Service dogs and emotional support animals in Spain: the one question Spanish law asks that American law forbids

Start with the thing that makes this subject different from every other relocation question. In the United States, the law protects a service dog team by refusing to ask. A business may put exactly two questions — is the dog required because of a disability, and what work or task has it been trained to perform — and may not require documentation, proof of certification, training records or licensing. There is no federal register, no national card, no government body that certifies a service dog, and the online "registries" that sell certificates and vests have no legal effect whatsoever. That absence is deliberate: Congress and the Department of Justice concluded that a documentation requirement would itself be the barrier.

Spain reached the opposite conclusion from the same starting point. Spanish law also treats denial of access as discrimination, but it delivers the protection by building a file: a defined disability threshold, a closed list of trained categories, an approved training body, a regional register, a card and a visible badge. The result is that the two systems are not stricter and looser versions of each other. They are inverted. What makes your team unquestionable in Denver is exactly what makes it unrecognisable in Málaga, until you rebuild the file on the Spanish side.

Two things need saying before the detail, because they decide whether the rest of this page is good news or bad. First, if your animal is an emotional support animal, Spain has no category for it — none, at any level of government — and the American ground beneath that letter has itself been shifting. Second, if you trained the dog yourself, which is lawful, common and fully protected in the United States, the Spanish rules as they stand contain no route for you. Everything in between is workable, and for a team trained by an Assistance Dogs International or International Guide Dog Federation member programme, better than most handlers expect: the Spanish state wrote a paragraph in 2025 aimed precisely at dogs from countries with no certification scheme, and the United States is such a country.

"The conversation I dread is the one that happens after the move, when somebody has already shipped the dog and already signed the lease. Almost everything here can be sequenced if we start early — the Spanish disability grade takes months and nothing else moves until it exists. What cannot be fixed afterwards is a dog that was trained by its owner or by a programme outside the two international federations, because the rule that lets an American dog in is written by reference to those federations and to nothing else. That is a question to ask before you choose the dog, not after you choose the country."

Two systems, one dog: why the paperwork problem is inverted

The American definition is at 28 CFR § 35.104 and § 36.104, in identical words for government and for businesses. A service animal is "any dog that is individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of an individual with a disability", and "other species of animals, whether wild or domestic, trained or untrained, are not service animals for the purposes of this definition". The exclusion that matters here is the last sentence of the definition, and it is worth quoting accurately because it is almost always quoted in truncated form: "The crime deterrent effects of an animal's presence and the provision of emotional support, well-being, comfort, or companionship do not constitute work or tasks for the purposes of this definition."

The enforcement mechanism is the refusal to inquire. Under § 35.136(f) and § 36.302(c)(6), a public entity or place of public accommodation "shall not ask about the nature or extent of a person's disability", may ask only whether the animal is required because of a disability and what work or task it has been trained to perform, and "shall not require documentation, such as proof that the animal has been certified, trained, or licensed as a service animal". Separately, miniature horses are dealt with by their own provision — § 35.136(i) and § 36.302(c)(9) — as a reasonable modification subject to four assessment factors, rather than by being folded into the definition.

Now hold that next to Spain. Spanish law defines an assistance dog by its training and by who did the training: a dog that, having passed a selection process, "has completed its training at a body officially recognised or approved by the competent administration", acquiring the aptitudes needed to assist a person with a disability. The user is defined by a number — a recognised degree of disability of 33% or more. The dog is defined by a category from a closed list. The relationship between the two is registered, carded and badged. A business in Spain may ask to see the card and the badge; what it may not do is impose any condition beyond those the law sets.

So the American handler's instinct — "they cannot ask me for papers" — is correct at home and wrong in Spain, and the American handler's fear — "my dog has no certificate, so Spain will never accept it" — is usually wrong too, for a reason set out below. The productive way to think about it is that you are not seeking recognition of an American status. There is no American status to recognise. You are making a first application, in Spain, using your dog's training provenance as the evidence.

The emotional support animal: three separate losses, in travel order

An emotional support animal is not a weaker service dog. In law it is a different thing, and for a handler moving from the United States to Spain it loses its footing three separate times, at three separate points of the journey.

In the air, in 2021. The Department of Transportation's final rule Traveling by Air With Service Animals (85 FR 79742, 10 December 2020) took effect on 11 January 2021 and rewrote 14 CFR Part 382. The regulation now defines a service animal as "a dog, regardless of breed or type, that is individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of a qualified individual with a disability", and adds that "animal species other than dogs, emotional support animals, comfort animals, companionship animals, and service animals in training are not service animals for the purposes of this part". Airlines may treat an emotional support animal as a pet, and in practice they do. For the service dog that does qualify, the same subpart sets the terms: a carrier may require the DOT Service Animal Air Transportation Form (§ 382.75(a)) and, on a segment scheduled to take eight hours or more, a relief attestation (§ 382.75(b)); it need not accept more than two service animals for one passenger (§ 382.74); it may not demand advance notice more than 48 hours ahead (§ 382.75(g)); and it must allow the dog on the handler's lap or in the handler's foot space, but not encroaching into another passenger's space (§ 382.77(a)). That regime is unchanged as at August 2026.

In American housing, in 2026. The Fair Housing Act was for years the last stronghold of the emotional support animal, because HUD guidance treated an "assistance animal" more broadly than the ADA and asked housing providers to consider a request for an untrained comfort animal as a reasonable accommodation. On 6 April 2026 HUD published a notification of withdrawal at 91 FR 17291, withdrawing eight FHEO guidance documents with effect from 17 September 2025 — among them FHEO-2020-01 on assessing a request for an animal as a reasonable accommodation, and FHEO 2013-01 on service and assistance animals in housing. The notice states that the withdrawn documents "have been removed from active use and should not be relied upon as authoritative". A HUD enforcement guidance dated 22 May 2026 replaced them. Be precise about what this does and does not mean: the statute has not changed, Congress has not acted, there has been no notice-and-comment rulemaking, private Fair Housing Act suits and Section 504 and state and local fair-housing laws are untouched. What changed is federal enforcement policy. But the direction of travel matters for anyone about to argue an ESA case on either side of the Atlantic.

In Spain, entirely. There is no legal category of emotional support animal in Spanish law. The state definition in Law 7/2023 is built on completed training at an officially recognised body. Royal Decree 409/2025 lists five categories, every one of them defined by what the dog has been trained to do. Andalusia's Law 11/2021 defines assistance dogs as those trained at officially approved centres and expressly excludes therapy dogs and dogs "used for any other purpose, of an assistance or support character, different from those provided for in article 4". The Valencian Community's Law 7/2025 goes further and excludes them by name: the law does not apply to "the use of dogs intended to provide a function of emotional support to persons affected by personality disorders or mental illness". The nearest thing to an exception proves the rule — Royal Decree 409/2025 art. 4.1.e) describes dogs for people with autism spectrum disorder as providing "specific assistance and emotional support", and even those must be trained.

The border does not care that your dog works

This surprises people, so take it plainly: at the animal-health layer, an Assistance Dogs International-trained service dog is treated exactly like a family labrador. Assistance status is irrelevant to entry. It becomes relevant only afterwards, under Spanish access law.

The legal basis changed in 2026. Regulation (EU) No 576/2013, the instrument every older guide cites, ceased to apply on 21 April 2026; from 22 April 2026 non-commercial movement of pet animals sits under Part VI of Regulation (EU) 2016/429, the Animal Health Law, supplemented by Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/131 and implemented by Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/705 for the certificate and declaration models and Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/636 for the country lists. If you are reading advice that talks about "the EU pet passport regulation 576/2013", it is describing a repealed regime.

What that means for a dog travelling from the United States to Spain, as set out in the European Commission's own published guidance:

• The animal must travel with its owner or a person authorised in writing, and under the owner's responsibility; the ordinary limit is five animals per traveller.
• An implanted microchip. A tattoo counts only if applied before 3 July 2011.
• A rabies vaccination given when the dog was at least twelve weeks old, on or after the date the microchip was implanted, with the certificate valid only from twenty-one days after completion of the primary course, and boosters kept within the previous validity.
• No rabies antibody titration test, because the United States is a listed territory for these purposes, together with American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. This is the single biggest saving, and it is why a US move is far easier than a move from an unlisted country.
• No tapeworm treatment for entry into Spain — that requirement applies to Finland, Ireland, Malta, Northern Ireland and Norway.
• An animal health certificate on the current model, issued by an official or authorised veterinarian and then endorsed by the competent authority, which in the United States means USDA APHIS. It is valid for ten days from issue until the checks on entry, and then for six months of onward movement inside the EU, or until the rabies vaccination expires, whichever comes first. Certificates on the old model remain acceptable if issued before 1 October 2026.
• A written declaration that the movement is non-commercial.
• Entry through a designated travellers' point of entry, contacting the competent authority there for documentary and identity checks. Only animals from a short list of neighbouring European territories are exempt, and the United States is not on it. Spain's current list of points of entry is published by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, and it changes — check the list in force rather than an airport name you read on a forum.

Is there a derogation for assistance dogs anywhere in that? We looked, and the honest answer is that the Commission's official guidance identifies none: the only exceptions to the travellers'-point-of-entry rule are for animals from the listed neighbouring territories and for registered military and search-and-rescue dogs. Guide dogs and assistance dogs are not mentioned. Plan on the full procedure.

Going back to visit. The CDC rules under 42 CFR § 71.51 changed on 1 August 2024, and this catches returning retirees. Spain is not on the CDC's high-risk list for dog rabies, so the light route applies: a CDC Dog Import Form receipt, obtained free online before travel, valid for six months and reusable while the country of departure does not change; the dog healthy on arrival; the dog at least six months old; and a microchip that is readable by a universal scanner — the widely repeated "ISO microchip" requirement does not appear in the regulation, so ask for universal-scanner readability rather than a standard number. Entry is permitted at any airport, seaport or land border. One trap for a Spain-based client: Ceuta and Melilla are listed separately by the CDC as high-risk. A dog that has been in either within the previous six months falls into the high-risk track, notwithstanding that it "has been in Spain". If you take the dog on a day trip across, you have changed your paperwork for six months.

What Spain actually recognises: the 2025 state regulation

Until recently the honest answer to "what does Spain require?" was "it depends which of the seventeen autonomous communities you land in". That is no longer the whole picture. Royal Decree 409/2025 of 27 May (BOE-A-2025-10490, in force 17 June 2025) is the first Spanish state-level regulation of assistance dogs. It rests on the constitutional power to set the basic conditions guaranteeing equality, it implements the mandate in article 29.6 of Law 7/2023, and it repealed the 1983 guide-dog decree that had been the only national rule for forty years.

It does four things that matter to a foreign handler.

It fixes who counts as a user. Article 2.b) defines the user by reference to a recognised degree of disability of 33% or more under the general disability statute, while allowing the regions to recognise additional users, in particular people needing medical-alert dogs or dogs for autism spectrum disorder.

It fixes the categories. Article 4.1 sets a minimum national list of five: guide dog, sound-alert dog for deaf or deafblind people, service dog assisting with daily living activities for a person with a physical disability, medical-alert dog for people whose condition brings recurrent episodes with sensory disconnection, and dogs for people with autism spectrum disorder. Regions may create variants within those categories, not outside them.

It fixes access, nationally. Article 7.1 gives access to "any space", and then names them: beaches at any time of year, recreational areas, swimming-pool enclosures and water parks, museums, theatres, educational, cultural, health and sports centres, retail premises, hospitality and restaurants, tourist accommodation — with no additional payment permitted. It covers the private communal spaces the user reaches as owner, tenant, member or on any other title; the workplace, on the same terms as other staff, with the dog at the handler's side at all times, expressly treated as a working condition for occupational risk-prevention purposes; collective transport, with priority use of disability-reserved spaces, the dog not counted against vehicle capacity or any dog quota, and no ticket or supplement chargeable for the dog; and shelters and care services. The permitted refusals are narrow — evident lack of adequate hygienic and sanitary conditions, imminent and serious risk to physical integrity, and the specific air-transport exceptions — and reasons must be given in writing on request. Absolute exclusions are limited to food-handling and staff-only areas, operating theatres and specifically restricted hospital areas, the water itself in pools and water parks, and the interior of fairground attractions.

It makes recognition portable inside Spain. Three separate articles say so: recognition of the binding unit by one autonomous community "shall be valid throughout the national territory" (art. 3.2), accreditation of a training body likewise (art. 5.4), and recognition of a dog's status as an assistance dog likewise (art. 6.3). Move from Valencia to Málaga and you do not start again.

Two corrections to what is often written about this decree. It does not create a national registry or a national card — registries remain regional, with a minimum common dataset (art. 3.3). And refusal of access is routed, by article 9, into the general disability statute as an act violating the rights to accessibility, equality and non-discrimination, rather than being punished by the decree itself.

The American route: the paragraph written for countries like yours

Here is the provision that decides most American cases, and it is easy to miss because it sits in the registration article rather than in a heading about foreigners. Article 3.3 of Royal Decree 409/2025 deals with dogs coming from abroad, and it splits them by asking a question about the country, not about the dog:

Read those two paragraphs against the American position. The United States has no federal or state certification scheme for service dogs — indeed the ADA affirmatively forbids requiring certification. The United States therefore falls into the second limb: the country with no recognition procedure. The route Spain provides for you is membership of ADI or IGDF, and nothing else is asked of the dog's provenance.

That produces a clean split, and it is worth being blunt about which side of it you are on:

We are not going to invent a workaround for the second and third rows. If you are owner-trained, the realistic options are to look at whether an ADI or IGDF member programme in Spain or elsewhere in Europe will assess and train a dog for you, to plan life in Spain around your dog being legally a pet, or to take advice on the specific facts before committing to the move. What we can say with confidence is that nothing in the current rules lets a Spanish official recognise an owner-trained dog, and that a handler who arrives assuming otherwise will find out at the worst possible moment.

Andalusia in practice: the disability certificate comes first

Andalusia is where most of this firm's clients land, and it has recently been rebuilt. Law 11/2021 of 28 December (BOE-A-2022-759, in force 23 January 2022) regulates assistance dogs for people with disabilities in Andalusia and expressly repealed both the 1998 guide-dog law and the 2005 decree on the guide-dog badge. Its implementing rules arrived only in 2025: Decree 94/2025 of 16 April (BOJA 76 of 23 April 2025) came into force on 24 June 2025 and sets the procedure, the badge, the binding-unit card, the training centres and the Andalusian register.

Andalusia recognises six categories — guide dog, service dog, sound-signalling dog, alert dog (for diabetes, epilepsy or another recognised condition), dog for people with autism spectrum disorder, and retired dog — with power to add more by ministerial order. The application goes to the regional social services department and is resolved by its provincial body. It takes up to three months, and administrative silence means rejection, so this is not a file to leave running unattended.

What the file needs:

• A Spanish degree of disability of 33% or more, evidenced by the certificate. Exceptionally, where the condition carries no recognised disability status or the assessment is still pending, an official medical certificate.
• A certificate from the training centre, plus a responsible declaration. Centres based in Andalusia must themselves be officially recognised and registered.
• The animal file: microchip and registration, and the health conditions of article 15 — sterilisation, vaccination, negative results for leishmaniasis, leptospirosis, brucellosis and campylobacteriosis, quarterly deworming and an annual veterinary review.
• Civil liability insurance with minimum cover of €120,000 per claim (art. 14).

What comes out is an official badge worn visibly on the harness or collar and a carnet de la unidad de vinculación carrying the handler's name and DNI or NIE, the dog's name and assistance type, the registration number and a photograph of dog and handler, issued as an electronic card. Establishments may ask to see them, but "may not impose or require any conditions other than those established in this law". Recognition then lasts for the animal's life, subject to suspension or loss, and is entered in the Andalusian Register of Assistance Dogs.

Refusal of access is not a soft rule. Denial in a privately owned place, or charging for access, is a grave infringement carrying a fine of €301 to €2,000. Denial in a public place or where a public service is provided is muy grave, €2,001 to €10,000, as is intentionally depriving a handler of the dog. Improperly demanding documentation or imposing extra conditions is a leve infringement of up to €300.

One more negative finding, and it is important enough to state flatly: a US disability determination has no legal effect in Spain. Royal Decree 888/2022 contains no mechanism for homologating, validating or recognising a foreign disability certificate, and the general disability statute assimilates only Spanish social security categories. A VA rating, an SSDI award or ADA documentation from a US state is admissible as supporting medical evidence before the Spanish assessment team, and it is worth translating and bringing — but it is evidence, not status. We cover that process in more detail in our page on the Spanish disability certificate for US retirees.

Two further wrinkles specific to Andalusia. The regional statute is not silent on foreign dogs: article 2.k) treats as training centres, among others, those belonging to "a European or international assistance-dog association or federation", and the third additional provision lets people staying temporarily in Andalusia rely on an official accreditation from another regional administration or another country, or on accreditations issued by centres belonging to such a federation — while requiring anyone who takes up residence in Andalusia with a dog accredited elsewhere to apply for Andalusian recognition. But the 2025 decree, which is the operative procedure, says nothing at all about foreign centres or foreign accreditations. It simply asks for "a certificate from the training centre". That silence is where the friction sits in practice, and it is why the ADI or IGDF membership evidence should be assembled, translated and, where appropriate, apostilled before the application rather than in response to a request.

Housing: the stairwell yes, the tenancy no

American handlers arrive with a well-founded expectation that housing is where assistance-animal law is strongest, because in the United States it was. Spain does not work that way, and the difference is easy to state.

Spain's Urban Tenancies Act of 1994 does not contain the words "animal" or "dog" anywhere. Its only disability provision, article 24, lets a tenant carry out works inside the dwelling needed to make it usable given a disability or age over seventy, after written notice to the landlord and subject to restoring it at the end of the tenancy if required. The Horizontal Property Act of 1960 likewise contains no reference to animals; its accessibility provision, article 10.1.b), makes works for reasonable accessibility adjustments obligatory and free of the need for a prior meeting resolution — but it is about physical works, not about animals.

What the assistance-dog rules do cover is the communal space. Royal Decree 409/2025 art. 7.1.b) reaches private spaces of collective use to which the handler has access as owner, tenant, member or on any other title; Andalusia's article 8.2.a) expressly names "the common areas and installations of buildings, properties or developments under horizontal property, co-ownership or timeshare", plus tourist accommodation buildings. Neither reaches the interior of the let dwelling, and neither says anything about a no-pets clause. The words vivienda and domicilio do not appear in the Andalusian access article.

The practical consequence: your dog's protected territory in Spain is the lobby, the lift, the stairwell, the pool enclosure, the street and every public-facing business — but the lease itself is a matter of contract. There is a serious argument to be built on the general disability statute, whose article 2.m) defines reasonable adjustments and whose article 23.2.c) requires complementary supports including "personal or animal support" — that last phrase being the hook the 2025 decree itself relies on — and whose article 81.3 makes discriminatory acts and refusal to adopt reasonable adjustments a grave infringement, with fines from €301 up to €1,000,000. Royal Decree 193/2023 art. 13 adds that assistance dog users "may not be discriminated against in any way in the access to and use of goods and services available to the public". But we found no reported authority applying any of that to a landlord's no-pets clause, either way, and we are not going to tell you it is settled. Negotiate the clause in the lease, in writing, before you sign. Our guide to renting long term in Spain as a foreigner covers how those clauses are usually drafted.

Flights, trains and taxis

Flights into and within the EU. Regulation (EC) No 1107/2006 on the rights of disabled air passengers puts the obligation in its annex rather than an article. Annex II, first indent, requires "carriage of recognised assistance dogs in the cabin, subject to national regulations"; article 10 requires that assistance to be provided without additional charge; and article 7(2) provides that where use of a recognised assistance dog is required, "this shall be accommodated provided that notification of the same is made to the air carrier or its agent or the tour operator in accordance with applicable national rules". Spain's 2025 decree interlocks with this expressly: air access is conditional on that prior notification. Note the two words doing the work — recognised and subject to national regulations. A revision of the EU passenger-rights package that would define "recognised assistance dog" in EU law for the first time is under negotiation and is not law; ignore anyone presenting it as such.

Trains. Regulation (EU) 2021/782 on rail passengers' rights provides at article 23(1)(c) that "an assistance dog shall be permitted to accompany them in accordance with any relevant national law", requires particular attention to the needs of assistance dogs during disruption (art. 20(5)), and — unusually and usefully — makes railway undertakings and station managers liable for the loss of or injury to an assistance dog, covering the cost of replacement or treatment and reasonable temporary replacement costs (art. 25(1)).

Taxis and VTC. This is where the Spanish rules are sharper than most people expect. Law 7/2023 art. 29.1 says that for ordinary pets, taxi and private-hire drivers shall facilitate entry "at their discretion", save for duly justified circumstances. Article 29.6 then removes that discretion for assistance dogs: access "shall not be discretionary nor shall they be included in access quotas", and "in any event assistance dogs may access any space accompanying the person they assist". Andalusia's article 7.r) names the modes explicitly — urban and interurban road passenger services, private-hire vehicles with driver, taxi, train, metro and tram within the region's competence — and refusal by a private operator is a grave infringement, by a public operator or public service muy grave. We have not surveyed individual municipal taxi ordinances and make no claim about any particular city.

The breed bar nobody warns Americans about

A short section, because it is short and because it ends some plans. Spain's potentially dangerous dog regime — Law 50/1999 and Royal Decree 287/2002 — remains in force in 2026. Law 7/2023 did not repeal it and does not mention it, contrary to a good deal of what is written online. The regime brings a municipal licence, muzzle and short-leash requirements in public, and its own civil liability insurance.

The consequence for a handler is direct: Andalusia's article 19.4 bars breeds classified in Annex I of Royal Decree 287/2002 from obtaining assistance-dog status at all. Pit bull terrier, Staffordshire bull terrier, American Staffordshire terrier, rottweiler, dogo argentino, fila brasileiro, tosa inu and akita inu are the named breeds. Psychiatric service dogs and mobility dogs of these types are not rare in the United States, and a handler with such a dog will not obtain Andalusian recognition however impeccable the training. Check the breed against the annex before anything else; it is a five-minute question that can save a year of planning.

One related loose end worth knowing about: Law 7/2023 art. 30 imposes a training course for dog owners and a civil liability insurance duty on all dog owners, but both were left to be fixed by implementing regulation — the course content and the insurance sum — and no state regulation developing that article appears in the official record as at 29 August 2026. The statutory duties exist; their content does not yet. Andalusia's €120,000 assistance-dog cover, by contrast, is fixed and operative.

What to do, in order

1. Answer the training question first. Was the dog trained by a full member of Assistance Dogs International or the International Guide Dog Federation? Get that in writing from the programme, with its membership status stated. If the answer is no, stop and take advice before anything else in the plan is committed.
2. Check the breed against Annex I of Royal Decree 287/2002.
3. Decide visitor or resident. If you are coming for a season and remaining non-resident, art. 7.7 of the 2025 decree may give you access with no Spanish application at all. If you are moving, you are making a Spanish application and the timeline below applies.
4. Run the animal-health file in parallel with the visa: microchip, rabies timing, the current-model health certificate endorsed by USDA APHIS within its ten-day window, the non-commercial declaration, and the current list of Spanish travellers' points of entry. Nothing about this file is affected by the dog being a service dog.
5. On arrival: padrón first. The disability assessment is competence-based on where you are registered and actually resident, so the empadronamiento is the gate to everything that follows. Our guide to the padrón sets out how.
6. Apply for the Spanish degree of disability under Royal Decree 888/2022, bringing translated US medical evidence — not as status, as evidence. Up to six months; effective from the date of application.
7. Apply for assistance-dog recognition to the regional social services department, with the training centre certificate, the disability certificate, the animal health file and the €120,000 insurance. Up to three months; silence means refusal, so diary it.
8. Deal with the lease separately and in advance. The badge does not override a no-pets clause. Negotiate it into the contract.
9. Keep the card and badge on the dog. Businesses may ask for them and may ask for nothing else.

General information, not legal advice, and not United States legal advice in particular. This page states Spanish and European Union law as at 29 August 2026 and United States federal law as published by the authorities named, and must be confirmed for your own circumstances before you rely on it. Primary sources reviewed: 28 CFR §§ 35.104, 35.136, 36.104 and 36.302; 14 CFR §§ 382.3, 382.74, 382.75 and 382.77, and the Department of Transportation final rule at 85 FR 79742 of 10 December 2020; the HUD notification of withdrawal at 91 FR 17291 of 6 April 2026; 42 CFR § 71.51 and the Centers for Disease Control's published dog-importation guidance; Regulation (EU) 2016/429, Part VI, with Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/131 and Commission Implementing Regulations (EU) 2026/705 and 2026/636, and the European Commission's published guidance on bringing a pet from a non-EU country; Regulation (EC) No 1107/2006, article 7(2), article 10 and Annex II; Regulation (EU) 2021/782, articles 20, 23 and 25; Royal Decree 409/2025 of 27 May, articles 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 and its final and derogating provisions, consolidated text; Law 7/2023 of 28 March, articles 3.cc), 29 and 30 and its first additional provision; Royal Decree 193/2023, article 13; Royal Decree Legislative 1/2013, articles 2, 4, 23, 66, 81 and 83; Law 11/2021 of 28 December of Andalusia, articles 2, 4, 7, 8, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 22, 25, 26, 27 and 28 and its third additional and derogating provisions, with Decree 94/2025 of 16 April, articles 2, 3, 8, 9, 10 and 14 to 16; Law 7/2025 of 26 December of the Valencian Community; Law 19/2009 of Catalonia and Law 2/2015 of the Community of Madrid; Law 50/1999 and Royal Decree 287/2002 with its Annex I; Law 29/1994, article 24; Law 49/1960, article 10; Royal Decree 888/2022, articles 1 and 4 to 11; and Royal Decree 1155/2024 of 19 November, articles 61 to 64. Points we could not verify and have deliberately not asserted: the article text of Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/131 itself, which we could not retrieve — the entry requirements above are stated on the authority of the European Commission's own guidance pages, and we make no claim by article number about what that regulation does or does not contain, including as to any assistance-dog derogation; the current list of Spain's designated travellers' points of entry, which is published as a downloadable document by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and should be checked before travel rather than taken from this page; the internal wording of the HUD enforcement guidance of 22 May 2026, which we describe only by its published effect; whether an accreditation from a US programme that is not an ADI or IGDF full member is treated as accreditation "by another country" for the purposes of article 7.7 of Royal Decree 409/2025, on which we found no published criterion; whether any Spanish court or administrative authority has applied the reasonable-adjustment provisions of Royal Decree Legislative 1/2013 to a landlord's no-pets clause, on which we located no authority in either direction; and the content of any municipal taxi or transport ordinance, which we have not surveyed. Where this page states that no route or no authority exists, that is a statement about what we found, not a guarantee that nothing exists.