María Fernanda: Arraigo por Formación turned a Caracas nurse into a Spanish nurse

María Fernanda qualified as a professional nurse in Caracas and worked for four years at a hospital in Chacao before leaving in 2022 with her sister. She had been in Seville for eighteen months when she bought our book, working cash-in-hand at a care home for the elderly and sending the better part of her monthly earnings home. Her Venezuelan nursing degree was not recognised in Spain, and she had been told that homologación would take at least two years and cost her five thousand euros she did not have.

The chapter on Arraigo por Formación — introduced by Royal Decree 629/2022 and expanded by RD 1155/2024 — was the piece that redirected her entire plan. The route allows a person who has been in Spain for a minimum period and completes a regulated training programme to apply for a one-year renewable residence permit, with the right to work in the field of training. The book spells out which courses qualify, which do not, and how to read the SEPE catalogue to confirm before enrolling.

María Fernanda enrolled in a one-year Técnico Superior en Cuidados Auxiliares de Enfermería programme at a Seville FP centre that the book listed as reliably accepting Arraigo-track students. She paid 1,200 euros in course fees, borrowed from a cousin in Valencia, and completed the programme in eleven months. Three weeks before the course ended she filed her Arraigo por Formación application with the Subdelegación de Gobierno in Seville. The resolución arrived forty-two days later.

With the residence-and-work permit in hand, she applied to the Servicio Andaluz de Salud bolsa de trabajo as an auxiliar de enfermería. Her first call came within two months. She has been working at a public hospital on the outskirts of Seville since April and is in parallel preparing her file for the full homologación of her Venezuelan nursing degree, which — now that she is legally employed in the sector — will proceed with a different weight behind it.

The chapter she read is seven pages long. It cost her two euros of our 47-euro book. The savings over paying a lawyer for the same information were between two and four thousand euros. She writes to us every three months to tell us how her sister’s own Arraigo file is coming along. We are rooting for her.