Unmarried couples in the Canary Islands: what registering as a pareja de hecho gives you, and what it does not

A German engineer and his Argentine partner have lived in Puerto del Rosario for six years, own the flat in equal shares and have never married. A British couple who moved to Lanzarote after a civil partnership in Manchester assume it works like a marriage here. A Spanish nurse wants her Colombian boyfriend to be able to stay and work. All three ask the same question in our office: should we register as a pareja de hecho, and what does it actually change? The honest answer is that registration changes a great deal for some things — the survivor's pension, the residence permit, the Canary inheritance-tax bill — and nothing at all for others, above all the inheritance itself. This piece sets out the Canary rules, what the registration gives you under state and regional law, and where only a will or a marriage works. Quotations are in Spanish with the reading in English.

What a pareja de hecho is in the Canary Islands, and what it is not

The Canary Islands regulate unmarried couples through the Ley 5/2003, de 6 de marzo, in force since 20 March 2003 and amended in 2006 and 2012. Its first article draws the boundary:

«La presente Ley será de aplicación a las personas que convivan en pareja de forma libre, pública y notoria, vinculados de forma estable con independencia de su orientación sexual, al menos durante un periodo ininterrumpido de doce meses, existiendo una relación de afectividad» — the law applies to two people who live together as a couple freely, publicly and notoriously, in a stable bond regardless of sexual orientation, for at least twelve uninterrupted months, in a relationship of affection. «Bastará la mera convivencia cuando la pareja tuviera descendencia en común» — cohabitation alone is enough when the couple has children together (art. 1).

Article 2 then lists who cannot form one: unemancipated minors, anyone still married — the official guidance is explicit that a legal separation does not end a marriage, so a divorce, a death certificate or an annulment must be shown — anyone already in a stable union with someone else, relatives in the direct line and collateral relatives to the third degree, and persons whose capacity has been judicially restricted. Two requirements matter more than any other for a foreign couple, and both date from the 2012 amendment: «Los dos miembros de la pareja de hecho han de estar empadronados en alguno de los ayuntamientos de la Comunidad Autónoma de Canarias y tener residencia legal en España» — both members must be on the municipal register (the padrón) of a Canary municipality and have legal residence in Spain (art. 2.2). A couple in which one partner still lives abroad, or a non-EU partner without a permit, cannot register. A pareja de hecho cannot be agreed for a fixed term or subject to a condition (art. 2.3).

What it is not is a marriage in another form. Spain has no civil-law regime for unmarried couples: no community of property unless you create one, no forced share of the estate, no divorce court, no compensatory pension by default. The Canary law is an administrative law — a registry, a way to prove the couple, a framework for agreements, and equal treatment in the region's own public law (arts. 11 and 12). Everything that lives in state law — pensions, immigration, income tax, succession — has its own rules, and they are the rest of this piece.

Registering: the Canary registry, the notary, and the clock that starts

The Canary law offers three ways to prove the couple (art. 6): registration in the Registro de Parejas de Hecho de Canarias, a public deed signed by both partners before a notary, or any other admissible evidence. Each takes effect from its own date — the registration, the deed, or the moment the evidence is found sufficient (art. 6.2) — and the registration itself is declarative, not constitutive (art. 4.1): the law recognises a couple that already exists, which is why the twelve months of living together come first.

The registry is kept by the regional Directorate-General for Transparency and Citizen Participation and its rules are in the Decreto 60/2004, as amended by the Decreto 28/2015. The application is filed jointly, on the Canary government's electronic sede (procedure 3376) or at any official registry office, with the documents the regulation lists (art. 9): identity documents; proof of twelve months of cohabitation — in practice the certificado de empadronamiento histórico colectivo showing both of you at the same address for that period — unless you have children together; a civil-registry certificate that neither of you is married, which for a foreigner comes from the home country with a sworn translation unless it is multilingual; sworn declarations that you are not relatives and not in another union; and, for a partner who is not Spanish, a copy of the residence authorisation in force on the day of filing (art. 9.2, as worded since 2015). A fee of a little over twenty euros is paid on form 700. The registry has three months to decide and silence is deemed acceptance (art. 12.5); a certificate of the entry can then be obtained at once, free of charge, through the sede.

The notarial deed is the route for couples who cannot wait or who want the date fixed with certainty: it takes effect from the day it is signed, it is a documento público in the sense the pension rules use, and it can carry the couple's agreements in the same instrument. It does not dispense with the requirements of legal residence and the Canary padrón, which the law sets for the couple, not for the registry.

Agreements are the part most couples skip and most later regret. Article 7 lets the partners regulate «las relaciones personales y patrimoniales derivadas de la convivencia» — their personal and property relations — including the right to medical information about each other and «las compensaciones económicas que convengan para el caso de cese de la convivencia», the financial compensation they agree for the day the relationship ends. The agreements must be in a public deed or an equally authentic document (art. 7.2), they may be registered (art. 8), and they bind only the two of you, never third parties (art. 8.4). Without an agreement the law presumes that each of you contributes to the household with work and income in proportion to your means (art. 7.3), and nothing else. The married equivalent is the marriage contract we described in our piece on prenuptial agreements in Spain; for an unmarried couple the deed of agreements is the only equivalent there is.

The couple ends by mutual agreement, by one partner's decision notified to the other in any provable way, by death, by a de facto separation of more than six months, or by the marriage of either partner (art. 9). The ending is registered too — one partner alone may ask for it, with proof that the other was notified or that notice was attempted — and until it is, the registration keeps producing effects.

The survivor's pension: two clocks, and why the courts will not stop them

This is the reason most couples register, and the rule is precise. Under article 221 of the Ley General de la Seguridad Social, in the wording in force since 1 January 2022, the surviving member of a pareja de hecho has the same right to the widow's or widower's pension as a spouse, provided the deceased met the contribution conditions, and provided the couple meets two tests at once:

«acrediten, mediante el correspondiente certificado de empadronamiento, una convivencia estable y notoria con carácter inmediato al fallecimiento del causante y con una duración ininterrumpida no inferior a cinco años» — they prove, by the municipal register certificate, a stable and notorious cohabitation immediately before the death and of no less than five uninterrupted years — «salvo que existan hijos en común» — unless there are children in common (art. 221.2).

«La existencia de pareja de hecho se acreditará mediante certificación de la inscripción en alguno de los registros específicos existentes en las comunidades autónomas o ayuntamientos del lugar de residencia o mediante documento público en el que conste la constitución de dicha pareja. Tanto la mencionada inscripción como la formalización del correspondiente documento público deberán haberse producido con una antelación mínima de dos años con respecto a la fecha del fallecimiento del causante» — the couple is proved by a certificate of registration in one of the specific registries of the regions or municipalities of the place of residence, or by a public document recording its constitution; and both the registration and the public document must date from at least two years before the death.

Read together: five years of living together on the padrón, and a registration or notarial deed at least two years old on the day one of you dies. Children in common remove the five-year test; they do not remove the two-year formal test. Neither partner may still be married to someone else. Where the couple is registered but the two years have not run, article 222 gives a temporary benefit of the same amount for two years, not a life pension. The income test that applied to unmarried partners until 2021 is gone from the current text.

The Supreme Court has been asked, again and again, to accept long cohabitation with children as proof enough, and it has refused every time. In March 2025 it denied the pension to a partner of more than thirty years with a shared home and reciprocal wills, because a will is not a deed constituting the couple (STS 1446/2025 of 25 March); in October 2025 it denied it to the mother of two of the deceased's daughters (STS 944/2025 of 16 October); in April 2026 it denied it after more than twenty years and two children (STS 407/2026 of 16 April): the pension belongs to couples that took the formal step, not to cohabitation however long. The one case that went the other way is an exception on its own facts — a partner of twenty years whose wedding, authorised by the civil registry, was cancelled by the state of alarm of March 2020 and who was widowed eleven weeks later (October 2025). Do not build a plan on it.

Two things outside the Supreme Court are worth knowing. On 16 October 2025 the European Court of Human Rights found against Spain in Mendieta Borrego v. Spain (application 3958/24): a woman with three children whose partner died in June 2015, fourteen months after the Constitutional Court's judgment 40/2014 made the formal requirement universal, had been denied the pension for lack of a registration she could not have made two years earlier; the Court found a violation of the right to property and awarded 8,000 euros. It protects couples caught by that transition, not couples whose partner dies today. And since October 2025 the Ministry of Social Security has proposed opening the pension to unregistered couples with children in common, on proof of cohabitation on the padrón; in May 2026 it was still a draft at the social-dialogue table, and at the date of publication we know of no bill amending article 221. Until there is one, the law is the one quoted above.

The practical rule follows: if the pension matters to either of you, register — or sign the notarial deed — as soon as the twelve months are met, because the two-year clock starts on that date and nothing you do afterwards can start it earlier.

Residence permits: when one of you is not an EU citizen

Registration also opens doors in immigration law, and the door depends on the nationality of the partner who is already entitled to be here.

If your partner is a citizen of another EU or EEA state, the family-member regime of the Real Decreto 240/2007 applies. It treats as family, with a right to the residence card, «la pareja con la que mantenga una unión análoga a la conyugal inscrita en un registro público establecido a esos efectos en un Estado miembro de la Unión Europea o en un Estado parte en el Espacio Económico Europeo, que impida la posibilidad de dos registros simultáneos» — the partner in a union akin to marriage registered in a public registry of an EU or EEA state that prevents two simultaneous registrations (art. 2.b). The Canary registry qualifies, and so does a French PACS. A partner who is not registered may still apply as a member of the extended family, as a «pareja de hecho con la que mantenga una relación estable debidamente probada» — a stable relationship duly proved, which the decree presumes after at least one year of marital cohabitation, or without a minimum where there are children in common (art. 2 bis); that route is assessed case by case, not granted as of right. A civil partnership registered in the United Kingdom is no longer a registration «en un Estado miembro», so a British couple relying on it is in the second group, not the first.

If your partner is Spanish, the Real Decreto 1155/2024, in force since 20 May 2025, created a residence authorisation for the family of Spanish citizens. It covers the unmarried partner registered «en un registro público establecido, a esos efectos, en un Estado miembro de la Unión Europea o en un Estado parte en el Acuerdo sobre el Espacio Económico Europeo o en Suiza» (art. 94.1.b) and, separately, the stable partner: «se entenderá por pareja estable debidamente probada aquella que acredite suficientemente una relación de convivencia análoga a la conyugal, dentro o fuera de España, de, al menos, doce meses continuados», with no minimum where there are children (art. 94.1.c). The authorisation lasts five years and allows work from the first day (art. 95); if the relationship ends after at least three years, one of them in Spain, the foreign partner can move to an independent permit (art. 99.4); the Spanish partner's death does not end it (art. 99.2). Marriage, registration and stable partnership are declared incompatible with one another — you are in one category, not two.

If neither of you is an EU citizen, the partner with the permit may bring the other in through family reunification, which since 2025 admits the partner registered in an EU registry or «una relación estable debidamente probada no registrada», proved by any admissible means and presumed after twelve months of cohabitation or with children in common (art. 66.1.b).

What registration never gives is nationality. The one-year residence route of article 22.2.d of the Civil Code is for «el que al tiempo de la solicitud llevare un año casado con español o española» — the person married to a Spaniard for a year — and an unmarried partner waits the ordinary ten years, or two for nationals of Latin American countries and the other states the article lists. Health cover, on the other hand, follows residence, not marital status: since 2018 every foreigner with legal residence in Spain is a holder of the right to public health care in their own right (Ley 16/2003, art. 3).

Inheritance: the will is not optional

Here the difference from marriage is absolute, and it is the mistake we see most often. Under the Civil Code the surviving spouse inherits everything if there are no descendants or ascendants (art. 944) and holds a usufruct over a third of the estate even against children (art. 834). The unmarried partner is not mentioned anywhere in the order of intestate succession. If your partner dies without a will, the estate goes to their children, and failing children to their parents, and failing parents to siblings, nephews and nieces, and then to the State — and you, after twenty years in the same house, are a stranger to it, with a claim on your own half of what you bought together and nothing more.

A will fixes part of this and only part. Spanish law reserves two thirds of the estate to children (art. 808) and half to parents where there are no children (art. 809 — a third only when they concur with a widowed spouse, which an unmarried partner is not). The free share a partner can leave to the other is therefore a third with children and a half with living parents, and everything only where neither exist. Foreign residents have a further lever: under the EU Succession Regulation a national of another state may choose the law of their nationality for the whole succession, which for many British, German or Dutch clients removes the forced shares altogether. Our piece on Spanish wills for foreign residents and the choice of law explains how that choice is made, and the general position is in our guide to inheritance in the Canaries.

Where the Canary Islands do help is the tax. Article 12 of the Ley 5/2003 and article 41 of the regional tax code — the Decreto Legislativo 1/2009 — give the members of a pareja de hecho «la asimilación a los cónyuges» — the same treatment as spouses — for inheritance and gift tax, for transfer tax and stamp duty, and for the regional deductions in income tax, with two limits stated in the text: it never extends to a joint income-tax return, and it reaches only the elements of those taxes the region itself regulates. The element that matters is the regional 99.9 % rebate on inheritance tax for the deceased's spouse, descendants and ascendants (art. 24 ter, in force since September 2023, and art. 26 sexies for gifts in a public deed), which the assimilation extends to the surviving partner. The condition of pareja de hecho «puede realizarse, a los efectos de lo dispuesto en el apartado 1 anterior, por cualquier medio de prueba admitido en Derecho» — may be proved by any admissible evidence (art. 41.2), so the registry certificate is the easy proof, not the only one.

Tax, work and the everyday effects

The rest is a list of specific rules, each with its own source.

• Income tax. Only spouses may file jointly (Ley 35/2006, art. 82); a pareja de hecho files two separate returns, and the Canary law says expressly that the regional assimilation does not reach joint taxation (art. 12).
• Leave from work. The Workers' Statute gives «quince días naturales en caso de matrimonio o registro de pareja de hecho» — fifteen calendar days on marriage or on registration as a pareja de hecho (art. 37.3.a) — and the partner counts as family for the leave on illness, hospitalisation or death (art. 37.3.b and b bis).
• The rented home. If the tenant dies, the partner who lived with them «durante, al menos, los dos años anteriores» — for at least the two years before — or with whom they had children may take over the lease (Ley 29/1994, art. 16.1.b).
• The region's own rules. In the Canary public sector and in regional public law generally — grants, subsidies, the civil service — the partners have the rights of spouses (Ley 5/2003, arts. 11 and 12).
• Property bought together. Without a marriage there is no gananciales: the flat belongs to you in the shares written in the deed, and a partner who paid more than their share has to prove it. The deed of agreements of article 7 is where that is settled in advance.
• Separation. There is no compensatory pension by analogy with divorce: the Supreme Court, sitting in plenary in September 2005, refused to apply the marriage rules to the break-up of an unmarried couple and left the disadvantaged partner with a claim for unjust enrichment, to be proved case by case. What you agreed in the deed is what you get; what you did not agree, you litigate. The rules for the children — custody, maintenance, the family home — are the same for married and unmarried parents, as we set out in our piece on child maintenance in Spain, and the procedure differs from the international divorce we described for married couples only in the absence of the marriage itself.

Register, marry, or neither: the questions to ask first

Registration is the right tool when the survivor's pension, a residence permit for a non-EU partner, the Canary inheritance-tax rebate or the fifteen days' leave are what you need, and when both of you are on the Canary padrón with legal residence and a year of shared address behind you. Marriage is the only tool when you want intestate rights and a widow's usufruct without a will, the one-year route to Spanish nationality, joint taxation, or a status every country in Europe recognises without argument. Neither replaces two documents every international couple in the islands should sign anyway: a will each, with a choice of law where the Regulation allows it, and a deed of agreements that says who owns what and what happens if you part. And whichever you choose, keep it current: a registration that outlives the relationship keeps its effects until its extinction is entered.

What we do for international couples

We check whether you can register at all — the padrón, the residence, the twelve months, the foreign civil-status certificate — and file the application or prepare the notarial deed so that the pension clock starts on a date you can prove. We draft the deed of agreements and the wills together, with the choice of law where it helps, and we handle the residence authorisation for the non-EU partner under whichever of the three regimes applies. Our family lawyers and immigration lawyers work on the same file, our inheritance lawyers draft the wills, and a first conversation starts from the contact page.

Common questions

We registered our partnership in France or the United Kingdom. Does Spain recognise it?

For a residence card as the partner of an EU citizen, a registration in a public registry of an EU or EEA state that bars double registration counts (Real Decreto 240/2007, art. 2.b), so a French PACS qualifies; a British civil partnership is no longer a registration in a member state and puts you in the extended-family route instead. For the survivor's pension the law names the registries of the Spanish regions or municipalities of your place of residence, or a public document constituting the couple: to be safe, register in the Canaries or sign a Spanish notarial deed as well, because the two-year clock runs from a document the Social Security recognises.

Do we have to live in the Canary Islands to register here?

Yes. Since 2012 both members must be on the padrón of a Canary municipality and hold legal residence in Spain (Ley 5/2003, art. 2.2), and the registry asks for proof of twelve months at a shared address — the historical joint padrón certificate — unless you have children together. A foreign partner also files a certificate from their home country that they are not married, with a sworn translation, and a copy of their residence authorisation.

If my partner dies, will I receive the widow's or widower's pension?

Only if the couple was registered in a regional or municipal registry, or constituted in a public deed, at least two years before the death, and you can show five years of cohabitation on the padrón — the five years are waived if you have children together, the two years are not (LGSS, art. 221.2). If the registration is younger than two years you receive a two-year temporary benefit (art. 222). The Supreme Court has confirmed in 2025 and 2026 that cohabitation and children do not replace the formal step; a Government proposal to change that for couples with children was still a draft in May 2026.

Does a registered partner inherit like a spouse?

No. The Civil Code gives the unmarried partner no share on intestacy and no usufruct, so without a will the estate goes to the deceased's children, parents or siblings. A will can leave the partner the free share — a third with children, half with living parents — or more where the partner's national law applies by choice under the EU Succession Regulation. What the Canary Islands equalise is the tax: the members of a pareja de hecho are treated as spouses for the regional inheritance and gift tax rules, including the 99.9 % rebate, on any admissible proof of the relationship.

This article is general information about the law of unmarried couples in the Canary Islands as it stood on the date of publication, verified against the consolidated texts of Ley 5/2003 and its registry regulation, the Ley General de la Seguridad Social, Real Decreto 240/2007, Real Decreto 1155/2024, the Civil Code, the Canary Decreto Legislativo 1/2009 and the judgments cited. It is not advice on your situation: your nationality, your partner's status and where you were registered change the answer, and a bill on the survivor's pension may change article 221 after this is published.