Who controls the entrance of boats to Spanish waters?
A. The Guardia Civil is the division of the Spanish police in charge of controlling the entrance of foreign boats. This division compiles all the information from the different Spanish Marinas as a control on how long foreign boats have been in Spanish waters. For boats that belong to the Shengen Area* there is no limit of time to remain in one or another Shengen* country. It doesn’t matter if your boat moves from one Marina to another inside the country, it’s the accumulative time spent in Spain and the police can easily calculate how long any boat has been inside the country. The clock, however, starts again from zero on the 1st January each year, permitting another 183 days of residency. So it would be possible to have a full consecutive year in residency providing it straddled a new year, 183 days each side! The criteria for non EU citizens is very complex and outside the scope of this article. However if any reader requires information on boat residency in Spain as a non EU subjec
