Can you get your money back if the Spain non-lucrative visa is refused without a letter?

No paper, no refund

The answer came in person, about seven months after they had applied: "No podemos procesarlo." We can't process it.

Call them the Archers. It isn't their name. They had applied for Spain's non-lucrative visa, the one for people who live on savings, a pension or passive income and are not allowed to work, at a US consulate in the summer of 2024. Their income came from short-term holiday rentals, with no savings behind it. They had hired a well-known, highly rated firm in Spain to handle the application.

Then nothing came. No letter, no email, no tracking, and the consulate still had their passports. They travelled from another state to the consulate twice, in person, because nobody was answering.

The reason, when it came, was one word in their letter of intent. Writing about the rentals, they had used "gestionamos", "we manage". The consulate took that to mean they were managing the properties themselves. In fact they didn't live where the rentals were, and a team took care of everything. They had proof. The consulate didn't want to hear it. The firm they had paid had not caught the word.

The refusal was the first cost. The second came from how it was given. Because it was only ever spoken, they never received an official refusal document. Without one, there was nothing to appeal. And without one, the health insurance they had prepaid for the visa couldn't be refunded either, because the insurer needed official proof. That was $1,800. Their plan was to move to another state for a year and try again at a different consulate. The thread doesn't say how that turned out.

The replies were short. One member manages their own rental property and was approved by the same consulate. A family at a different consulate had been refused because their rental income wasn't accepted and their savings sat in an investment account; they moved the money to a new account, appealed, and were approved. Another member, still deciding, called it risky to give up work and pay for insurance and other fees with no assurance of approval.

No paper, no refund. That is the trap in the Archers' story, and it applies whether or not a firm is involved. Some costs are paid up front because the visa requires them: insurance, translations, a firm's fee. Getting any of it back can depend on a written refusal, and in this case the consulate never sent one.

This is one household's account, not legal advice. Consulates handle refusals and appeals differently, and the official source is the place to check before acting.

For anyone holding a quote, the question most quotes leave unanswered: if the file is refused over something the firm wrote or checked, what does the firm do next, and who pays for the second attempt?

A refusal you can't prove costs more than one you can.

For Spain's non-lucrative visa, we have fees from 8 firms on file. The typical fee is about €950. The middle half sit between €762 and €4,625. Some cover the application only, some the full package.

Have you ever been refused without a letter? What did you manage to get back?

Based on a real case, shared publicly in an online group and anonymised. Fees on file as of November 2026.