🇪🇸 Seville · Healthcare
Doctors, insurance and emergencies in Seville
The Servicio Andaluz de Salud issues the first card in person, at the centro de salud covering your address, and what it will not proceed without is a padrón certificate.
The thing people get wrongThere is no central office to queue at. You go to the centro de salud for your address, and it will not process you without proof of residence in Andalusia, which in practice means the padrón certificate. That is why empadronamiento comes before anything medical.
Getting the tarjeta sanitaria
The first card is requested in person at your assigned centro de salud. You take the completed application form, the INSS certificate showing you are an asegurado or beneficiario, a padrón certificate proving residence in Andalusia, and identification, which means a DNI for Spaniards over fourteen and a NIE or passport for everyone else. A family doctor or paediatrician is assigned at the same appointment, and the plastic card is posted to the address held in the SAS user database. Since 26 March 2026 a virtual card has been available through the App Salud Andalucía, which removes the wait for the post.
If you have no entitlement yet
A legal resident with no cover through work or a bilateral agreement can buy into the public system through a convenio especial. You must be registered on the padrón of an Andalusian municipality when you apply, document at least one continuous year of prior effective residence in Spain, and have no public cover by any other route. Real Decreto 576/2013 sets the cuota at €60 a month if you are under 65 and €157 a month at 65 or over, and a region may charge more where it adds services to the basic package.
The fallback while your file is open
Andalusia grants public healthcare access to foreigners who are neither registered nor authorised as residents, on conditions similar to the rest of the population, provided they can prove effective residence in Andalusia and have no cover by another route. In practice the proof is the padrón certificate again, and the SAS asks for a minimum period of effective residence before it will open the file, so ask your centro de salud what that period currently is and what it accepts from someone who cannot get on the padrón at all. If your residence application is still pending, this is the route to ask your centro de salud about rather than defaulting to paying privately.
The numbers to keep
112 is the free general emergency number, reachable from any mobile on any network, and the only one that can dispatch several services at once. 061 is the dedicated medical emergency line, run by the Junta's EPES with a coordination centre in every Andalusian capital, and it is what you call when a life is at risk. For anything non-urgent, including a GP appointment, Salud Responde answers on 955 545 060, staffed twenty-four hours a day every day of the year, and has an app for family-medicine and paediatric bookings.
Private cover
Private insurance is widely held in Spain and is often an employer benefit, used mainly to skip waiting lists for specialists, scans and elective procedures. Premiums move sharply with age, the level of cover and whether the policy carries copayments, and the comparison sites that publish prices are not authorities, so get quotes from two or three insurers directly rather than working from a headline figure. If you are applying for a visa route that requires private cover, the policy normally has to be a Spanish one without copayments or waiting periods, so confirm the exact wording with the consulate before you buy.
Rather have someone do this with you?
Your Insider has done healthcare in Seville many times over. On Premium they do it with you, in person, rather than sending you a checklist.
Get startedNot sure which plan is right for you? →