Internships in Spain: the prácticas permit and who actually needs insurance
Most guidance treats an internship as a variety of student visa. The regulation itself says otherwise: RD 1155/2024 removed non-labour internships from the student title and points, by name, at a different law. That law allows two instruments — a training agreement or an employment contract — and they produce opposite insurance answers. One of them means you should not buy anything from us.
RD 1155/2024 sent internships to a different law — and names it
If you search for an "internship visa for Spain", most of what ranks will walk you through the student authorisation in Real Decreto 1155/2024. That was defensible under the old regulation. It is not what the current one says. The preamble to RD 1155/2024 states, in terms:
The figures of non-labour internships and research activities are removed from the student title, because both are regulated in Ley 14/2013. And in case a preamble is not enough, the operative text repeats it. Article 52.3 — inside the very article that defines the student stay authorisation — reads:
So the governing instrument for internships as such is Ley 14/2013, the entrepreneurs and internationalisation law, and within it the provision that matters is the disposición adicional decimoctava — "Autorización de residencia para prácticas", added in 2018 to transpose the EU students-and-researchers directive and last amended in 2023. We read the consolidated text at BOE on 24 August 2026; everything below comes from it.
The label is worth a second look: it is an authorisation of residencia, not an estancia por estudios. An intern under this provision is not on a student authorisation at all, which is why pages about student insurance rules — including most of this site — only partly apply to them.
Who qualifies, who applies, and for how long
The disposición adicional decimoctava is short enough to summarise faithfully. It opens with who it is for: foreigners who "hayan obtenido un título de educación superior en los dos años anteriores a la fecha de solicitud o que estén realizando estudios que conducen a la obtención de un título de educación superior en España o en el extranjero" — a higher-education degree obtained within the two years before the application, or current studies leading to one, in Spain or abroad. They may take part in an internship programme "mediante la firma de un convenio de prácticas o contrato de trabajo en prácticas" — through a training agreement or an employment internship contract.
One boundary sentence, because the two regimes are routinely confused: prácticas are not formación — if what you are actually enrolled on is one of the five exclusive actividades formativas cases of article 52.1.e), you are on the student title after all, and the vocational training page owns that regime.
What the text actually requires — and how it differs from the student rule
Among the requirements the application must evidence, apartado 4.d) is the insurance condition, and here it is in full:
That the foreigner will have, for the duration of the residence, sickness insurance and sufficient resources. Compare the student rule, RD 1155/2024 article 35(i), which asks for "un seguro de enfermedad, concertado con una entidad aseguradora autorizada para operar en España, con prestaciones similares a las concedidas por la cartera común básica de servicios asistenciales del Sistema Nacional de Salud, válido para la duración de la estancia prevista". The internship wording is markedly thinner: no authorised-in-Spain clause, no benchmark against the public system's basic portfolio, no express whole-stay validity formula — just sickness insurance, for the residence.
Thinner is not the same as looser in practice, because Ley 14/2013 also carries a general clause. Article 62.3, listing the general requirements for the residence visas and authorisations of the law's international-mobility section, includes at letter e):
A public insurance, or a private sickness policy with an insurer authorised to operate in Spain. The internship authorisation sits in an additional provision rather than in that section's own list of categories, and the text nowhere states which of the two formulations the deciding office applies to a prácticas file — we are flagging that as unresolved rather than pretending the law answers it. What can be said safely is this: cover that satisfies the fuller formulation — an insurer authorised in Spain, benefits comparable to the public portfolio, valid for the whole period — satisfies every reading. Choosing it is a practical risk-reduction choice: it removes the question before a caseworker can ask it. It is not an additional legal requirement, and we do not present it as one — the two provisions say what they say, and the law does not resolve the tension between them.
Notice, too, what article 62.3.e) puts first: un seguro público. Public insurance counts, expressly. That matters for the next section.
Contract or convenio — opposite answers to the insurance question
The disposición adicional allows the internship to rest on either of two instruments, and apartado 5 deals with the first: where the intern is bound to the host entity by a contrato de trabajo en prácticas, the national employment situation test is disapplied and the contract is subject to "la regulación propia del trabajo en prácticas" — the ordinary labour-law regime for internship contracts, whatever that regime calls the contract at the time.
An employment contract in Spain carries compulsory Social Security membership. The general Social Security law (Real Decreto Legislativo 8/2015, article 7.1) includes in the system, for contributory purposes, foreigners legally resident or present in Spain working in Spanish territory as "trabajadores por cuenta ajena… con independencia, en todos los casos, del grupo profesional del trabajador, de la forma y cuantía de la remuneración que perciba y de la naturaleza común o especial de su relación laboral" — employed workers, whatever the pay and whatever the special character of the employment relationship. An intern on an employment contract, once registered, is inside the public system.
We arrange private health insurance, so read the next sentence knowing what it costs us to write it. If your internship comes with an employment contract and you will be registered with Social Security, do not buy a private policy from us to satisfy the residence requirement — public cover is the thing article 62.3.e) names first. A private policy on top of that is a choice about comfort — private network, English-speaking consultations, shorter waits — never a compliance purchase, and nobody should sell it to you as one.
Two honest caveats belong next to that. First, the student title contains an express deeming clause — article 57.5, under which Social Security registration satisfies the student insurance requirement — and Ley 14/2013's internship provision contains no equivalent sentence; the reading above rests on article 62.3.e)'s own words, not on a provision written for prácticas. Second, what documentary proof of registration a given office asks for at application — when the alta itself follows the start of work — is not specified anywhere we have read, and we will not invent it. Ask the office handling the file, in writing, and keep the answer.
The convenio route is the mirror image. A convenio de prácticas is, by the provision's own list, a defined legal relationship that is not an employment contract — there is no alta, so there is no public cover arriving with the paperwork. A convenio-route intern has to evidence sickness insurance under apartado 4.d) the ordinary way: with a policy. That is the reader this page can actually help.
A placement inside your course needs no internship permit at all
If you are already in Spain on a student authorisation and the "internship" is part of your course, none of the above applies to you. RD 1155/2024 article 57.1 provides that no additional authorisation is needed for "prácticas curriculares" — placements forming part of the study plan the authorisation was granted for, carried out under a collaboration agreement between the host entity and the institution, and "que no tengan carácter laboral". The same paragraph states expressly that external curricular placements and the in-company phase of a training programme "estará cubierta por la autorización de estancia de larga duración por estudios concedida" — covered by the student authorisation you already hold.
For a degree or master's student that means the placement changes nothing about your papers and nothing about your insurance: the article 35(i) policy you evidenced for the visa keeps doing its job. The master's and postgraduate page covers the letter a) category those students sit in, and working on a student visa covers the adjacent question of paid work alongside study, including the thirty-hour ceiling and where curricular placements sit outside it.
Three situations, then, and it is worth being sure which one is yours before any money moves: a curricular placement inside a course (student authorisation, existing policy, nothing new needed), a convenio-route internship (residence authorisation for prácticas, sickness insurance to evidence), and a contract-route internship (residence authorisation for prácticas, Social Security, no compliance purchase). Whoever is advising you should be able to say which of the three you are in, by reference to the instrument you signed.
What we can offer a convenio intern — and one question we will not answer
The Sanitas International Students plan insures one student aged 14 to 35 per policy, for an insured period of three to fourteen months, renewable, starting on the 1st of a month and contractable up to six months ahead. It has no copayments and no waiting periods, and contracting it requires proof of studies — a matriculation or enrolment certificate showing the course start and end dates. What consulates and offices generally look for from a certificate is set out on the requirements page.
Here is the open question, flagged rather than papered over: whether a convenio de prácticas counts as proof of studies for contracting this plan is a Sanitas underwriting question we have not had answered, and we are not going to guess at it on a page. A convenio is not a matriculation certificate, even though the residence provision it supports is built on your student or graduate status. If you are a convenio-route intern and want this plan, email us with the convenio's dates and your enrolment position and we will put the specific case to Sanitas before you commit to anything. Eligibility, premium and policy terms are confirmed before the policy is issued.
If you are still enrolled at a university — a placement year, an internship between taught semesters — the enrolment certificate you already have may answer the proof-of-studies requirement on its own, and the question above may never arise. And if you already hold a policy and are weighing a change of insurer part-way through your time in Spain, switching cover mid-stay deals with the notice mechanics and the continuity duty before you touch anything.
We arrange insurance; we do not advise on Spanish immigration or employment law, and the decision on any authorisation rests with the Spanish authorities. Nothing on this page promises an outcome.
Convenio-route, and enrolled? See the price before you decide anything
The calculator prices the exact insured period from your date of birth, your province and the length of your stay. Nothing is arranged and no cover is created by quoting — and if your internship turns out to carry an employment contract, you have lost nothing by looking.
Read 24 August 2026
Internship guidance goes stale in a particular way: the regime moved between instruments, and pages written under the old regulation keep ranking. Everything above comes from the consolidated primary texts, read in full on the date shown.
Internships, the prácticas permit and insurance
This page describes what the regulations say. It is not immigration or employment advice, and decisions on visas and authorisations rest with the Spanish authorities.