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Members
Travel & Family
The real cost of staying close to the grandkids, hosting visitors, and the Schengen upside.
Flights home
- Direct routes: exist from Madrid and Barcelona to Newark and JFK, plus a Barcelona-Miami route, with over 500 weekly flights operating between Spain and the US as of mid-2026. Off-peak, connecting through a European hub is often cheaper and more frequent than a direct flight.
- Flight time: roughly 9 hours nonstop from Madrid or Barcelona to the US East Coast, closer to 12–13 hours to the West Coast.
- Realistic budget: round-trip fares commonly range from roughly $400 to $700 depending on season and how far ahead you book; 2–3 trips home a year is the common pattern for people who want to stay genuinely close to family, not the once-a-year trip people initially picture.
Hosting family
- Where they stay: a nearby Airbnb or a guest room, depending on the apartment, worth factoring into which unit you choose if visits will be frequent.
- What it adds: a two-week visit typically adds a predictable, budgetable amount on top of a normal month, meals out, local transport, the odd day trip, worth planning for rather than treating as a surprise.
The Schengen upside
- Weekend trips: as a Spanish resident inside the Schengen Area, weekend flights to Paris, Rome, or across the rest of the EU are often genuinely cheap on a budget carrier, frequently less than a comparable US domestic flight, a real quality-of-life win most people underweight going in.
- Shipping & gifts: Spain's de minimis threshold for non-EU imports is low (around €22, with gifts between individuals duty-free up to €45), and standard VAT of 21% applies above that, worth knowing before a family member ships something "as a gift" and it arrives with a customs bill attached.