Homologacion de Titulo

How to legalize documents on education (diplomas) for Spain?

In Spain, it is the Ministry of Science and Innovation of Spain (MSIS) (Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion) that is responsible for this procedure. The recognition procedure can take from 6 months to 2 years.

The MSIS recognizes not the diploma itself as a document, but the qualification stated therein, i.e. whether it corresponds to a university title in Spain.

This procedure is called Homologacion de Titulo.

Qualification is recognized only if the education courses taken in a Russian university are fully consistent with the education courses of Spanish universities. This course-matching procedure is called Convalidacion de Estudios.

Once you have passed this course-matching procedure, your courses can be recognized in Spain fully, or partially, in which case you will need to attend a certain number of class hours, or not recognized at all, in which case you will need to attend a full course of study.

But before submitting documents to the Ministry of Science and Innovation of Spain, you need your documents properly prepared and legalized (legalizacion de diploma). First of all, you need to have the originals of your documents on education apostilled. If the documents are issued in the Russian Federation, they can only be apostilled in the Russian Federation. Once the documents on education have been certified as authentic and apostilled, they need to be translated into Spanish. The last and first name in the translation must be spelled the same way as in the foreign passport of the document holder (if the last name has not changed). The original documents on education, photocopies and translation thereof shall be submitted to the consular department of the Spanish Embassy in Moscow. The documents shall be legalized according to the requirements of the consular department.

For more on obtaining services from the consular department of the Spanish Embassy in Moscow, see HERE.