Teach English in Spain
Teach English in Spain without guessing your way there.
Thousands of people move to Spain every year to teach English. The ones who last are not the ones with the best Spanish — they are the ones who arrived with the right paperwork, in the right month, holding a certificate schools recognise.
1 Your route in
There are two ways into Spain.
There are two ways into Spain.
Only one of them needs paperwork.
Almost every question people ask about teaching in Spain — can I work legally, how long can I stay, will a school hire me — comes down to one thing: which passport you hold. Find your row and the rest of this page makes sense.
You already have the right to be here
No visa, no sponsorship, no waiting. You can land, look for work and sign a contract like any Spanish citizen. What you do need is the admin that makes you employable.
- NIE number. Your foreigner ID. Schools cannot put you on a contract without it, and it is the first thing they ask for.
- Registration as an EU resident once you plan to stay beyond three months.
- A recognised TEFL certificate. The passport gets you in the door; the certificate is what gets you the timetable.
The student visa is the realistic way in
Spanish schools very rarely sponsor a work visa for an entry-level English teacher. The route that actually works is to come as a student: you enrol on a course, and the visa comes with the right to work.
- Up to 30 hours a week of legal work while you study. That is not a side gig — it is enough to build a real timetable.
- You arrive with a status, not a countdown. No 90-day tourist clock, no leaving and re-entering.
- No degree is required for a large share of academy work in Spain — the certificate matters more than the diploma. Here is how teaching English in Spain without a degree actually works.
Whichever route you take, the first month looks the same
Three pieces of paper turn you from a visitor into someone a school can actually pay. Get them in this order and nothing blocks you.
- EmpadronamientoRegistering at your address with the local town hall. Everything else hangs off it.
- TIE cardYour physical residence card. Non-EU teachers apply for it after arriving.
- Spanish bank accountSchools pay by transfer. No account, no payroll.
2 Where the work is
English teaching in Spain is not one job.
English teaching in Spain is not one job.
It is six, and most teachers do three.
This is the part almost nobody explains before you arrive. A contract at an academy is the anchor, but it rarely fills your week on its own — and it is not supposed to. The teachers who do well here stack two or three sources of hours that fit around each other, because the schedules genuinely do not clash.
Language academies
The backbone of the market and where most new teachers start. Every neighbourhood in every Spanish city has several, and they hire on a school-year cycle.
Auxiliar de conversación
The government language assistant scheme places native speakers in state schools alongside a Spanish teacher. Mornings only, which leaves your afternoons completely free.
In-company & business English
Companies book classes for their staff before the working day starts and over lunch. Better paid per hour than general classes, and it fills the exact slots academies leave empty.
Private students
The best hourly rate you will find, with no cut going to anyone else. It builds slowly through word of mouth and parents talking to other parents, then it snowballs.
Online teaching
Your existing students back home, or platforms with learners anywhere. It travels with you, it fills gaps between terms, and it is the easiest thing to start before you even land.
Summer camps
Academies wind down in summer and camps take over across the north and the coast. Intensive weeks, accommodation and meals usually included, and a genuinely good time.
When Spain actually hires
Timing matters more here than almost anywhere. Arrive in the wrong month and you will hear «come back in September» from everyone. Arrive in the right one and you can walk into a full timetable in a fortnight. This is the year, honestly.
Late Aug – Oct
The main wave
Academies staff up for the school year. This is the single best window of the whole calendar. Be on the ground and ready to interview.
Nov – Dec
Quiet, but not closed
Timetables are set. Hiring happens for replacements and extra groups, so keep applying — there is less competition.
January
The second wave
New term, new groups, and teachers who went home for Christmas and did not come back. A genuinely strong second chance.
Feb – July
Build and prepare
Exam season pushes demand for private classes, camps recruit from spring, and this is when you line up September.
The part that decides everything
Being here in September beats being qualified in December
Spanish academies hire face to face. They want to meet you, see how you are with a class, and know you are already living in the city with your paperwork in order. A CV sent from abroad in October rarely gets a reply — the same person, in the same academy, in person in September, gets a timetable.
Which is why the certificate and the paperwork come first, and the job hunt comes after. Do it in that order and September works for you instead of against you.
3 What you actually earn
Nobody gets rich teaching English in Spain.
Nobody gets rich teaching English in Spain.
Plenty of people live very well.
Here is the honest version, with the same figures we publish on our Madrid pages. A contract covers your life. Your free hours are what turn it into money you can actually spend — on weekends in Lisbon, on a flight home at Christmas, on the savings account you did not expect to have.
Academy contract
€1,200–1,600
per month, full time
Your base. A proper contract with social security, paid across the school year. This is the number that makes a landlord say yes.
Private classes
€15–25
per hour, paid to you
The highest rate you will earn and nobody takes a cut. Eight hours a week at €20 is roughly €640 a month on top of everything else.
Language assistant
€700–1,100
per month, 12–16 h a week
Mornings in a state school. Fewer hours and a smaller cheque, but it leaves your entire afternoon free to fill at the private rate.
What a real month looks like in Madrid
Not a best case. A normal one: a mid-range academy contract plus eight hours a week of private classes, living in a shared flat in the centre of the most expensive city in the country.
Money in
Academy contract€1,400
Private classes · 8 h a week at €20€640
Total€2,040
Money out
Room in a central shared flat€500–700
Groceries€200–300
Bills, transport, phone, insurance€175–295
Typical total€1,100–1,300
Left over
€840
on a €1,200 month of costs, after paying for everything
And that is Madrid. The transport pass is €33 a month, or €10 if you are under 26, and a three-course menú del día with a drink is €12–16. The maths gets friendlier the moment you leave the capital.
Where your rent goes furthest
Rent is the one cost that really changes between Spanish cities. Everything else — food, transport, bills — moves far less than people expect. A room in a shared flat, per month:
Read that gap again. The same teaching hours in Valencia or Seville leave you several hundred euros a month better off than in Barcelona. Madrid sits in the middle and has by far the most work going, which is why most teachers start here and decide later.
4 Where to base yourself
Four cities take almost every new teacher.
Four cities take almost every new teacher.
They are not interchangeable.
The city you pick decides three things at once: how much work there is, how much of your salary the rent eats, and how fast you find your feet. Rent is the variable that really moves — the difference between a room in Seville and one in Barcelona is several hundred euros a month, every month, for the same teaching hours.
Madrid
€500–700
room / month
Best for finding work fast
The largest teaching market in the country by a distance, and the easiest place to fill a timetable in your first month. Academies in every barrio, a huge in-company market thanks to the head offices, and no coastline to distract you from actually working. Rent sits in the middle, and the metro is €10 a month if you are under 26.
Barcelona
€750–950
room / month
Best for lifestyle · most competitive
Beach and city in the same afternoon, which is exactly why every other foreigner also wants to be here. Plenty of work, but you are applying against more people for it, and the rent is the highest of the four. Catalan is present in schools and daily life, and it is worth knowing that before you arrive rather than after.
Valencia
€300–500
room / month
Best value for money
The city that quietly wins the arithmetic. You get a beach, a proper city and a rent that is roughly half of Barcelona's, so the same hours leave you hundreds of euros better off every month. The teaching market is smaller than Madrid's, so it rewards arriving in September rather than turning up in November and hoping.
Guide coming soon
Seville
€300–500
room / month
Best for living cheaply and learning Spanish
The lowest cost of living of the four and the least English spoken around you, which is the fastest way to actually learn Spanish rather than talk about learning it. Smaller market, strong demand for private classes and exam preparation, and summers that genuinely need planning around.
Guide coming soon
And everywhere else
Spain does not stop at four cities. Bilbao and San Sebastián pay well and have far fewer foreign teachers competing. Málaga and Alicante run on tourism, English and a long season. Zaragoza, Valladolid and Salamanca are proper university cities where a native speaker is still a novelty.
The trade is always the same: the smaller the city, the less competition and the cheaper the rent — and the fewer total jobs. If it is your first year, start where the work is thickest and move once you know how the system works. Almost nobody regrets that order.
5 How to actually start
Five steps, in this order.
Five steps, in this order.
Change the order and it stops working.
Almost everyone who struggles in Spain did the same thing: they came first and sorted the rest out later. The certificate and the paperwork are what unlock everything else, so they go at the front. Do it this way round and the hard parts stop being hard.
1
Get certified
This is the gate. Spanish academies ask for the certificate before they ask for anything else, and for non-EU teachers it is also what makes the student visa possible in the first place. Everything downstream depends on this one decision, which is why it comes first and not third.
Opens the visa route
What academies ask for
Do it before you move
See course options and dates
2
Sort your right to be here
EU, EEA or Swiss passport: you already have it, and what you need is the NIE number so a school can put you on a contract. Everyone else: the student visa, which comes with the right to work up to 30 hours a week while you study.
Start this early. It is the step with the longest lead time and the one that decides whether you make September or miss it.
NIE for EU citizens
Student visa for everyone else
Longest lead time
How the student visa works
3
Time your arrival
Work backwards from the calendar, not forwards from whenever you happen to be ready. Late August to October is the main hiring wave and January is the second. Landing inside one of those two windows is worth more than any line on your CV.
Arriving in November with perfect paperwork is a worse position than arriving in September with paperwork that is merely finished.
Aim for late August
January is the backup
Avoid arriving in spring
4
Land and register
Three pieces of admin in your first weeks: the empadronamiento at your local town hall, the TIE card if you are non-EU, and a Spanish bank account. Nothing exotic, but schools pay by transfer and cannot contract someone who has none of the three.
Get a room before you chase the paperwork — the empadronamiento needs an address.
Empadronamiento
TIE card
Spanish bank account
5
Build your timetable
Land the academy contract first, because it is the anchor that pays the rent and gives you the contract a landlord wants to see. Then fill the gaps: private students in the evenings, in-company classes at 8am, online whenever you like.
This is the part that turns a salary into savings. Teachers who only do the contract get by. Teachers who stack two or three sources travel on the money left over.
Contract first
Then privates
Then in-company
What this looks like in Madrid
Start at step one
The certificate is the part you can start today
Everything on this page — the visa, the contract, the timetable, the money left over at the end of the month — runs through it. It is also the only step you can begin from wherever you are reading this, before you book a single flight.
6 Straight answers
The questions everyone asks
The questions everyone asks
before they book the flight.
No hedging and no brochure language. If the honest answer is «it depends», we say what it depends on.
Do I need a degree to teach English in Spain?
No. A large share of academy work in Spain does not require a university degree — the TEFL certificate matters more than the diploma. A degree helps for some government programmes and for a handful of international schools, but it is not the barrier most people assume it is.
Can I work legally in Spain on a student visa?
Yes. The Spanish student visa allows you to work up to 30 hours a week while you study. That is enough to build a real teaching timetable rather than a side job, and it is the route most non-EU teachers take because Spanish academies rarely sponsor work visas for entry-level teachers.
How much do English teachers earn in Spain?
A full-time academy contract pays roughly €1,200–1,600 a month. Private classes pay €15–25 an hour directly to you, and government language assistant programmes pay around €700–1,100 a month for 12–16 teaching hours a week. Most teachers combine two or three of these.
Do I need to speak Spanish to teach English in Spain?
No. Most academies teach in English only and some actively prefer teachers who do not switch into Spanish in class. Speaking Spanish makes your daily life easier and helps with paperwork, but it is not a hiring requirement.
When is the best time to look for English teaching jobs in Spain?
Late August to October is the main hiring wave, when academies staff up for the school year. January is the second wave, with new groups and replacements for teachers who did not come back after Christmas. Arriving inside one of those two windows matters more than anything on your CV.
What do I need to start teaching English in Spain?
Three things: a recognised TEFL certificate, the legal right to work — an NIE number if you hold an EU passport, or a student visa if you do not — and to be physically in the country. Spanish academies hire face to face, so applying from abroad rarely works.
Which Spanish city is best for teaching English?
Madrid has by far the most work and is the easiest place to fill a timetable quickly. Valencia and Seville have the lowest rents, so the same hours leave you better off each month. Barcelona has the best lifestyle and the highest rent, and you compete against more foreign teachers there.
Can I teach English in Spain as a non-EU citizen?
Yes. The realistic route is the student visa: you enrol on a course, the visa comes with the right to work up to 30 hours a week, and you arrive with a legal status instead of a 90-day tourist countdown. Americans, Canadians, Australians and South Africans do this every year.
Still deciding?
The certificate is the step that unlocks the visa, the contract and the timetable — and it is the one you can start from wherever you are right now, before booking anything.
See course options and dates