How a Global Firm Transferred 14 Specialists to Spain — Without Missing a UGE Deadline

Situation

About the Client & Spain ICT Strategy

A Netherlands-headquartered engineering and IT consulting group with 3,800 employees across Europe needed to establish a centre of excellence in Madrid and scale a Barcelona delivery team — fast. Spain's ICT permit, governed by the Ley 14/2013 de Apoyo a los Emprendedores, was the only viable route.

‍

The company had previously handled individual relocations in-house, but a simultaneous multi-employee transfer to Spain exposed the complexity of the ICT framework: four distinct eligibility categories, distinct documentation requirements per profile, and Spain's notoriously tight UGE-CE processing windows.

The Ley de Emprendedores (Entrepreneur's Law, 2013, amended in 2022 and updated for 2026 compliance) introduced Spain's dedicated ICT route, processed exclusively by the UGE-CE — the central immigration unit for large companies and strategic collectives. Unlike local immigration offices, UGE-CE applies a standardised, accelerated 20-working-day target timeline, provided documentation is complete at submission.
‍

Challenges & Spain ICT Compliance

Transferring 14 employees simultaneously across three eligibility categories — into two different Spanish legal entities — surfaced a chain of compliance and logistical challenges that no spreadsheet could track reliably.

One early complication: the Barcelona-based receiving entity had only been active for eight months and lacked the financial documentation UGE-CE expects from an established employer. This required supplementary evidence of economic solidity — a scenario the HR team had not anticipated and had no template for.

Jobbatical stepped in to stabilise and standardise the client’s fragmented immigration operations by combining its global mobility platform with hands-on, country-specific expertise across all active markets. Instead of managing cases in silos, Jobbatical introduced a centralised system that created a single source of truth for case tracking, giving HR teams real-time visibility into timelines, milestones, and next steps across all eight countries.

Solution, Results & Impact — Jobbatical

Jobbatical was engaged six weeks before the target start date. Using its centralised immigration platform and a dedicated Spain immigration specialist, the team restructured the entire case workflow within 72 hours of onboarding.

The go-live date for the Madrid centre of excellence was met on schedule. The Barcelona delivery team was operational within four working days of the last permit resolution — a result the company's internal HR team described as "not achievable without Jobbatical's Spain-specific process knowledge."

For HR teams and global mobility managers planning Spain ICT transfers in 2026, the key lesson from this case is operational: the UGE-CE fast-track is genuinely fast — but only if every document is correct, every eligibility classification is defensible, and the family file sequencing is managed proactively. That is precisely where Jobbatical's Spain relocation service adds the most value.

‍

90 cases, 8 countries, €16,220 saved — and a talent rating of 4.8

Over twelve months, Jobbatical processed the full immigration caseload for this EOR provider's placed workers — delivering consistent, expert-grade outcomes across every market with no missed deadlines and no visa failures attributable to case management errors.

Before & after

The operational shift: from reactive patchwork to embedded expertise

‍