SFR certificate of departure for the digital nomad residence permit in Spain

The certificate of departure (also called a certificate of leaving) is a document from the Social Fund of Russia (SFR, formerly the Pension Fund, PFR) confirming that an employee of a Russian company who works from Spain remains in the Russian social insurance system, so no Spanish social security contributions need to be paid for them. For the digital nomad visa it is a key document for anyone working under an employment contract for a Russian employer. Based on applicants’ experience in 2026, the SFR does issue these certificates and Spain’s immigration authorities accept them. Below we explain what the document is based on, who it suits, which papers to take to the SFR, what the text must say and how to attach it to your residence permit application.

What the certificate is based on

Russia and Spain are bound by the Social Security Agreement of 11 April 1994, in force since 22 February 1996, and its Administrative Arrangement of 12 May 1995. In 2023 Russia partially suspended the tax convention between the two countries, but the social security agreement still applies.

Under Article 7 of the agreement, a worker posted to work in the other country for a fixed period remains subject to the legislation of their own country. Article 3 of the Administrative Arrangement sets out the mechanism: at the request of the worker or the employer, the authority of the worker’s country issues a certificado de desplazamiento (the Russian text calls it a “certificate of departure”), which proves that the other country’s legislation does not apply to the worker. The period is the one stated on the certificate, but no more than five years from the start of the posting. It can be extended beyond that only with Spain’s consent: before the period ends, the Russian authority sends the Spanish one a request for an extension.

The certificate does not need an apostille; to submit it to the UGE (the Large Companies and Strategic Groups Unit) you need a sworn translation into Spanish, described below.

Why you need it for the digital nomad visa

When you apply for the digital nomad residence permit, Spain’s immigration authority (UGE) checks who will pay your social security contributions while you live in the country. For an employee of a foreign company there are two routes: either the employer registers with the Spanish social security system and pays contributions in Spain, or the applicant provides a document from their own country’s social insurance body stating that they remain insured there. The first route is almost never used by Russian companies in practice, so the main option is a certificate of applicable legislation, and for Russia that is the certificate of departure. All the options are covered in our guide to the digital nomad visa in Spain.

If your employer is not in Russia

The document has different names, but its purpose is the same: to confirm that you are insured in the employer’s country:

• EU countries, the EEA and Switzerland: an A1 certificate (documento portátil A1) under EU Regulation 883/2004, issued by the social security authority of the employer’s country.
• United Kingdom: an A1 certificate from HMRC; the employer first submits form CA3821 and then requests the certificate itself on form CA3822. Each stage can take several months.
• Countries with a bilateral agreement: as with Russia, the social security authority of the employer’s country issues a certificate of applicable legislation. If there is no agreement, or the agreement does not provide for a certificate for remote workers, the employer will have to register with the Spanish system.

According to Spain’s social security administration, bilateral social security agreements are in force with 26 countries:

• Europe: Andorra, Moldova, Russia, Ukraine.
• North and Central America: Canada, Mexico, the USA, the Dominican Republic.
• South America: Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Chile, Ecuador.
• Asia and Oceania: Australia, China, the Republic of Korea, the Philippines, Japan.
• Africa: Cape Verde, Morocco, Senegal, Tunisia.

The agreements differ: some cover all types of insurance, others only pensions, and not every social security authority will issue a certificate for working from Spain for the full term of the residence permit. The maximum posting period also varies from agreement to agreement. Before applying, check the text of your country’s agreement and ask its social security authority whether they issue such a document.

Who it suits and who it does not

• It suits people working under an employment contract for a Russian company who continue to work for it from Spain: the agreement’s mechanism is designed for a worker posted by an employer.
• It does not suit sole proprietors (Russian IP), the self-employed (Russian NPD regime) or those working under a civil-law contract (GPKh): on the nomad visa they usually register in the Spanish system as autónomo (self-employed) and attach an undertaking to do so to their application.
• If you have both an employment contract and a sole proprietorship, the route is determined by the income you use to meet the visa requirement.

If your employer will not post you: can you do without an order?

A common situation: you work remotely under an employment contract, you are moving to Spain on your own initiative, and your employer is only willing to give you a letter saying it does not object to you working from Spain. There is no order posting you on a business trip.

In practice the certificate is not issued without an order. Article 7 of the Russia–Spain agreement is designed for a worker whom the employer posts abroad, and the SFR checks this against the order. A “no objection” letter does not count as a posting. Applicant communities report no confirmed cases in 2025–2026 of a certificate issued without an order — only attempts. Submitting such a letter to the UGE instead of the certificate is not a good idea either: it leads to a request for documents or a refusal.

What you can do:

• Agree an order with your employer. Contributions stay in Russia and the company pays nothing in Spain. But under the Russian Labour Code a business trip obliges the employer to reimburse the worker’s expenses (Article 168) — this is usually what holds employers back, so discuss the terms of the posting in advance and bring a ready draft of the order: your address in Spain, the dates, remote work.
• The employer registers with Spanish Social Security and pays contributions in Spain. Lawful, but noticeably more expensive and complicated for the company.
• Change the basis of your income: work for the same company under a civil-law contract or as a sole proprietor and apply as an autónomo. You then do not need the SFR certificate, but your taxes and obligations in Spain change — see digital nomad taxes.

Which documents to take to the SFR

• Employment contract, original. They will copy it and give it back. The contract must state that the employee may be sent on business trips and may work remotely. According to applicants’ experience, a contract titled “Employment contract for remote work” leads to refusal: you need a standard employment contract with these terms.
• Order posting you on a business trip, original with a stamp. The SFR keeps it. The order states that the employee is being posted to Spain, the address in Spain and the period, no more than five years.
• Russian internal passport and a copy of the first page and the registration page.
• A copy of the personal data page of your international passport.
• SNILS (Russian insurance number) and a copy.
• Your full address in Spain where you will live.
• A notarised power of attorney, if a representative is collecting the document.

It helps to bring a completed draft of the certificate with the wording of the grounds, for example: “in connection with a business trip posting, order No. … of … on posting to Spain for the period from … to …”. Fund staff produce the document on their own form, but a ready text reduces the risk of mistakes.

What the certificate must contain

Based on applicants’ experience in 2025–2026, the UGE pays attention to details in the text, and an incomplete certificate is a common reason for a request for further documents. The document the SFR currently issues consists of a header and three sections:

• Header: the date and number of the document, filled in by the SFR, and a reference to the agreements. Without it the document will not work; the wording is usually: “Under Art. 7 of the Agreement between the Russian Federation and the Kingdom of Spain on Social Security of 11.04.1994 and Art. 3 of the Administrative Arrangement for the Application of the Agreement of 12.05.1995” — what these articles mean is explained below.
• Insured person: full name, nationality, details of the Russian internal and international passports, date of birth, SNILS, address in Russia, phone and email.
• Employer: name of the organisation, INN and KPP (tax identifiers), address in Russia, phone, email and address in Spain. Here you give your home address in Spain, not the address of a company branch.
• Applicable legislation: both dates of the period, “from” and “to” (the document is not accepted without an end date), and a statement that during this period you work from Spain.

SFR staff sometimes ask to replace the wording “during remote work from Spain” with “during work from Spain”; according to applicants’ experience, the UGE accepts both.

It is best to set the period in the certificate to cover the full term of the permit: when you apply from within Spain, the digital nomad residence permit is issued for up to three years. For the UGE the document is translated into Spanish by a traductor jurado (sworn translator) on the Spanish Foreign Ministry’s register: an ordinary or notarised translation will not be accepted.

What “Article 7 of the Agreement and Article 3 of the Administrative Arrangement” means on an SFR certificate

This line in the certificate header refers to the legal basis on which it is issued: the Social Security Agreement between the Russian Federation and the Kingdom of Spain of 11 April 1994 and its Administrative Arrangement of 12 May 1995. Both are published in Spain’s Official Gazette (BOE-A-1996-4208) and have been in force since 22 February 1996.

Article 7 of the Agreement is an exception to the general rule. Under Article 6, workers are subject to the legislation of the country where they work. Article 7 makes an exception for posted workers, who “continuarán sometidos a la legislación de la primera Parte” (will remain subject to the legislation of the first Party): someone sent to work in the other country for a fixed period stays under their own country’s legislation. For you, this means that while you work from Spain on a posting from your Russian employer, you remain in the Russian social insurance system and no Spanish contributions are due.

Article 3 of the Administrative Arrangement sets out the procedure. The fund issues the certificate “a petición de éste o de su empresario” (at the request of the worker or the employer); the Russian text calls it a “certificate of departure”. The period is the one stated on the certificate, but it “no será superior a cinco años” (shall not exceed five years) from the start of the posting. An extension beyond five years needs Spain’s consent: before the period ends, the Russian authority sends the Spanish one a request for an extension.

The UGE accepts this document instead of Spanish social security registration if it is based on the agreement and expressly states that it covers work from Spain (UGE FAQ, question 6). The agreement does not cover healthcare on the Spanish side, so you also need private health insurance with no excess and no waiting periods — see health insurance for a Spanish residence permit.

How to get a certificate of departure

1. Prepare documents with your employer: the employment contract and an order posting you to Spain, with dates.
2. Book an SFR appointment through Gosuslugi. According to applicants, in Moscow you can choose any office regardless of your registered address; in the regions staff sometimes do not know the procedure, so the draft certificate and a reference to the agreement will come in handy.
3. Submit the application in person or through a representative with a notarised power of attorney.
4. Wait for the document. In Moscow certificates are signed centrally; offices quote 5 working days as a guide, but in practice it can take anywhere from one day to three weeks.
5. Check the text when you collect it: both dates of the period, the address in Spain and the wording about working from Spain.
6. Have a sworn translation into Spanish made — no apostille is needed — and attach the document to your residence permit application.

If the office refuses or says they do not know this document, refer to Article 7 of the Agreement and Article 3 of the Administrative Arrangement: under these the fund issues the certificate at the request of the worker or employer. Ask to speak to the head of the office or go to another office.

If you are already abroad, your employer can submit the application, and a trusted person with a notarised power of attorney can collect the finished document. A sworn translator can work remotely from a scan.

Order the certificate as one of your first documents: you have 10 working days to respond to a request for further documents, extendable by another 5 (Article 68 of Law 39/2015), and that may not be enough to get the document from the SFR again.

Translating the certificate

The certificate of departure does not need an apostille. A sworn translator translates it into Spanish, and the translation is attached to the UGE application.

If the UGE cannot verify the apostille by its QR code

Since September 2026 the UGE has been sending requests for further documents about Russian documents apostilled by the Ministry of Justice. The gist: the QR code on the apostille returns nothing, so its authenticity cannot be checked, and you must provide documents that allow it to be verified. You have 10 working days to reply.

The apostille itself is fine. The QR code leads to the apostille register on the Russian Ministry of Justice website, which loads unreliably from Spain, so the officer sees a blank page. Applicants report that a screenshot taken in Russia with an explanation does not resolve the request.

The answer is a deed from a Spanish notary, an acta notarial de presencia. The notary opens the QR link personally and certifies that it shows the Ministry of Justice register entry for this very apostille. The deed is Spanish, so it needs no apostille.

• What to bring to the notary. The original document with the apostille and the text of the request. Ask the notary in advance to check that the register page opens in their office.
• Translation. The register page is in Russian, so a sworn translator translates the printout attached to the deed.
• If you are short of time. Before the 10 days run out, ask the UGE for an extension: the law allows up to five more days when the documents are hard to obtain.
• Fallback. Under the Russian apostille law, the Ministry of Justice must confirm on request from any interested person that the apostille is in its register. The law sets no deadline for the reply, and the reply itself would need an apostille and a translation for Spain, so this route rarely fits the deadline of a request.

What else has worked for applicants. In practice, in autumn 2026 such requests were also resolved in other ways: with a Russian notary’s record of inspection of the register page, apostilled and sworn-translated, or by sending the original document through a government register office (Registro). The UGE has announced no single method, so the reply is chosen according to the wording of the specific request. In one of our 2026 cases the likely reason for a refusal was exactly an unverifiable QR code: the application was filed again with fresh extracts and the permit was approved.

To be ready for such a request, bring the originals of every document filed with your application to Spain and keep them for as long as you hold the permit: if a copy raises doubts, the UGE may ask to see the original. A criminal record certificate often has no QR code at all, and the reply for it is different; see the criminal record certificate guide.

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How to enter the certificate in your residence permit application

The digital nomad residence permit application is submitted to the UGE through its online platform. An employee of a Russian company needs to:

1. choose the Trabajador por cuenta ajena (employee) option;
2. answer Sí to the question about a social security certificate (certificado de cobertura de Seguridad Social);
3. upload the certificate together with its sworn translation in the field that then appears first in the list of required documents.

The certificate when renewing your permit or changing jobs

A digital nomad residence permit obtained in Spain is issued for up to three years and renewed for two years if the conditions are still met. The renewal application is submitted online to the UGE, and it extends the validity of the permit until a decision is made. You can also apply within 90 days after the permit expires, and it will still be extended, but you may be fined for the delay (Law 14/2013, Articles 74 quinquies and 76).

• On renewal the UGE again checks who pays your contributions, so you need a certificate covering the new period. The Administrative Arrangement limits the period to five years from the start of the posting. An extension beyond five years is possible only with Spain’s consent: the Russian authority must request it from the Spanish one before the period ends. Start early, allowing time for the translation.
• If you have changed employer, you need a new certificate based on the new employer’s order and contract.
• If you have switched to a sole proprietorship or self-employment, you no longer need the certificate: instead you register in Spain as autónomo.

Documents that will not work instead of the certificate

A statement of your individual personal account, a notice of registration in the personalised accounting system or a SNILS card only confirm that you are registered in the Russian system. They do not say that Russian legislation applies to you while you work from Spain, so they do not meet the UGE’s requirement.

Social security and tax are separate questions

The certificate settles only the question of social security contributions. Tax residence is determined separately: if you live in Spain for more than 183 days a year, you become a Spanish tax resident, and the articles of the Russia–Spain tax convention have been suspended since 2023. Details are in our article on double taxation between Russia and Spain.

Frequently asked questions

What is a certificate of departure?

A document from the Social Fund of Russia stating that Russian social insurance legislation continues to apply to an employee working from Spain. It is based on the 1994 social security agreement between Russia and Spain.

Certificate of departure: what do Article 7 of the Agreement and Article 3 of the Administrative Arrangement mean?

They are the legal basis of the document. Article 7 of the 1994 Russia–Spain Social Security Agreement keeps a worker posted to the other country for a fixed period in their own country’s social insurance system. Article 3 of the 1995 Administrative Arrangement requires the fund to issue a certificate of departure, at the request of the worker or employer, for no more than five years; any extension needs Spain’s consent.

Who needs an SFR certificate for the digital nomad visa?

People working under an employment contract for a Russian company. Sole proprietors and the self-employed on the nomad visa usually register in the Spanish system as autónomo.

For how long is a certificate of departure issued?

The Administrative Arrangement allows no more than five years from the start of the posting; an extension beyond that is possible only with Spain’s consent. For the nomad visa it is best to set the period to cover the full term of the residence permit, up to three years.

Does the certificate of departure need an apostille?

No, the certificate does not need an apostille. A sworn translation into Spanish is needed.

Do you need a new certificate when renewing your residence permit?

Yes, if the previous one does not cover the new period. If you change employer you need a new certificate from the new employer, and if you switch to a sole proprietorship you do not need a certificate but register as autónomo instead.

Can you get the certificate with a remote work contract?

According to applicants’ experience, a contract titled “for remote work” leads to refusal. You need a standard employment contract that provides for business trips and remote work, plus an order posting you to Spain.

How long does the SFR take to issue the certificate?

Offices quote 5 working days as a guide; in practice it takes from one day to three weeks. Order this document among the first.

Will an SFR statement work instead of the certificate?

No. A personal account statement or SNILS details only confirm registration in the Russian system, not that Russian legislation applies to you while you work from Spain.

What should I do if the UGE cannot verify the apostille by its QR code?

Order a deed from a Spanish notary (acta notarial de presencia): the notary opens the QR link and certifies that the apostille is in the Russian Ministry of Justice register. Submit the deed with a sworn translation of the attached page in reply to the request, within 10 working days.

Can you get the certificate of departure without a business trip order?

In practice, no: the SFR issues the certificate to a worker posted abroad by the employer and checks this against the order. A letter from the employer saying it does not object to you working from Spain does not replace the order. The options are to agree a posting with the employer, have the employer register with Spanish Social Security, or apply as an autónomo under a civil-law contract or as a sole proprietor.

Sources

• Convenio de Seguridad Social entre el Reino de España y la Federación de Rusia (11.04.1994) and Acuerdo Administrativo (12.05.1995): Article 7 of the agreement, Article 3 of the arrangement. BOE-A-1996-4208.
• Russian texts on the SFR website: Social Security Agreement and Administrative Arrangement.
• Ley 14/2013 de apoyo a los emprendedores: Articles 74 quinquies and 76, permit term and renewal. BOE-A-2013-10074.
• Ley 39/2015 del Procedimiento Administrativo Común: Article 68, deadline for correcting an application. BOE-A-2015-10565.
• Seguridad Social: list of bilateral social security agreements.
• Regulation (EC) 883/2004 on the coordination of social security systems: EUR-Lex.
• Federal Law No. 330-FZ of 28.11.2015, Art. 10(4): confirmation of an apostille against the register on request.
• Ley 39/2015, Articles 16.5, 28.5 and 68: filing at a registry office, the right to request the original, 10 days to reply and an extension of up to five. BOE-A-2015-10565.
• Reglamento Notarial, Article 199: the notarial deed of presence (acta de presencia). BOE-A-1944-6578.