Three months in the group, and a qualification proven with official documents, not company letters.
An intra-company transfer lets a company or group bring to Spain, for a limited time, an employee it already has in another country. Law 14/2013 (Ley 14/2013) regulates it in Article 73 in two forms: the ICT EU permit, which transposes Directive 2014/66 and serves managers, specialists and trainee employees coming from outside the Union, and a national authorisation for everyone else. The Large Companies and Strategic Groups Unit (UGE) decides within twenty days, and if it does not answer the application is approved; then the consulate issues the visa. In cases before the High Court of Madrid, the disputes are mostly about the worker's qualification and, at renewal, criminal records.
Spain asks for the minimum length of service the Directive allows: three months of prior, continuous employment with the group (Art. 73.2.c), where the Directive lets each State require up to twelve. The demanding part is elsewhere: the qualification, or three years of equivalent experience.
Updated
Requirements, types, mobility and procedure
Four specific requirements
It covers people coming to Spain under an employment, professional or vocational training relationship with a company or group established in Spain or in another country. Besides the general requirements of Article 62 (criminal record, insurance, means, fee), you must prove a real business activity, including that of the group where there is one; a qualification at level 5A of the Spanish Qualifications Framework for Lifelong Learning, or three years of equivalent professional experience; a prior, continuous employment or professional relationship of three months with one or more group companies; and company documents proving the transfer.
ICT EU: manager, specialist or trainee
A manager runs the company, a department or a subdivision; a specialist has specialised knowledge of the entity's activities, techniques or management; a trainee employee is a university graduate transferred to be trained in the company's methods, and paid for it. The transfer lasts at most three years for the first two and one year for the third. The Directive requires a contract and an assignment letter setting out the duration, the location, the post, the pay and the return to the home company, and when the period is used up the worker must leave the Union unless they obtain another permit. The permit bears the entry 'ICT'.
Working in other EU countries
With a Spanish ICT EU permit you can live and work in other Member States, after notifying them or obtaining authorisation as their rules require. The Directive sets short-term mobility at 90 days in any 180-day period per State; for longer, the second State may require a long-term mobility permit ('mobile ICT'). The other way round, an entity in another Member State can send an ICT EU holder to Spain by notifying the UGE: the Directorate-General for Migration has 20 days to object, and only if the conditions are not met, the documents are fraudulent, or the maximum duration has been used up.
The national authorisation and the time limits
The national type covers whatever does not fit the ICT EU permit and what comes after its maximum duration has run out; it lasts three years or as long as the transfer. Instruction DGM 1/2021 applies it, for example, to film crews sent under service contracts between companies that are not part of the same group. The UGE decides within twenty days, and no answer means approval; the consulate decides the visa within ten working days, and while it is valid the visa serves as a residence permit, with no card needed. Companies registered with the UGE for collective processing, for three renewable years, do not have to prove real activity, qualifications or the prior relationship when applying, unless in the previous three years they have been penalised for a serious or very serious immigration offence or have failed an official check.
Three situations for transferred workers
Yes, if it is three years in duties at that level, proven with reliable documents. In STSJ M 1311/2026 of 9 February (appeal 462/2025), a restaurant in Santanyí (Mallorca) applied in June 2024 for an ICT EU permit for a Brazilian cook who was to be its head chef. He had no qualification and relied on more than seven years as a chef in São Paulo, with letters from former employers. The High Court of Madrid gave more weight to his digital employment record book, an official Brazilian document translated by a sworn translator, which registered him as a 'general cook'. It explained that a cook corresponds to level 4A and a head chef to 5A, the level of the Técnico Superior en Dirección de Cocina (higher technician in kitchen management), because the job involves managing production, quality and staff. With no qualification and no three years proven as head chef, it dismissed the case, with costs against the company capped at €500 plus VAT. It added that the UGE did not have to ask for the application to be completed: it refused because the requirements were not met, not because papers were missing.
Law 14/2013 leaves no room for discretion: it requires a clean record both on applying and on renewing (Arts. 62.3.c and 76.3), and the High Court of Madrid does not apply here the case-by-case assessment that the Immigration Act allows. What matters is whether the record could already be cleared (expunged) when the renewal was filed. In STSJ M 5506/2025 of 25 April (appeal 1151/2024), a transferred worker was refused renewal of his ICT EU permit in December 2023 because of a 2022 conviction carrying a four-month fine and a ten-month driving ban. The sentences had been served in 2022 and the record could be expunged from 28 June 2023; it was formally expunged in October 2024, with the case under way. The court held that on 7 December 2023, when he applied for renewal, his record no longer counted: it quashed the refusal, declared his right to renew and ordered the administration to pay costs capped at €500 plus VAT. If you have a conviction, apply to have it expunged before you renew.
We have not found any judgments on the relatives of transferred workers, so we stick to the rules. You may be accompanied by your spouse or partner, minor children, adult children who depend on you and have not formed their own family, and dependent parents; they apply at the same time or later, and if at the same time, the applications are decided together (Art. 62.4 of Law 14/2013). Each relative must meet the general requirements of Article 62.3, including financial means. For the ICT EU permit, Directive 2014/66 adds that the worker cannot be required to have a minimum period of residence or prospects of permanent residence, that the relative's permit is granted within ninety days at most of a complete application, that as a rule it expires with the worker's, and that it gives access to employment and self-employment (Art. 19).
Tell us the case
Say which consulate you will be applying to and roughly when you want to travel. Those two facts change the answer more than anything else. We reply the same working day.
If you have already been refused and the one-month deadline is running, write to contacto@spainvisaservice.com with REFUSAL in the subject line and the date on the notification.