Indian DevOps Engineer (Client Company in India)

The Case & Challenge

The applicant, an Indian DevOps Engineer, applied for Spain's Digital Nomad Visa from within Spain based on his long-term professional relationship with a company in India.

He had been providing services to the company since 2021 under an independent professional arrangement. His work was entirely remote and involved areas such as cloud infrastructure management, CI/CD implementation, deployment automation, system monitoring, security configuration, and coordination with distributed teams.

During the evaluation of his application, UGE issued a requerimiento focused on his self-employed status in India.

Specifically, UGE requested an official certificate demonstrating that he had been registered as self-employed for at least three months before the application was submitted. As a foreign public document, it also needed to be apostilled and accompanied by a sworn Spanish translation.

The challenge was that India does not have a direct equivalent to Spain's alta de autónomo, so the response needed to demonstrate his self-employed status using the appropriate documentation available under the Indian system.

The Strategy & Solution

To address the requerimiento, we used the applicant's GST Registration Certificate as evidence of his formally registered independent economic activity in India.

The document showed that he operated as a proprietor and that his registration had been active since 2018, substantially exceeding the minimum three-month period requested by UGE. The certificate was properly apostilled and accompanied by its sworn Spanish translation.

Our response focused on demonstrating how this official Indian registration satisfied the underlying requirement UGE was seeking to verify, rather than attempting to obtain a Spanish-style self-employment certificate that does not exist in the same form in India.

The Outcome

UGE accepted the documentation submitted in response to the requerimiento, and the applicant was approved on March 10, 2026.

He received his Initial Residence Authorization for International Teleworkers, valid until March 9, 2029.

This case demonstrates how country-specific documentation can be used to successfully address UGE requests when there is no exact equivalent to a Spanish document. By presenting the applicant's GST registration with the appropriate apostille, sworn translation, and explanation, we were able to establish his self-employed status and secure his three-year Digital Nomad Visa approval.