How do I teach English in Spain?

There are no qualifications that you absolutely must have in order to teach English in Spain. However, you’ll stand a far higher chance of getting a good English teaching job if you:

• Are a native English speaker
• Have successfully completed an accredited TEFL course lasting 120 hours or more – such as an i-to-i’s Ofqual regulated TEFL certification course
• Hold a Bachelors’ degree in any subject.

Plus we reckon it’s definitely worth taking a TEFL course at least so that you’ll know what to do when you face a class of 30 students all expecting you to teach them English from day 1!

Check out i-to-i’s jobs board for the latest vacancies for jobs to teach English in Spain. Autumn (mid-September to early October) and January are the main recruitment periods for jobs to teach English in schools. If you’d like to teach English in a holiday camp, then look out for jobs in the spring – and if you want to teach English privately then you can pick up a job at any time of the year.

Check out our free Spanish TEFL job guide and find out where to find TEFL opportunities today!

You can teach English pretty much anywhere in Spain. However, you’ll find most English teaching jobs in the cities of Madrid, Barcelona, Granada and Seville.

Do you hold an EU passport? Brilliant – you can teach English in Spain legally without a visa. If you’re not an EU citizen it’s far harder to teach English in Spain legally. You’ll need an employer to sponsor you for a work visa and to do that the employer must prove that they can’t find a suitable EU citizen to do the job (pretty tricky, given how many English speakers there are in Europe). However, there are a few schemes out there, such as the North American Language and Culture Assistants programme, that do provide opportunities for non-EU citizens to teach English in schools.

It’s definitely worth learning a bit of Spanish before you go. Also be prepared for a rather fluid sense of time, an overwhelming passion for football, fiestas galore, amazing architecture, fantastic shopping – and a thrilling, fascinating, passionate and beautiful country in which to teach English.