep accessible while travelling
A credit or debit card to pay the government ESTA charge and our service fee together
Your home address, phone number and an emergency contact
Employer details and, if you have them, the address of where you are staying in the United States
Simple process
Four steps, entirely online, with our team checking every field before anything reaches U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Enter your passport details exactly as printed, your contact and employment information, and answer the eligibility questions. Most applicants finish in about fifteen minutes.
Our team checks your passport number, name spelling, dates and declarations against CBP requirements before anything is submitted.
Your application goes to U.S. Customs and Border Protection with the government charge paid, and we track its status until a decision is issued.
There is nothing to stick in your passport. The authorisation is held electronically against your passport number, and the airline verifies it when you check in.
CBP advises applying at least 72 hours before departure, and most Spanish applications are answered well inside that. A minority are held as pending while further checks run, which is why the advice exists.
Spanish booking habits make the margin worth respecting. Long weekends are seized late, and a puente trip to New York booked on a Monday for the Thursday leaves no room if the status comes back pending. Apply when you buy the flights, not when you start packing.
For the big seasonal departures the sensible moment is earlier still: before Semana Santa, before the August rush out of Madrid and Barcelona, and ahead of the Constitución and Inmaculada bridge in early December.
On arrival
An approved ESTA gets you on the plane. This is what happens once you land, and how to make the arrival as quick as possible.
Visa Waiver travellers are seen by U.S. Customs and Border Protection at the first American airport they land at, even when connecting onward. The officer takes a photograph and, for most adults, fingerprints.
There is no paper form to fill in on the aircraft. Your arrival record, the I-94, is created digitally and shows the date by which you must leave. You can look it up online afterwards.
Expect to be asked where you are staying, for how long and what you do for a living. A return ticket and the address of your first night are usually all it takes.
Queues at the busiest gateways can run past an hour at peak arrival times. If you are connecting to a domestic flight, leave a generous margin, since you also reclaim and recheck your bags.
Getting there
Spain has one of the best nonstop networks to the United States in southern Europe. Iberia's Madrid hub carries the bulk of it, American, Delta and United fly from both Madrid and Barcelona, and Level runs low-cost long-haul from Barcelona. Travellers from Bilbao, Seville, Valencia or the Canaries usually connect in Madrid.
Best time to go
The Spanish calendar and the American one collide in August. That is when Spain goes on holiday, and it is also the last month of the US school summer, the hottest stretch in Florida and the busiest in the national parks.
Semana Santa is a better fit than many expect. When it falls in April it lands after American spring break, so the cities are pleasant and the theme parks are between peaks.
The December puente has become a fixture for New York: Christmas lights, shopping and a cold that Madrid rarely matches. It comes a week or two after Thanksgiving, so the worst of the American holiday crowds has passed. Anyone heading for Miami or the Gulf Coast between June and November should keep hurricane season in mind and book flexible fares.
Jet lag runs in Spain's favour on the way out. The mainland is six hours ahead of the East Coast and nine ahead of California. Midday departures from Barajas land in the afternoon, when immigration halls at JFK and Miami are at their fullest, so leave a long gap before any onward domestic flight.
Avoid these
Refusals are rare, and almost always technical rather than substantive. These are the problems that come up most often on applications from Spain — we check for every one of them before submitting.
Spanish passports print both apellidos, and the application has to carry both in the family-name field. Applicants who shorten García Fernández to García, as they do on loyalty cards and hotel bookings, create a record that does not match the passport the airline scans.
The photo page of a Spanish passport shows the holder's DNI number as well as the passport number, and the two are easy to confuse on a small screen. Only the passport number links the ESTA to the document, so an application built on the DNI digits cannot be found at check-in.
Havana and Varadero have been sold to Spaniards for decades, and a week there since 12 January 2021 removes Visa Waiver eligibility altogether. Answering no to the travel question because it was only a beach trip is a false declaration.
Under-30s often discover at the last minute that their passport lapses within months. The ESTA will expire with it, and the renewed passport needs a new application.
Travel to a restricted country
Anyone who has been in Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Sudan, Syria, Libya, Somalia or Yemen on or after 1 March 2011, or in Cuba on or after 12 January 2021, is generally not eligible for the Visa Waiver Program and needs a visa instead.
A previous visa refusal or overstay
An earlier refusal of a US visa, a denied entry or a past overstay must be declared. Each one commonly leads to an ESTA being refused and the traveller being directed to apply for a visa.
Passport details that do not match
A single wrong character in the passport number, or an expiry date typed in the wrong order, produces an authorisation the airline cannot find at check-in.
Conditions
These conditions are set under the Visa Waiver Program and do not vary by nationality. The 90-day limit and the passport-linking rule catch out a great many otherwise well-planned trips.
Your authorisation is held electronically against the passport number you enter. If you renew or replace that passport, change your name or change citizenship, the ESTA no longer applies and you need a new one.
Every person travelling under the Visa Waiver Program needs their own ESTA, including babies and children, each linked to that traveller's own e-passport.
An approved ESTA generally lasts two years from the date of authorisation, or until the passport it is linked to expires, whichever comes first.
Within its validity you can make repeated trips. Each stay can be up to 90 days, and time spent in Canada, Mexico or the nearby Caribbean islands during a trip counts towards those 90 days.
A Visa Waiver stay cannot be extended and cannot be converted into another immigration status from inside the United States. Anyone who needs longer must apply for a visa before travelling.
An ESTA lets you board a carrier bound for the United States. Admission is decided by a CBP officer at the port of entry, who can ask about your plans, your funds and your ties to home.
Consular services
The United States has its embassy on Calle de Serrano in Madrid and a consulate general in Barcelona. None of them handles ESTA applications, which are made entirely online. You would deal with them only if you need a visa, for example after time in Cuba or an earlier refusal.
FAQs
The questions Spanish passport holders ask most often about travelling to the United States.
No, Spanish citizens do not need a visa for visits of up to 90 days, but they do need an approved ESTA before boarding. Spain has belonged to the Visa Waiver Program since 1991, and the authorisation covers tourism, business, medical treatment and transit. Work, credit-bearing study and journalism still require a visa.
Put both apellidos in the family-name field, in the order and spelling shown on your passport's photo page. Leave out the hyphen unless the passport prints one, and enter compound given names such as Juan Carlos in the first-name field.
Follow the machine-readable lines at the bottom of the photo page. Spanish passports normally render ñ there as N and strip the accents, so Peña becomes PENA and Núñez becomes NUNEZ. Type what those lines show, not the printed form above.
Not if the visit was on or after 12 January 2021. Spanish travellers who have been in Cuba since that date are outside the Visa Waiver Program and need a B-1/B-2 visa, applied for through the American embassy in Madrid. Earlier trips do not have this effect.
No. Dual nationals who hold Cuban citizenship cannot travel under the Visa Waiver Program, even on a Spanish passport, and the same applies to those who are also nationals of Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Sudan or Syria. A visitor visa is the route for them.
Generally two years, or until the passport expires if that comes first. Because Spaniards under 30 hold five-year passports and under-fives two-year ones, younger travellers are the likeliest to see an ESTA cut short. A renewed passport always needs a new authorisation.
Aim for at least 72 hours before the flight and ideally the day you book. Most answers arrive quickly, but a pending status can take the full period, and a four-day bridge weekend has no slack for a postponed departure.
Yes. Spanish passengers connecting through Miami, Dallas or Houston to Mexico, Central America or the Caribbean pass through US immigration at the first American airport, so transit requires an ESTA just as a holiday does.
Your nationality is already set to Spain. Complete the form in about fifteen minutes, and our team will check every detail before it reaches CBP.
Other nationalities
Routes, passport rules and the practical details differ by country. Here are the guides for other Visa Waiver Program nationalities.
