What menaje de casa actually covers
Menaje de casa — literally "household goods" — is the customs exemption that lets new residents bring their personal belongings into Spain from outside the EU without paying import duty or VAT. It covers furniture, personal effects, and household items that were genuinely part of your household before the move — it is not a general-purpose exemption for buying new goods abroad and shipping them in duty-free. Customs officials expect the shipment to look like an actual household relocation, not a bulk import.
Label everything as menaje de casa on the shipping paperwork, not as commercial freight — a shipment coded incorrectly at origin is one of the most common reasons this exemption gets denied or delayed at the Spanish side, regardless of what's actually inside the boxes.
The two timing rules that matter most
Two separate clocks govern eligibility, and missing either one can cost you the exemption entirely:
- Your own residence abroad: you generally need to show you resided outside the EU customs territory for at least the 12 consecutive months immediately before your move.
- How long you've owned the goods: the items being imported generally need to have been in your possession for at least 6 months before the transfer — this is why customs paperwork typically asks for the approximate purchase date of major items, not just their value.
On the Spanish side, you generally need to file the exemption request within the first 12 months of establishing residency, though it's possible to request it up to 6 months before your move if you can demonstrate you're genuinely relocating and provide the required guarantee.
What documentation you'll need
Expect to provide a detailed itemized inventory of everything being imported, with an estimated value and approximate purchase date for each item or category, plus proof of your new Spanish residency. Your empadronamiento certificate is commonly used to establish the date your Spanish residency began, which is why registering your address promptly after arrival matters for more than just the reasons covered in our empadronamiento guide.
Once granted, the exemption comes with a restriction worth knowing about upfront: imported goods generally can't be sold, rented, loaned, or otherwise transferred without notifying customs until 12 months have passed since the goods were released for free circulation in Spain. This is meant to stop the exemption being used as a backdoor for a commercial import, and customs can revisit the exemption if it's violated.
Planning the shipment itself
Because the exemption depends on documented timing rather than just paperwork completeness, it's worth engaging a removals company experienced with Spanish customs specifically, rather than a general international mover — the customs declaration and inventory need to match the exemption's requirements exactly, and errors here are far more common with movers who don't handle Spain-bound shipments regularly. If you're also coordinating a pet's EU entry paperwork, keep the two timelines separate — they run on entirely different rules.