Is My Policy Valid for a Spanish Student Visa?
If you already hold health insurance, you need to know whether it passes — not whether we would rather sell you a different one. This page sets out the four conditions that are actually written into Spanish law, the extra conditions consulates add in practice, and how to test your own policy against both. If yours passes, keep it.
Four conditions — and only four are law
The operative regulation is Real Decreto 1155/2024. (RD 557/2011, still cited across the internet, was repealed on 20 May 2025.) Article 35(i) is short, and it asks for exactly four things. Everything else you have read is a consulate's own checklist, not the regulation — which matters, because consulate checklists differ from each other.
1. A health insurance policy
An insurance policy providing healthcare — not a discount scheme, not a membership, not a company's internal assistance service. If what you hold is not a contract of insurance, it does not clear the first hurdle.
2. From an insurer authorised to operate in Spain
The test is authorisation, not nationality: an insurer does not have to be Spanish, it has to be authorised to operate in Spain. You can check this yourself in the DGSFP's public register of insurers and intermediaries at rrpp.dgsfp.mineco.es. If your insurer is not in that register, this is usually where a policy fails, and no amount of good cover fixes it.
3. Benefits similar to the SNS basic common portfolio
The benchmark is the cartera común básica of the Spanish national health system — the ordinary range of public healthcare: primary care, specialists, diagnostics, hospital treatment, surgery. The word in the regulation is "similar", not "identical", but the comparison is against comprehensive healthcare. An emergencies-only policy is not comparable to it, whatever its headline sum insured.
4. Valid for the whole intended stay
The stay, not the course. Article 55.2 defines the student authorisation as running from one month before the course starts to fifteen days after it ends, so a policy that begins on your first day of term already falls short at one end. This is the condition most often failed by an otherwise good policy — the start-date guide works the margins through with examples.
No copayments, no waiting periods, repatriation, €30,000
These four conditions appear on consulate checklists constantly, and they are routinely described online as Spanish legal requirements. They are not. We searched the full consolidated text of RD 1155/2024 — 783,908 characters — for each of them:
| Term searched | Occurrences in RD 1155/2024 | So what is it? |
|---|---|---|
| copago (copayment) | 0 | Consulate practice — required by many posts, not mentioned by others |
| carencia (waiting period) | 0 | Consulate practice |
| repatriación as a requirement | 0 | Consulate practice — and expressly not required at some posts |
| €30,000 minimum cover | 0 | Comes from the Schengen short-stay Visa Code, art. 15 |
The last row explains the other three. The €30,000 minimum and repatriation cover are genuine requirements — for short-stay Schengen visas, under article 15 of the Visa Code. They have been carried across onto student-visa document sheets by mistake, and once one post's sheet said it, others followed. That is why the wording varies so much from consulate to consulate: it was never anchored in the student regulation to begin with.
How much consulates actually differ
Positions below were checked on 23 August 2026 against each post's published student-visa material. Each consulate sets and revises its own list, so treat this as evidence that the practice varies — not as a substitute for reading yours.
| Consulate | Published position |
|---|---|
| San Francisco | Repatriation cover required |
| Toronto | The opposite, stated plainly: "it is not necessary to cover repatriations and/or evacuations" |
| Casablanca / Nador | Repatriation required, with a €30,000 minimum |
| São Paulo | No copayments, no waiting periods, and no cover limit |
| Boston | "If the total of days is over 180, the health insurance will cover 365 days" |
| Chicago | Over six months: a one-year policy from the date of entry |
| Ottawa | A six-month split; a foreign policy is accepted where it carries USD $500,000 of cover |
| London / Manchester / Edinburgh | The UK GHIC is accepted as medical insurance |
| Miami, Houston, Mumbai, Shanghai, Sydney | Silent on copayments and waiting periods |
Two posts contradict themselves in their own documents, which is worth knowing before you assume a checklist is the final word. London's web page demands a policy with no copayment, while the BLS checklist London itself points applicants to omits that condition. Edinburgh is the mirror image: the website says nothing about copayments while Edinburgh's own PDFs require their absence. Where a post contradicts itself, the safe reading is the stricter one.
Why travel insurance normally fails this test
Travel policies are the most common thing readers arrive holding, and they fail for structural reasons rather than because of any one clause.
- ✕It insures emergencies and unexpected illness abroad, not ongoing healthcare — so it is hard to argue it is similar to the SNS basic common portfolio
- ✕It is built around an excess, which reads as a copayment to a consulate that bars them
- ✕It is written for a trip, often with a maximum days-per-trip limit — not for a stay of nine or twelve months
- ✕The underwriter may not be authorised to operate in Spain, which is checkable and often decisive
- ✕It usually cannot produce a certificate stating the conditions a consulate wants to see confirmed
- ✓Underwritten by an insurer listed in the DGSFP register
- ✓Comprehensive medical cover — primary care, specialists, diagnostics, hospital
- ✓An insured period spanning the whole authorised stay, margins included
- ✓Terms matching whatever your own post adds — commonly no copayments, no waiting periods, sometimes repatriation
- ✓A certificate you can put in the file that states those terms
This is also why the €30,000 figure appears on so many travel policies: that number was written for short-stay Schengen visas, and travel cover is the product built to satisfy them. A travel policy can be perfectly good at its job and still be the wrong instrument for a student authorisation.
Two situations where you may not need a policy at all
You are going to work while you study
RD 1155/2024 art. 57.5 provides that registration with Spanish Social Security satisfies the article 35 insurance requirement. Students in higher education may work up to 30 hours a week without a separate permit (art. 57.1–2). If you will be registered with Social Security, the statutory insurance condition is met by that registration — this is rarely mentioned and it is in the regulation.
You are applying in the UK and hold a GHIC
London, Manchester and Edinburgh accept the UK Global Health Insurance Card as medical insurance for the student visa. If that is your route, you may need nothing further for the application itself. What we would flag is scope, not validity: a GHIC buys access to the Spanish public system on the same terms as a Spanish resident — it does not buy a private network, English-speaking consultations, or dental care. That is a lifestyle decision, not a visa one.
Run your policy through this
Take your policy schedule and your consulate's current document list side by side. The first four are the law; the rest depend on the post you are applying through.
- Is it a contract of insurance providing healthcare?
- Is the insurer in the DGSFP register of entities authorised to operate in Spain?
- Is the cover comprehensive — comparable to the SNS basic common portfolio, not emergencies only?
- Does the insured period span the whole stay, from one month before the course to fifteen days after?
- Does it meet your post's added conditions — copayments, waiting periods, repatriation, any minimum sum?
- Can the insurer issue a certificate in Spanish stating those terms for your file?
Six yeses and your existing policy does the job — use it. A no on any of the first four is a genuine problem, and a no on the last two is worth a call to your insurer before you assume you need to replace anything.
If your policy does not pass
The Sanitas International Students plan is arranged for students aged 14–35 on courses of three to fourteen months, with the certificate issued for your visa file. See the price for your own dates before you decide anything.