Spanish wills: why the will you make next can revoke it

Almost everyone who owns a house in Spain is told to make a Spanish will, and it is sound advice. What usually comes with it is a sentence that is not true: that the Spanish will handles the Spanish assets, the will at home handles everything else, and the two run in parallel.

They do not run in parallel. Article 739 of the Spanish Civil Code says the earlier will is revoked by operation of law by a later valid one, unless the testator states in that later will that the earlier is to survive in whole or in part. Total revocation is the default. Survival is the exception, and it has to be written into the second document.

Which means the order in which the two wills were signed matters more than what either of them says about Spain.

The trap is the will you make next

The usual sequence is harmless-looking. A Spanish will is signed in front of a notary in Alicante or Málaga in the spring. Two years later the family solicitor at home redrafts the domestic will, because a grandchild arrived or an executor died. Nobody mentions Spain, because the domestic will does not deal with Spain.

Under article 739 that is enough. A later will that is valid revokes the earlier one entirely, and it does so whether or not it says a word about Spanish property. There is no rule in Spanish law that confines a will to the assets it happens to mention. Articles 764 and 912.2 allow a will to dispose of only part of an estate, with the rest passing under the intestacy rules, but neither of them narrows article 739.

The fix costs one sentence. The later will has to say that the earlier Spanish will survives. Not the other way round: a clause in the Spanish will announcing that it is not to be revoked by anything signed afterwards is worth nothing. Article 737 says every testamentary disposition is essentially revocable even where the testator declares the opposite, and clauses requiring particular words or signs before a revocation counts are treated as not written.

Which country decides whether the revocation worked

Regulation 650/2012 governs succession across most of the EU, and it has a separate rule for this question. The admissibility and substantive validity of a modification or revocation are judged under the law that would have applied to the succession if the testator had died on the day the modification or revocation was made. Recital 51 spells out the reasoning. In practice that points at the law of habitual residence on the date the second will was signed, not the date of death and not the law of the first will.

A choice of national law changes the picture, which is one of the reasons for making one. That mechanism is covered in Spanish inheritance tax.

There is a second layer that catches people with a Spanish connection. Where Spanish law applies, Spain is not one system: the Civil Code, Catalonia, Navarra, Aragón, Galicia, the Basque Country and the Balearics each have their own succession rules, and which one applies to a Spanish national turns on vecindad civil. How article 36 of the Regulation interacts with that for someone whose habitual residence is in Spain but who is not Spanish is genuinely unsettled. The Directorate General for Legal Security and Public Faith said as much in its resolution of 26 January 2026. Anyone being given a confident answer on this point is being given someone's preferred reading, not the law.

How much freedom a Spanish will actually leaves you

Common-law testators are used to leaving the estate as they like. Under the Spanish Civil Code two thirds of the estate belong to the children and descendants as their legítima: one third divided equally between them, one third that the parent may distribute unequally among children or grandchildren as a mejora, and only the last third free.

Where the regional law applies instead, it can look very different. In Catalonia the legítima is a quarter, and it is a claim for a sum of money that the heir can settle in cash rather than in property. In Navarra the legítima is formal: it is expressed in the will, but it carries no enforceable claim on the estate. Other regions with their own civil law set it differently again.

The point is not which regime is more generous. It is that the answer depends on connecting factors that are decided at death, and that a will drafted on the assumption of complete freedom of disposition can be partly unenforceable.

Signing one in Spain without speaking Spanish

This is simpler than it is usually made to sound.

Where the testator expresses their wishes in a language the notary does not know, an interpreter is required, and the testator chooses the interpreter. One, not two. The instrument is then written in both languages, with a note of which one the testator used. That second part applies even where the notary does speak the language: the open will is drawn up in the foreign language and in the official language the notary uses, in a single document, not two separate wills.

Witnesses are not needed. They stopped being a general requirement in 1991. Two witnesses attend only where the testator declares they cannot or do not know how to sign, or where the testator or the notary asks for them.

The handwritten will is not the shortcut it looks like

A holographic will, written and signed entirely by hand, is valid in Spain. It is also the version that generates the most trouble after a death.

Whoever holds it must present it to a competent notary within ten days of learning of the death, and is liable for the loss caused by failing to do so. It then has to be protocolised before a notary within five years of the death. Since 2015 that procedure has run through notaries rather than the courts, which made it faster, but it is still a procedure with deadlines, and it happens at the worst possible moment for the family.

Registration: what the register actually knows

When a will is signed before a Spanish notary, the notary reports it to the Registro General de Actos de Última Voluntad. That is automatic and it covers open wills, the deed of execution of closed wills, and any subsequent revocation. What is recorded is the identifying detail: who made it, before which notary, where and when, and what kind of instrument it was. Not the contents.

A will made abroad before a foreign official is not recorded there automatically. It can be, on request: someone living in or visiting another country who makes a will there may record the fact before the Spanish consulate, which passes the details to the register. Worth doing if the Spanish property is a real part of the estate.

One timing point the family discovers at the worst moment: a third party can only obtain the certificate once fifteen days have passed since the death.

Questions we get

Do I need a NIE to make a Spanish will?
No rule requires one for the will itself. It becomes unavoidable the moment anything happens to the property, which is why owners tend to have one already. What the NIE is and how to get it is in what is a NIE number in Spain.

I already have a Spanish will and I am updating my will at home. What do I tell the drafter?
That the Spanish will exists, its date, and the notary who authorised it, and that the new will must expressly preserve it. That is the whole intervention.

Does a Spanish will reduce the tax?
No. It changes who inherits and how quickly the paperwork moves, not what is due. The tax side is in Spanish inheritance tax.

Can I sign it before I complete on the house?
Yes, and there is a case for waiting until the deed is signed so the property can be identified properly. The purchase itself is covered in buying a second home in Spain.

Why Buenaley?

Buenaley is a Spanish law firm working with international clients. Two things around a Spanish property are ours to take off your hands, and the first one comes before everything else.

The first is the NIE. Nothing goes into your name at the registry without it, and it is the step that most often holds up a completion. We handle that through our NIE service, for every person who appears on the deed.

The second is the property itself: the registry and planning checks, the deposit contract before you sign it rather than after, the community debt position, the tax on completion, the deed at the notary, and the will signed at the same notary while you are there.

• NIE applications for every buyer, started on day one
• The deposit contract reviewed and negotiated before signature
• Registry, charges, community debts and planning status verified
• Completion under power of attorney if you cannot travel
• Fixed price, agreed in advance

Buying, or already an owner with a will at home that has never been checked against the Spanish one? Send us the dates of the two wills and we will tell you which of them is still standing. Or start with the NIE application, because nothing completes without it.