Concept
ASISA — the legal entity Asistencia Sanitaria Interprovincial de Seguros, S.A.U. — is a Spanish health insurer authorised and supervised by the DGSFP, the national insurance regulator. It works on a service model: rather than reimbursing your bills, it gives you direct access to its own network of doctors and clinics. For relocation the relevant product is ASISA Salud, a full private policy that meets the medical-cover condition for Spanish residence permits, including the Digital Nomad Visa.
🍓 In a residence file an ASISA policy does one job: it proves medical cover equivalent to the Spanish public system. It is not evidence of income, and it says nothing about your tax residency.
Why the visa asks for a policy like this
The international-teleworker route was created by Ley 28/2022 and is decided centrally by the UGE-CE, the migration unit for large companies and strategic groups, normally within about twenty working days. The first authorisation runs for up to three years. One of its conditions is health cover for the entire stay, and the law accepts two different ways to satisfy it.
The first way is full private insurance with a company authorised to operate in Spain. The second is enrolment in the Spanish Social Security system, or a certificate of cover if your home country has a bilateral social-security agreement with Spain. ASISA sits on the private-insurance side, next to providers such as DKV, Adeslas and Sanitas.
What UGE Requires from an Insurance Policy
Unidad de Grandes Empresas y Colectivos Estratégicos (UGE) requires:
- Medical coverage for the entire period of the permit;
- Coverage comparable to the Spanish national healthcare system;
- Without significant co-payments and waiting periods;
- A policy for each applicant and family members in the immigration file.
UGE explicitly states that the following are not accepted:
- travel insurance;
- reimbursement-only policies;
- policies with significant co-payments or waiting periods.
ASISA as a Provider
ASISA has operated since 1971 and is one of the largest health insurers in Spain, with roughly 2.9 million policyholders. It is owned by Lavinia, a cooperative of more than ten thousand doctors, so the clinicians who deliver the care also own the company. It is a long-standing provider for the civil-servant mutual funds — MUFACE, ISFAS and MUGEJU — which tells you how the public sector and the regulator regard it.
The defining feature is the service model. You go to a clinic in the ASISA network, show the policy, and the insurer settles directly: no paying upfront, no claim forms, no waiting for a refund. The trade-off is that your care happens inside the network, so its quality where you actually live matters more than the headline premium.
In practice the network is what you are buying. ASISA runs one of the widest private medical networks in the country — over a thousand hospitals, clinics and diagnostic centres and tens of thousands of practitioners — but its density varies by region, which is exactly what the checklist below is for.
What to Check in the Policy
- Composition of insured persons—correspondence with the family composition in the immigration file;
- Validity period—coverage for the permit period;
- Coverage—sin copagos, sin carencia (no co-payments, no waiting periods);
- Medical network—which clinics are available in the region of residence;
- Territory—Spain and preferably EU.
Registration and Access to Services
ASISA provides an app and a personal account for using the policy: booking appointments, holding your digital policy card, and contacting the insurer. For the residence file itself you only need the insurance certificate, and an electronic copy is fine; the app matters later, once you start using the cover.
More details on working with the ASISA app and personal account—separate technical instructions in Asisa App Registration.
Where ASISA Is Suitable
- applicants for Digital Nomad Visa and their family members;
- families with children, especially if there is a convenient ASISA clinic in the region of residence;
- Spanish residence permit programs requiring medical coverage.
Where It's Not Suitable / What to Pay Attention To
- if there is no good clinic in the ASISA network in the region of residence—DKV or another provider with a wider network may be more convenient;
- copago or carencia in the policy—UGE may refuse;
- if you will be enrolled in Spanish Social Security — usually autónomos under RETA — a private policy is no longer mandatory for the file, so buying one may be unnecessary, though some applicants still keep ASISA for faster private access.
ASISA, DKV or another provider
Among service-model insurers the realistic shortlist is ASISA, DKV, Adeslas and Sanitas. All of them issue policies the UGE accepts once they are written sin copagos and sin carencias, so the certificate rarely decides anything. The network does: which insurer has the clinics and specialists you want near home, and whose app you find less irritating. ASISA is strongest around its own hospitals; in a city where a competitor is denser, that competitor wins on convenience even when the paperwork looks identical.
Bottom line
ASISA is a solid, regulator-friendly way to meet the health condition of the Spanish teleworker permit, as long as two things hold: the policy is issued sin copagos and sin carencias for the full period, and the network is genuinely good where you will live. Before buying, settle the prior question — whether you need private cover at all, or whether Social Security enrolment will carry the file for you.