Applying for the DNV when you work for yourself
Freelancers, contractors and company owners work to a different set of rules from employees, and advice written for employees is how self-employed applications go wrong.
Start here
If you work for your own clients rather than for a single employer abroad, the DNV treats you as a professional. In practice that normally means registering as autónomo, the Spanish word for a self-employed worker, which places you in RETA — the part of Spanish Social Security that self-employed people belong to. What that means for your insurance, and for the timing of any cover around approval and registration, is set out on the pages below.
Two things to settle first. If you are partly employed and partly freelance, called a contractor in a contract that reads like employment, or a director of your own company, your classification is not settled and everything after it depends on it — start there. And if you believe your own Social Security situation is genuinely arguable, that is a question for somebody qualified, not for a workaround.
Where to go next
Registering as autónomo, and what it means →
What it means for your cover, and for your timing.
Am I employed or self-employed? →
Settle this before anything else.
Agreements between countries →
Why the answer differs depending on how you work.