Making a Spanish will as a foreign owner

Your home-country will is valid in Spain. That is not the problem

Almost nobody arrives with the right question. The one people ask is “is my English, Dutch or German will valid here?”, and the short answer is that a will made abroad does not stop existing because it crossed a border. The question worth asking is a different one: on the day it is needed, how does the person who needs it find it?

That is where the practical difference lies, and it is about registration, not validity. In Spain, testamentary dispositions made before a notary are recorded, through the notary's compulsory notification, in the General Register of Last Wills, which belongs to the Ministry of Justice. That register is the first search any notary runs when an estate is opened: it says whether there is a will, which one is the latest, and before whom it was signed.

A will signed outside Spain is not in that register. It does not come up in the search, nobody locates it for you, and the person inheriting has to know it exists, find it and produce it. If they live in another country, with a shut house two thousand kilometres away, that is not paperwork: it is a search.

Which law decides the shares, and how you choose

Since Regulation (EU) 650/2012 applies, the general rule is a single one and it does not depend on where the house is: the law applicable to the succession as a whole is that of the State in which the deceased had their habitual residence at the time of death. A house in Torrevieja does not by itself drag the estate into Spanish law, and nationality does not decide on its own either.

The same regulation opens the way out, and it is the part hardly anyone uses: a person may choose the law of a State whose nationality they possess, either at the time of making the choice or at the time of death. That choice is not presumed and is not inferred from habit: it has to be made expressly in a disposition of property upon death, or demonstrated by the terms of one. Bluntly: if you want your own law to govern your estate, it has to be written into the will.

Two very different situations follow from the same house. Someone living in the Netherlands who owns a flat on the coast is governed, absent a choice, by the law of their residence. Someone who moved to Spain and lives here is governed by Spanish law, again absent a choice. The text of the regulation was re-read on EUR-Lex on 15 September 2026, and it is linked at the foot of this page.

The legítima: under Spanish law you do not share out freely

This is the surprise that most often arrives too late. Spanish common civil law reserves a portion of the estate for certain relatives, a portion the testator cannot dispose of. It is called the legítima, and it is not advice.

According to the official succession factsheet the European e-Justice Portal publishes for Spain, the legítima of children and descendants is two thirds of the estate. One of those two thirds may be used to favour one child or descendant over the others, and the remaining third is freely disposable. Where there are no descendants, ascendants are entitled to half the estate, which drops to a third when they concur with a spouse. A non-separated spouse takes the usufruct of two thirds where there are neither ascendants nor descendants, and the usufruct of one of the two thirds due to the children where there are.

And one local detail no general page mentions: Spain does not have a single law of succession. The same factsheet lists seven, with separate law in Aragon, Catalonia, the Balearic Islands, Navarre, the Basque Country and Galicia. Neither the Valencian Community nor the Region of Murcia is among them. For the seventeen towns we cover, what applies is the common civil law described above.

The three forms of will, and the only one that gets used

Spanish law accepts three. The open will is made before a notary, who drafts it and enters it in his protocol: it is the usual form, and the only one that reaches the register of last wills by itself. The closed will still exists but is hardly used today. The holographic will is handwritten, signed and dated by the testator, and in practice it is rare.

For an owner who lives abroad, the difference between the first and the third is not a matter of style. It is that the first leaves a trace in a state register any notary consults, and the third leaves none: a handwritten sheet in a drawer of a house that is shut six months a year is worth exactly what it is worth on the day somebody finds it.

What does not depend on the form is the content. A short Spanish will, saying who inherits the house and, where relevant, which law you want applied, fits into one afternoon at a notary's office. The expensive one is the will that does not exist.

What a will does not spare anyone

It does not bring the heir's calendar forward by a single day. The certificate of last will acts, the first document in any Spanish estate, cannot be applied for until fifteen working days have passed since the date of death: that is what the Ministry of Justice's own portal says, checked on 15 September 2026. That wait runs whether there is a will or not.

Nor does it remove taxes. Inheritance and gift tax is filed just the same, with its own deadlines, and the municipal plusvalía is owed by the acquirer when the transfer is gratuitous, that is by the heir. A will orders the shares: on its own it does not cut the bill.

And it does not replace the papers of the house. The deed, the cadastral reference, the last IBI receipt, the insurance policies and the community minutes are needed all the same, and gathering them from another country with a notary waiting is what turns weeks into months.

What this guide cannot tell you

What a notary will charge for your will. Which law suits you better, which depends on your family, your country and what you want to leave to whom. Whether the will you already have revokes the other one, which depends on what each of them says. And how much whoever inherits will pay, which depends on the region, the relationship and the value.

All four depend on papers we have not seen and on advice that belongs to a notary or a lawyer, not to this page. What we can do, free and in writing, is tell you which documents about the house you are going to need and what state the ones you already have are in.

Frequently asked questions

Services

The other guides

Official sources

• European Union · Succession Regulation (EU) 650/2012
• European e-Justice Portal · Succession, Spain
• Spanish Ministry of Justice · certificate of last will and testament acts
• Spanish Tax Agency · inheritance and gift tax for non-residents