Study in Spain

Spain looks like one country on the map, but to a university applicant it is seventeen. Every autonomous community sets its own public tuition, runs its own admission round and - in Catalonia, the Valencian Community, the Balearic Islands, Galicia and the Basque Country - teaches part of its degrees in a second official language. Students from Morocco, Equatorial Guinea, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Mauritania, Senegal, The Gambia, Mali, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon, Gabon, Angola, Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe and South Africa apply to its fifty public universities and dozens of private ones every intake - and almost none of them set foot in Spain first. Accrediting your certificate, applying and paying the fees all happen online, from home; the paper steps run through the Spanish embassy or consulate in your own country.

So choose the region before the university. The region decides what you pay per credit, which admission round you enter - Andalusia’s distrito único, Catalonia’s preinscripció, the Madrid and Valencian rounds - which language part of your lectures are in and what a room costs. With the same admission mark, a non-EU student pays about €760 a year for a public engineering degree in Granada and around €7,700 in Madrid, and living costs run from €600 to €1,500 a month. The national rules - certificate recognition, the student visa, the proof of funds and the right to work - are the same everywhere. The city pages above go deep on Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Granada; this page covers what applies wherever you study.

The good news first: there is no foundation year. Spanish schooling ends after twelve years with the Bachillerato, so WASSCE, NECO, KCSE, the NSC and the Baccalauréat cover the same length of school - the one-year gap that sends WASSCE holders to a German Studienkolleg does not exist here. What you need instead is homologación: the Ministry of Education formally declares your certificate equivalent to the Spanish Bachillerato. File it as early as you can. The decision can take months, but the receipt you get when you file - the volante de inscripción condicional - lets UNEDasiss and the universities process you in the meantime, with your place confirmed once the homologation arrives.

Your certificate then goes to UNEDasiss, the accreditation service of Spain’s national distance university, which turns your grades into a Spanish admission mark out of 10 - enough for most degrees. For competitive ones - medicine, dentistry, nursing, physiotherapy, biotechnology, double degrees and the most popular engineering schools - you add PCE subject exams (Pruebas de Competencias Específicas), weighted per degree, which lift the mark to a maximum of 14; medicine cut-offs above 12 are normal. The main sitting runs from mid-May to mid-June at centres in Spain and abroad, including Morocco and Equatorial Guinea, with registration from mid-March to late April; the September sitting comes after the main admission rounds have closed. Private universities usually set their own test and interview instead.

Master’s applicants skip most of this. For an official máster your bachelor’s is not homologated: the university checks that it is equivalent in level and gives access to postgraduate study in the country that awarded it, so a degree from Lagos, Accra, Nairobi, Kampala, Yaoundé, Dakar or Johannesburg is assessed directly. An HND alone does not usually open a master’s in Nigeria or Ghana, so it will not in Spain either: a PGD or a top-up bachelor’s is the usual bridge. Whatever you hold, budget six to ten weeks for the paperwork: an apostille (or consular legalisation outside the Hague Convention), a sworn translation into Spanish by a traductor jurado, and for the visa a legalised police clearance and a medical certificate. Paperwork delays far more files than admissions decisions do.

Public tuition is set by the regional government as a price per credit, and a full year is 60 credits. The catch for African applicants is one word, resident: a student permit is legally a stay, not residence, so several regions charge non-EU students more. Andalusia does not - €12.62 a credit, about €760 for the first year in Granada, Seville or Málaga, and from the second year 99 % of every credit you passed first time is waived. The Valencian Community doubles its price for non-residents, still only about €1,550-€2,150 a year; Catalan universities set their own rate, from about €2,550 at UPC to €5,400 at the University of Barcelona; Madrid charges its top band, €6,800-€8,200 a year. A 60-credit public master’s runs from about €820 in Andalusia to €5,000 in Madrid, while private universities charge €6,000-€25,000 a year - and the big business schools more.

The second number is the money the consulate wants to see: 100 % of the IPREM for every month of your stay - €600 a month, unchanged since 2023, so €7,200 for a full year - in your own account or a parent’s backed by a signed letter of support, plus private health insurance with no co-payments and no waiting periods. It is the same figure for every city, and that is where applicants get caught out: €600 roughly covers a month in Granada (€600-€850), but not in Valencia (€750-€1,000), Madrid (€1,000-€1,400) or Barcelona (€1,100-€1,500). Budget for the city, not for the visa. These figures are revised every year, so treat them as a planning range and confirm the current price list for your degree before you move money.

Most Spanish bachelor’s degrees are taught in Spanish, and Spanish runs your lease, your part-time job and the immigration office even when your degree is in English. English-taught programmes cluster at master’s level and in a few bachelor’s tracks at Carlos III, Pompeu Fabra, IE and other private universities, normally on IELTS 6.0-6.5 or TOEFL iBT 79-90. Spanish-taught degrees ask for B2, proven with DELE or SIELE: SIELE results arrive within about three weeks, DELE results can take three months. French- and Portuguese-speaking applicants from Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Angola, Mozambique and Cabo Verde usually reach B2 fastest, and students from Equatorial Guinea, where Spanish is an official language, already have it. In Catalonia and the Valencian Community, check the language of each course, not the degree summary.

Apply for the student visa at the Spanish consulate in your country as soon as you hold the admission letter - July and August appointments are the real bottleneck. Since May 2025 the student permit covers your whole degree, with proof of enrolment each year instead of a fresh application; it lets you work up to 30 hours a week with no separate work permit, and within a month of landing you register your address (empadronamiento) and apply for your TIE residence card. After graduation Spain gives you a job-search permit of up to 24 months, and a qualifying job turns it straight into a work permit - or, with a high enough salary, an EU Blue Card. Choose the region whose fees, language and job market fit the life you want, then work through the details above - or send us one WhatsApp message and we will do it with you.