Living here · Guides
Spain has some of the best healthcare in Europe — and here on the coast, excellent private hospitals, English-speaking doctors and a pharmacy on nearly every corner. It is reassuringly good and, compared with home, reassuringly affordable. Here is how to get into the system, where to go, and what to know about your medication.
Which route is yours depends mostly on whether you work, draw a pension, or neither.
Almost everything starts with the padrón — registering your address at the town hall (empadronamiento). It is quick, and it is the document that unlocks most of the routes below and assigns your local health centre.
Employed or self-employed (autónomo), you pay into Social Security and are covered from registration — your family can be added as beneficiaries.
Ask your home country for an S1 form. It means your home system keeps paying while you're treated in Spain. You register the S1 with the INSS, then sign up at your health centre. (UK state pensioners still qualify for the S1 after Brexit.)
Legal residents can pay into public cover via the Convenio Especial — roughly €60/month under 65 and about €157/month at 65+, after a year of registered residence. Non-EU residents on most visas are required to hold private health insurance instead.
Most people who move here end up using a bit of each.
The public system is genuinely good, especially for serious and ongoing care — but appointments can take time and your local health centre often works mainly in Spanish. So a lot of foreign residents also take out private insurance, which is inexpensive here and buys speed, choice and English-speaking care for the everyday things. Many keep public cover for the big stuff and private for convenience.
The coast is unusually well served with private hospitals and English-speaking clinics.
One number, and it works in English.
Dial 112 for any emergency — ambulance, police or fire — and you can ask for an English-speaking operator. For urgent but not life-threatening problems, head to urgencias (A&E) at any hospital; the private hospitals above all run 24-hour emergency departments, as does the public Hospital Costa del Sol.
The green cross you'll never be far from — and genuinely useful.
Spanish pharmacists (farmacia) are highly trained and will sort a surprising amount on the spot, without a doctor, for everyday ailments. You're never far from one, and there's always a 24-hour pharmacy (farmacia de guardia) on rota — the nearest one is posted on every pharmacy door.
A Spanish doctor's prescription is dispensed straight away on the system. A prescription from another EU country can usually be filled too — provided the medicine is approved in Spain and the prescription names the active ingredient — but you pay the full price yourself (Spanish social security won't cover a foreign script). Non-EU prescriptions generally aren't accepted. For anything ongoing, the simplest path is to see a local doctor and move the prescription onto the Spanish system.
Bring enough for the first stretch plus a doctor's letter listing your medicines by their active ingredient, and arrange continuation with a doctor here early. If something needs refrigeration, plan the journey (a cool bag) and check a local pharmacy can supply the same thing before you run low.
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Moving here with a condition to manage, or just want to know the system is there? Tell us how you plan to live here and we'll help you set it up — doctor, insurance, the nearest hospital, all of it.
Talk to usGuide written October 2026. Spain's healthcare rules vary by region and by personal situation, and some are still being updated — always confirm the current details with your town hall, the INSS, your insurer or a Spanish doctor or pharmacist. This is general information, not medical or legal advice.
