Moving Your Pet to Spain: Things to Think About

Overview

So, you are moving with your pets to Spain!  Congratulations.  We’ve only lived here about twelve weeks but we can already tell it was the right choice for our family.

And our family includes two small furry creatures who love to bask in the Spanish sun. Moving them was a source of great anxiety for me, so I want to share our experience. While the paperwork and deadlines feel daunting, it really all works out fine in the end. 

So, what is needed to move your pet to Spain?  Let me first of all share that we moved two adult Siamese cats to Spain. If you are moving a dog there may be differences, although I think this will still be useful to you. 

Your first task is figuring out air travel. We were not willing to fly any airline or cabin that does not allow pets in the cabin. This cuts out most European airlines and most business class. For instance, United allows 2 pets total in Coach and Economy Plus but none in most Business or Premium Economy (purple seats) cabins. So, to find flights efficiently we paid the surcharge for making reservations with a United agent rather than using the app as we normally would.

We also ended up not being able to fly direct, as the direct flights from DC to Madrid only run through around October 15th and we were leaving on the 22nd. We would recommend flying direct if you can, as the added time is not fun for the cats (and wasn’t fun for us, but more on that later). 

You also want to check with your chosen air carrier about their requirements for pet travel. United seemed pretty chill about the ones we chose (which were recommended by Wirecutter). However, on Facebook some US immigrants who have moved to Spain with their pets have advised taking the carrier and the critter out to the airport to have the airline approve both the carrier and the amount of room the pet has within it. United does have a size limit for carriers, because the carrier has to fit under the seat in front of you. They have a helpful page of information called “Traveling with Pets”and I imagine other airlines have this information as well.

Find a Vet Who Does International Certificates

Your second and equally important task is finding a vet who works with the US Department of Agriculture on international travel certificates. We lived in Washington, DC, home to tons of folks in the military, the foreign service, and international organizations and we found only TWO vets in the city that actually handled international travel. We were pretty surprised!

Our own vets—a wonderful cats-only practice in Virginia—stopped doing them because of how complicated the rules are for different countries. Basically you need a full-time staffer who keeps up on all of the different and changing requirements, and they just didn’t feel it was worth it. 

MicroChip and Vaccinate Your Pet

Once you find a vet, Spain’s rules are relatively straight forward but the number of deadlines can make your head spin.  The first thing you need to do is chip your pet and then they get a rabies shot after they are chipped. The chip must be 15 digits and also be ISO 11784 or 11785 compliant.  The chip compliance did not seem to be a big deal when we brought it up with vets, but it is an important detail to note, especially if you have a pet who was chipped somewhere using different standards. The chip and rabies needs to happen a minimum of 21 days before you land. So, I would advise doing this sooner rather than later. If your pet has already been chipped, and has a rabies vaccination that will be valid for at least a year from your arrival date, you can skip this step. 

Book an Exam to Obtain the Certificate

Now you need to focus on their actual travel paperwork. There are two ways that this can work, depending on your vet and his or her preferences.

For some vets, within 30 days of when you land in Spain, you will need an appointment with the international certs vet. They will be able to issue you the pet’s certificate and this is valid for 30 days. Then, exactly 10 days before you land in Spain, the certificate will need to be endorsed by the US Department of Agriculture. Many vets can do this online; others will have you take the paperwork and submit it yourself via Fedex.

In our case, the vet preferred to do everything at once, so we had to do an appointment for an exam very early in the morning 10 days before our arrival date. That afternoon, he submitted the paperwork for the endorsement electronically.

A couple of things to note here.  One is that your appointment needs to be timed based on when you land. Since this is often one day later than you leave, it’s important to make sure you are timing things around your landing date. It would really be awful to have moved with your pet to Spain and discover your paperwork was one day out of date! Second, if you are using a new vet to issue the certificate, find out whether or not they require a separate, earlier, “joining the practice” visit and also what documentation or additional things they need from your old vet in order to have what they need to issue the certificate. We had to bring in a stool sample for a parasite check, for instance, in addition to vaccination records and the records of their last exams. 

The other important detail was that the if the vet is doing this electronically, you will need a paid, self-addressed FedEx priority label printed out. So, after our 7:30 am certs appointment we took the cats back to our apartment and went to the nearest FedEx store to pay for a shipping label. This was then scanned and uploaded with the documentation.  Then, when the US Department of Agriculture had our certs ready, they printed out this label and used to overnight the certs back to us. 

All of this made us feel a little breathless, especially since the certs appointment was early  on a Thursday and the first of our two movers (the ones hauling away furniture donations) came on Thursday afternoon. We were also living in a hotel for a week before our flight, so we had the certs sent to our hotel. But in the end it all worked out, despite my being convinced that it wouldn’t. 

On the Day of Travel

So, in order to travel with them, we had to show some documents to United. They were most interested in rabies vaccines, so we had brought copies of the chip-and-vaccine docs, although they also glanced at the USDA documents. They then tied yellow paper tags onto each carrier that authorized the cats as fully paid, authorized, carryon passengers. 

So, how was it to fly with our cats?  Although we didn’t have any issues with our flights or our arrival to Spain, it still wasn’t fun. We gave both cats the anti-anxiety medicine recommended by the vet but it did zero good. Basically they meowed and screamed bloody murder for 60% of the time (Capri) and 80-85% of the time (Bali). Bali especially constantly tried to break free of his cage, etc. to the point where we need to get the carrier repaired before he can travel in it again. At the lounge in Newark we tried to interest them in food or water in a quiet room, but they were so mad they wouldn’t have anything to do with it. And all of this drama lasted from the minute they were put into their carriers at the hotel at 11:30 am until we got into our hotel room at around 6 am DC time (noon Madrid time). So that is around 18 hours of meowing!

Despite our vet assuring us the cats would be fine for that period of time, it was really hard to ignore them. Also note that our cats are healthy and only two years old. So, figure out how long your travel time will be (with generous padding on both ends) and ask your vet if this time in a carrier with potentially no food or water is okay. I did try to calm them by talking to them and petting them through the carrier but they would not have it. Finally I just put on my headphones and hoped the people around us didn’t hate us by the time the flight was over. 

Arriving at the Airport with Your Pet

And what was arrival to Madrid-Barajas like?  Spain had dropped its COVID requirements, so that was one less hurdle. Basically, we got our baggage as usual and then on the way out stopped at a special pets area. The employee  checked to make sure the pets were microchipped and then she looked over all their documents. She was mainly just making sure that the chip numbers on the documents matched the numbers that came up on her chip reader. She then recorded their entry and stamped the forms. I think we gave her the chip and vaccine documents, but I do not recall if she looked at them. 

The good news is the hotel room was sunny and they ate food (we brought several weeks of food from home) and drank water and took a nap within an hour of arrival. And they’ve been fine since. But if you are moving with cats, especially, be prepared for them to be unhappy. Despite what they may be telling you, however, they will be fine. 

Download our Handy Checklist

The most up to date source of current travel requirements for pets to Spain is the US Department of Agriculture:
https://www.aphis.usda.gov/aphis/pet-travel/by-country/eu/pettravel-spain