Pet Transport from Spain to the USA

The entire American requirement for a Spanish dog: submit the free CDC Dog Import Form online and print the receipt, carry a microchip a universal scanner can read, be at least six months old, and look healthy to the officer. Land at any airport you like.

No rabies titre. No endorsed rabies certification. No CDC-registered facility reservation. No quarantine. And no screwworm certificate either, because Spain is not on the USDA’s screwworm-affected list, which is what forces an official vet appointment in the final five days for origins across much of Asia and the Middle East.

Cats need nothing at all from the CDC.

So the real planning question on this route is not regulatory. It is whether your dog can travel in the cabin.

Across the Atlantic, most US carriers have withdrawn from carrying civilian pets in the hold. That leaves European airlines doing the work, and Spain is better served than most.

Published airline summaries put Iberia among the small group of carriers that will take a dog or cat in the cabin on a long-haul flight to the United States, with the animal and its carrier together weighing under 8kg and the carrier no larger than roughly 45 x 35 x 25cm. Larger animals go in a climate-controlled hold, with fees banded by weight up to 45kg. Bookings are made through Iberia’s booking offices rather than online, at least 48 hours before departure.

Those figures come from third-party airline guides rather than from Iberia’s own page, which could not be read when this was checked, so treat them as a strong indication and confirm them when you book. What is not in doubt is the shape: a small dog has a genuine cabin option out of Madrid, and a 25kg dog does not.

So weigh the animal in its carrier before you do anything else. Under 8kg opens up a straightforward, relatively cheap booking. Over it, and you are into hold carriage or manifested cargo, which changes the price, the crate, the handling and the paperwork all at once.

It is worth naming the things this route does not involve, because they dominate most pet-transport guidance and none of them apply.

Spain is not on the CDC’s high-risk list for dog rabies. That list is what triggers the full apparatus: an endorsed Certification of Foreign Rabies Vaccination and Microchip valid only 30 days from signature, a titre from a CDC-approved laboratory drawn at least 30 days after vaccination and at least 28 days before entry, a mandatory reservation at a CDC-registered animal care facility, and arrival restricted to the six airports that host one. A Spanish dog faces none of it and can land anywhere.

Spain is also absent from the APHIS screwworm-affected list, so there is no official government veterinary inspection required within five days of shipment.

And Spain appears on the APHIS list of regions free of foot-and-mouth disease subject to restrictions, which puts it in better standing than origins that have to bathe the animal on arrival and keep it from livestock for five days.

Your dog’s EU pet passport, meanwhile, has no standing at the US border. It is a European document. Airlines routinely ask to see it because it holds the vaccination record, and it will matter enormously if you ever bring the animal back, but no American official requires it.

The CDC does not require a rabies vaccination for a dog arriving from a low-risk country such as Spain. It recommends one, and the distinction is worth understanding rather than glossing.

Several things make it the right call anyway. Airlines commonly ask for a current rabies vaccination in their own conditions of carriage regardless of what the border requires. Individual US states set their own rabies rules for resident animals, and you will be registering the dog somewhere. And if the family later moves back to the EU, the return trip runs on the vaccination record in that pet passport, with a lapse in cover potentially costing months.

Keeping the vaccination current is the cheap option in every scenario. Letting it lapse because the American border does not check is a decision that only looks free until you need it.