Insurance Blog Spain. Expat News & Health Articles

Pet Insurance Spain 2025. New Animal Welfare Law Makes Dog Liability Insurance Mandatory

Three years on from Spain's Animal Welfare Law (Ley 7/2023), civil liability insurance is mandatory for every dog in Spain — and the Guardia Civil and local police are actively enforcing it.

Fines for an uninsured dog reach €10,000, and the most common claims I see are not aggression but everyday accidents: a slip-and-trip when a dog bolts on a busy promenade, a cyclist clipped on a coast path, a fence broken into a neighbour's garden. Pet liability is no longer a nice-to-have — it is a legal baseline.

Generali ON Mascotas is structured in three weight tiers. Small (up to 9kg, including cats), Medium (9–15kg) and Large (over 15kg) — with civil liability up to €300,000, vet fees for accidents and illness, lost-pet location assistance and a 24-hour vet helpline included as standard.

Optional extras worth considering: dental treatment, behavioural therapy, physiotherapy, death-by-illness compensation and extended liability for the eight Potentially Dangerous breeds (Pit Bull, Rottweiler, American Staffordshire Terrier, Doberman, Akita Inu, Tosa Inu, Bull Terrier and Brazilian Mastiff).

PPP owners must hold a minimum €120,000 civil liability cover and a special licence from the local Ayuntamiento — we will not issue a PPP policy without sight of that licence, since cover is void without it. Andalusia and Murcia introduced 30% regional tax deductions on eligible vet costs in 2025; the Generalitat Valenciana is consulting on a similar scheme for the Costa Blanca in 2026.

Community Insurance Spain. What Every Apartment Owner Needs to Know About Comunidad Cover

Buying an apartment in Spain quietly enrols you in your building's Comunidad de Propietarios — a legally constituted owners' association with mandatory collective insurance, an elected presidente, and shared decision-making at every annual junta.

Most expat owners don't notice the policy exists until something breaches the line between communal and private: a leak from the upstairs riser, a slip on wet lobby tiles, a falling balcony fragment. That is the moment the cover, the limits, and your own home policy suddenly matter.

Generali Comunidad covers fire, explosion, water damage from communal pipes, civil liability up to €1,000,000, board members' liability (presidente y junta), employer's liability for community staff (cleaners, gardeners, concierge) and 24-hour emergency assistance for plumbing, electrical and lock-out incidents.

The unusual benefit I draw clients' attention to is urgent plumbing cover for leaks even where no material damage has yet occurred — it pays for the leak detection and repair before water destroys your downstairs neighbour's ceiling.

Optional extensions worth budgeting in: weather damage (essential for older buildings on exposed coastal plots), pool and garden cover for resorts, pest control, breakage in common areas, theft, and the malversación de fondos extension up to €3,000/year (which protects against an administrator misappropriating community funds — rare, but it does happen). Mixed-use buildings where commercial space exceeds 75% of total floor area are referred to a different product.

Hospital Cash Insurance Spain. What is Subsidio and Do Expats Need It?

Hospital cash — known in Spain as subsidio por hospitalización — pays a fixed daily benefit for every night you spend on a ward, paid directly to your bank account on top of any health insurance you already hold.

It is one of the most underused policies on the Spanish market, and one of the few that genuinely helps the people around the patient as much as the patient. Generali Hospitalización Plus lets you choose a daily benefit between €15 and €300, with no waiting period for accidents and a two-month waiting period for illness.

The daily payment covers the costs no insurer typically reimburses — a family member flying out from the UK, temporary childcare, daily taxis to the hospital, lost work, home help during recovery. The plan also includes surgery compensation of €1,000–€10,000 per procedure on a published tariff, plus an option to add hospital out-patient cover for chemotherapy and dialysis days.

For self-employed expats — autónomos, freelancers and digital nomads — the Profesional Plus variant extends the daily benefit to any period of temporary incapacity to work, not only hospitalisation, which puts it closer to a sick-pay policy than a pure cash benefit.

Excess options of 0, 3, 7, 15 or 30 days let you tune the premium to your real need: a freelancer with three months of savings might choose a 15-day excess and a higher daily rate; a single-income household with no buffer typically picks zero-excess. We handle all the claims correspondence in English.

Commercial & Office Insurance Spain. What Every Business Owner Needs to Know

Spanish business owners do not get a quiet retirement from risk. A burst pipe, a small electrical fire, a customer slipping on a tiled floor — any of these can wipe out a quarter's profit before the cleaner has finished mopping up.

Commercial multi-risk insurance (multirriesgo comercial) is the single policy that turns those incidents from existential threats into administrative inconvenience: claim filed, building dried out, business reopened. For shops, offices, restaurants, salons and small workshops on the Costa Blanca, it is the foundation policy.

Generali ON Comercios is a tailored multi-risk policy with standard cover for fire, explosion, water damage, electrical surge, glass breakage, vandalism, civil liability up to €600,000, employer's liability for any employees on the premises, and 24-hour emergency assistance. The sum insured indexes to construction-cost inflation each year, which avoids the silent under-insurance problem that catches out so many small businesses after a major claim.

The optional extension I always recommend for any premises that depends on footfall is pérdida de beneficios — loss of business income — which pays your projected revenue while the shop is closed for repairs after a fire or flood.

Other valuable add-ons: theft and burglary cover with cash-on-premises limits, machinery breakdown for restaurant kitchens and workshops, legal protection, cyber risk for any business taking card payments online, and product liability for retail. The policy accepts all business types except nightclubs, discotheques and a small list of high-hazard activities.

Hotel Insurance Spain. Essential Cover for Hoteliers and Accommodation Businesses on the Costa Blanca

Tourism on the Costa Blanca is recovering strongly — record summer arrivals, year-round Northern European demand, and a steady shift from large hotels to smaller hostales, casas rurales and apartamentos turísticos run by expat owners.

The risk profile of these smaller operations is genuinely complicated: a fire in one guest room, a leg broken by a cracked tile in the breakfast room, a phone stolen from a luggage store, a forced closure that empties the booking calendar for a month. Hotel insurance is one of the few policies where what you don't buy can put the business at risk.

Generali ON Empresas Hoteleras is built specifically for accommodation businesses. The standard cover insures the building at new replacement value (not depreciated, so you can actually rebuild after a fire), all hotel contents and equipment, guest property — including cash held in room safes under bienes en depósito — civil liability up to €1,000,000, and 24-hour emergency assistance for plumbing, electrical and lock-out incidents.

Optional extensions for any serious operator: loss of hotel income (lucro cesante hotelero) — pays your projected revenue while the hotel is closed for repairs, and is genuinely uncapped in real-life claims — pool and garden cover for resorts, machinery breakdown for kitchens and HVAC, cash on premises, a restaurant-and-bar extension covering food poisoning incidents, and cyber risk cover for guest data and booking systems.

For licensed turistic apartments, we sometimes layer this with a separate community policy if the building has a Comunidad de Propietarios — getting that interface right is one of the small details that matters when a claim happens.

Motorhome & Camper Insurance Spain. What Expats Need to Know in 2025

Spain has quietly become Europe's preferred motorhome destination. Year-round mild weather, dozens of designated áreas de autocaravanas on the Costa Blanca alone, modernised coastal and mountain roads, and an increasingly tolerant attitude in most municipalities all add up to long-touring conditions the rest of Europe cannot match in winter.

The popularity has also brought specific insurance issues — converted vans rejected by mainstream UK insurers when crossing to Spain, agreed-value disputes after theft of high-spec vehicles, and gaps in cover for the habitation contents that motorhomers actually live with.

Generali Autocaravana offers four progressive cover tiers — third party only; third party plus glass (which crucially covers acrylic skylights as well as windows); third party plus glass, theft and fire; and comprehensive all-risks with optional voluntary excess. European breakdown assistance comes as standard on every tier and includes roadside rescue, towing, and up to 4 nights of accommodation if the vehicle cannot be repaired same-day.

The extensions worth adding for any genuine touring use: habitation contents cover for personal belongings stored inside the van, aftermarket accessories cover for solar panels, awnings, bike racks and conversion equipment, extended territorial cover into Morocco for North African touring, and agreed-value cover for high-spec motorhomes where market valuation undersells the rebuild cost.

The single most-important conversation to have before a policy is set up: declare every modification and self-build conversion in writing. An undeclared conversion can void the cover entirely after a fire — and motorhome fires are not rare.

Van Insurance Spain. What Tradespeople, Couriers and Business Owners Need to Know

Vans do not insure the same way as cars in Spain, and the gap matters. Tradespeople and couriers running a private car policy on a commercial van are technically uninsured the moment they pick up a tool or a delivery — and the first thing the insurer's loss adjuster checks after any serious claim is the registered use class on the policy.

Yet we still see expat builders, delivery drivers, mobile mechanics and food-truck operators on car policies that quietly fail at the first claim. Seguro de Furgoneta is the policy you actually need.

Generali Seguro de Furgoneta covers third-party civil liability as the legal minimum, with progressive optional layers for own damage, theft, fire and glass.

The single most-claimed extension is herramientas en furgoneta — theft of tools and equipment from the vehicle, a constant problem for tradespeople in Spain and a claim that mainstream comprehensive policies do not pay without this rider. Goods-in-transit cover is a separate add-on for regular delivery and courier work, with varying limits per consignment.

For any business running two or more vans, our fleet product is usually the better economic answer. Mixed-use vans — used commercially in the week, privately at the weekend — are written on a dual-use schedule so both purposes are covered without any grey area in a claim.

UK no-claims bonus certificates are accepted up to nine years and translated into the Spanish bonus-malus system. And the rule that catches every new arrival from the UK: insurance is mandatory in Spain even while the van is parked off-road, with the only exception being a formal baja temporal at the DGT.

Motorbike Insurance Spain. Everything Expat Riders Need to Know in 2025

The roads through the Sierra Aitana, the climb behind Tárbena, the coast run from Calpe to Altea — there are reasons the Costa Blanca has become a near-permanent home for British, Dutch, German and Scandinavian bikers in winter.

The flip side is a high concentration of premium machinery in an area with serious theft and accident exposure, and a small handful of insurance traps for riders moving from a UK policy to a Spanish one. Spanish motorbike cover is straightforward when you understand what to ask for.

Generali Moto runs from third-party only through to fully comprehensive, with 24-hour European breakdown assistance, legal defence and compensation recovery, fire protection and occupant personal accident cover all included as standard.

The extensions worth budgeting in for any bike worth over €4,000: comprehensive own damage; theft cover (a non-negotiable for the coastal apartment-block parking situation most expat riders live with); rider equipment cover for helmets, leathers and boots — which Spain treats as part of the bike, not the rider's home contents;

aftermarket accessories; and agreed-value cover for classic and modified machines where book value undersells the rebuild cost. The European Green Card is built in for cross-border riding.

UK no-claims bonus certificates are accepted up to nine years on production of the original UK letter. Every type of two-wheeler is covered — sports, touring, naked, scooters, mopeds, trail bikes, classics and electric motorcycles — with electric premiums noticeably lower than equivalent ICE machines under current Generali underwriting.