I had brief hopes that I would be able to get citizenship in Italy. My grandfather was born there, and under their old laws, my mother was a dual citizen through him and I could apply citizenship through her. But they changed the law just this year to basically remove the ability for Italians that emigrated to the Americas in the 20th century to come back. Pre-1992, Italy considered you to have given up your Italian citizenship if you naturalized in another country. But if you had kids and it was a jus soli country, they would retain their Italian citizenship even if you naturalized. Well, they would lose it until they were an adult, and then automatically regain it. It’s a little complicated. But the 2025 law changed it so that your grandparent had to be fully italian/un-naturalized to anywhere else when YOU were born, not your parent. It’s really inconsistent with how they generally handled the chain of descent issue – they basically cut out your parent at that point. Since my grandfather naturalized when my mom was a child, I could’ve qualified under the old system but not the new one. I was briefly very excited about the possibility of gaining Italian citizenship because having EU citizenship would be amazing – you could live anywhere in the EU without a long and complicated residency application. I was so hopeful I could go that route.
I ended up spending a month in Spain and 2 weeks in Portugal. If I had gone to Portugal first, I think I would’ve had a more positive opinion of it. It’s reasonably nice and there’s a lot to like about it… but.. pretty much everything Spain is better. So going from Spain to Portugal was a downgrade and a disappointment. And most annoyingly, at least Portugal was supposed to be cheaper – every cost of living site agrees – but I found that not to be the case at all. Portugal had incredibly cheap wine, I ate cheaper in Spain.
I thought I might move to Portugal anyway, because their requirements are easier and you can get citizenship much faster (5 years vs 10). But I’ve since learned some very positive things that make Spain more practical. I was under the (incorrect) impression that if I go over on a non-lucrative visa – a non-working visa – based on passive income, I’d never be able to work no matter how long I stayed unless I became a citizen.
However, if I’m understanding what I’ve read correctly, once you’ve lived in Spain on the non-lucrative visa for 5 years, you can apply for permanent residency, and at that point you regain your ability to work. Is anyone familiar with that? I’d like confirmation if possible. Anyway that would make the main reason I would be seeking citizenship moot.
As an added bonus - after 5 years of residency in any EU country (except Ireland and Denmark – they don’t participate in this), you can file for residency in another EU country if you want. It’s not as flexible as citizenship – there are requirements like proving income, health insurance, and sometimes stuff like a language certificate – but it’s much easier than achieving your initial residency in your first country. So while citizenship would be better, permanent residents still have a route to move around Europe if they want.
Portugal also had a much lower requirement for passive income at around 900 Euros a month. I also don’t have enough passive income to meet Spain’s requirements for their non-lucrative visa, which is 28,800 euros per year/2400 per month. My passive income is more like 22,000 euros. However, again, if I’m interpreting what I’ve read correctly, they only require that you make up the gap between your passive income and the required income in savings that you have at all times. So if I keep a bank account with 6800 Euros, and prove it every time I renew, I can qualify for the visa. That’s easy. I’m probably going to talk to one of those agencies that assists with immigration to make sure I have all of this correct.
Given that, I don’t think I have much reason to prefer Portugal over Spain, and I’m strongly leaning towards moving forward on Spanish residency.
I think I’m mostly ruling out non-European options at this point. If I moved to somewhere like Thailand, the Phillipinnes, Costa Rica, etc., I would be relatively richer, I could live a better lifestyle with my income. But those places, I suspect, would have a lower quality of life than Europe in some ways that are important to me. The climate is much worse (I’m averse to hot/humid places compared to southern Europe which is pretty much fantastic), the infrastructure is more third world, the governments are probably less stable and less liberal/protective of people, etc. For somewhere like Thailand or Vietnam, the language would be a real challenge to learn (though the Philippines speaks English widely and central America would be okay with Spanish). Anywhere in Europe is also more likely to fare better in the face of climate change – living in a tropical place would probably be too hot right now, but in 10 or 20 years we may be looking at collapse.
I love Spain. It’s cheap enough that I can have a decent quality of life even without working or just doing modest work (I likely couldn’t work there in my current field so my training/experience is kind of irrelevant unfortunately - but that’s going to be true of pretty much anywhere but a handful of countries that are expensive), the climate, lifestyle, and culture are all awesome. The societal stability and quality of government, while not the best in Europe, is probably a significant step up from the non-European options. Spanish permanent residency grants a decent amount of access to the rest of the EU in case I wanted to move elsewhere.
I could still consider other European options like Portugal, Italy, Greece, maybe eastern Europe – but since I love Spain, it seems hard to imagine they’d be better options. The only real driving factor that might push me somewhere else in Europe is much more widespread English speaking. Somewhere like Greece has the low costs of Spain, the beautiful weather, the history and travel possibilities, but with many more people speaking English. But Spain passed the vibe check very well.
, we read the local press and follow local politics, our friends are mostly European (again, no expat bubble), we’re a few months away from securing citizenship, etc etc.