El País today reports that the Spanish government is considering higher minimum investment requirements for its golden visa program. Scrapping the real estate option altogether is not off the table either.
Sources at the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security, and Migration revealed to El País that analyses of the program had determined the current EUR 500,000 minimum investment requirement for the program’s real estate option had become obsolete and was too low, particularly for the country’s major cities, where properties in this price class no longer fall into the “luxury” segment.
The government is in negotiations on the matter with the Ministries of Economy and Transport, as well as with Más País, a left-wing party with a handful of congressional seats that in February submitted a draft bill that sought to close the program’s real estate option, which it argues has contributed to upward pressure on property prices.
Más País and its founder-leader, Iñigo Errejón, have since failed twice to garner legislative support for their proposal but say they are maintaining “direct and fluid” channels of communication open with the government on the topic.
“Everything is open, and we are going to explore legal avenues for this,” a source at Más País told El País.
Meanwhile, a spokesperson with the Ministry of Economy says it is open to discussing the matter but that negotiations are still in their early stages.
The government, according to sources intimately familiar with the negotiations speaking to El País, is actively considering two options:
The first option is to bring the minimum investment requirement for real estate more in line with the program’s other options (bank deposits and business investments), i.e., to a minimum of at least EUR 1 million. The second is to remove the real estate option altogether and redirect investment into “more productive” investments.
IMI program guide: Spain Entrepreneur Visa
