An English solicitor’s guide to the Spanish estate on your desk

What your English grant does — and does not — do in Spain

An English grant proves title over the English estate; Spain gives it no direct operative effect and has no resealing procedure. It is far from useless, though: apostilled and with a sworn Spanish translation, it serves as formal evidence of the will’s admission to probate and of the executors’ appointment, and Spanish registry authority treats it as significant supporting title in the notarial process — but Spanish title to Spanish assets comes from the Spanish deed below, never from the grant. Nothing in Spain waits for your grant — the two legs can and usually should run in parallel.

One Spanish habit surprises English practitioners at the outset: before anything else, Spain checks its central wills registry (the Registro General de Actos de Última Voluntad) for a Spanish will — many British owners made one for their Spanish assets and never told their English solicitor. The certificate from that registry is the first document any notario will ask for.

The Spanish sequence, in one paragraph each

The wills search. Once fifteen Spanish working days have passed from the death, the últimas voluntades certificate can be requested — it establishes whether a Spanish will exists and which notary holds it (alongside it, Spain also issues a certificate of any life-insurance contracts). No notario will act without it; note it speaks only to the Spanish register — it does not prove that no will exists anywhere else. If a Spanish will exists, it usually governs the Spanish assets alongside your English will; if the succession is intestate under the governing law, a declaración de herederos (the notarial declaration of heirs) comes first as a preliminary step — though where English law governs and the English title is proved with a certificate of English law, that Spanish intestacy procedure is not automatically required.

The deed of acceptance and adjudication. Spain’s centrepiece: the escritura de aceptación y adjudicación de herencia before a notario, in which the heirs accept the inheritance and the assets are allocated. Executed under powers of attorney with special powers, drawn for the specific inheritance acts (the notario formally judges the power’s sufficiency and its equivalence to a Spanish notarial power, so we draft it to the Spanish statutory formulas from the start — and agree the text with the notario before anyone signs, so your client signs once, correctly) — and here is the one step that happens at your end, not ours: the heirs sign before a notary public in England, with the FCDO apostille, on a bilingual power we send ready to sign; your office (or the family’s local notary) oversees the signing. No heir needs to travel. Each heir needs a Spanish tax number (NIE), which we obtain for them by proxy, wherever in the world they live.

The inheritance-tax filing. The Impuesto de Sucesiones return is due within six months of the death; a further six months can be added, but the extension must be applied for within the first five months — miss that window and the extension is gone. Spain taxes by region, and here is the point English advisers most often get wrong: since a 2021 statutory reform, UK-resident heirs are entitled to the regional allowances despite Brexit — in Andalucía that means a 99% relief and a €1,000,000 allowance per close-family heir, so the tax often all but disappears. The filing obligation does not: the return must be made even where nothing is payable (late filing draws percentage surcharges where tax is due, and a fixed penalty even where it is not). If you take one date from this page, take this one: the clock is usually already running by the time the file reaches your desk. On urban property the municipal plusvalía also arises — no longer the blunt tax it once was: nothing is due where the land shows no real gain, and the real-gain method can be elected where it is lower.

Registration and release. With the deed executed and the tax position settled, the property is registered at the Registro de la Propiedad and the accounts are released — the bank pays the heirs directly. (We never hold client or estate money; the funds move bank-to-heir.) Only then can the family sell — and if a sale is the plan, flag early that the buyer of a non-resident’s property must withhold 3% of the price (the retención) on account of the seller’s capital-gains tax, reconciled later against the real gain since the death.

Where the law of succession itself crosses the border

Start with why any of this reaches your British client at all: the assets do it. A Spanish immovable moves only through the notarial route above — no English grant or order touches a Spanish register — and a Spanish account opens only to the Spanish process. Once a Spanish authority is involved, the EU Succession Regulation (650/2012, “Brussels IV”) tells it whose law governs — and the Regulation binds Spain, not the deceased: Spain applies it to every succession before its authorities, whatever the nationality — Brexit changed nothing on the Spanish side. The default is the law of the deceased’s habitual residence; a will may elect the law of nationality.

The retiree who died resident in Spain. Spanish law governs the whole succession by default — including its forced-heirship rules protecting descendants — regardless of what the English will says. Check the will for a choice-of-law clause before advising the family on shares. And a subtlety worth knowing: Spain contains several regional succession systems, and on the prevailing, court-endorsed view a foreigner habitually resident in one of those territories is governed by that territory’s succession law — a British retiree in Catalonia faces the Catalan rules, under which the reserved share is a one-quarter money claim rather than the Civil Code’s two-thirds. Registry practice has wavered at the edges, which is exactly why the analysis belongs in a written opinion, not an assumption.

The Manchester client with a Costa Blanca flat. English law is the starting point — but because the UK is a third state, the Regulation’s renvoi rule (Article 34, Reg. 650/2012) lets English conflict rules speak, and they refer immovables to the law of the place they stand — the lex situs rule, which sits in no statute: it is the settled common law of English private international law (Nelson v Bridport (1846) 8 Beav 547; Philipson-Stow v IRC [1961] AC 727), and art. 34(1)(a) accepts exactly that referral back to a Member State’s law — an analysis an owner resident in Ireland, the United States, Canada or Australia raises in just the same way. So the Spanish flat can be sent back to Spanish succession law — a split estate: Spanish law for the flat, English law for the movables. A choice-of-law election excludes renvoi (art. 34(2)) and restores certainty — and on a full intestacy there is nothing to elect: the referral runs unopposed, and the flat passes under Spanish intestacy, legítima and all. Make the election name the law of England and Wales, never “British law”. This short analysis is the first thing we check on any file — and precisely where we give a written, signed opinion where the family needs one. One thing the election never does: it moves no Spanish formality — the notarial sequence above runs in full whichever law governs; the election only settles who takes, and hands the notario a foreign law he will want formally proven.

What this costs, and who does what

You stay lead: the English estate, the will, the family relationship, your fees — untouched. The Spanish leg runs at published fixed prices — transferring a Spanish property after a death is €4,500 + VAT; a cross-border estate €7,500–€9,500 + VAT — agreed in writing before work begins, with third-party costs shown to your client up front. (A structural note for an English eye: there is no client account and no undertakings culture here — we never hold client or estate money; every third-party cost is paid by your client directly to the official body, on a payment instruction we prepare.) Where the notario or registry needs formal proof of English law (or, on the English side, the Probate Registry needs proof of Spanish law under NCPR r.19), we produce the certificate in-house, from €1,200 — because the same lawyer is admitted — and practising — on both sides of the question. How instructing us works, and why we cannot take your client, is set out on our page for solicitors and professional advisers.

What to send us on day one

The death certificate; any wills the family knows of (no translation needed — we handle it, and we run the Spanish central wills search regardless); a note of the Spanish assets as best the family knows them; the heirs’ names and where they live; and whether anyone plans to sell. That is enough for a written fixed quote. Please don’t hold the file until it is complete — the six-month clock is running.

What we organise together

Two pieces of the file sit naturally between your office and ours. First, the power of attorney: we draft it, bilingual and to Spanish standards; your end oversees the family’s signing before a notary public and the FCDO apostille — then it travels here, and everything else (the NIE for each heir included) follows without anyone boarding a plane. Second, money: prepare your client for a system without a client account — our fees are invoiced in instalments at the milestones, and every third-party cost is paid by the client directly to the official body on a payment instruction we prepare; the estate itself moves bank-to-heir. Set those two expectations early and the file feels orderly rather than foreign.

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