Advenures with the Spanish Consulate

Sometime in April we remember the comment from the USAC office in Madrid. “First, get the visas sorted out.” My sister’s son Nicholas has First Communion on May 9. What a great time to go to San Francisco and get the visas sorted out! We’ll make an appointment with the consulate on Friday, May 8. In the mean time we’ll take a look at the visa application. How hard can this be?

Wendy and Jeremy advise against it. Fred and Anna advise against it. Our guides through this process have led the way without visas. But we’d rather do it on the straight and narrow. So we get started.

To apply for Spanish visas we collect a lot of documents. Birth certificates. Marriage certificate. Health certificates. We get finger printed so that we can get certificates saying we’re not bad guys. We get all the official certificates officially officialized with apostilles. (Note, if you ever plan a trip like this, figure the apostilles out early.) We travel to the Nevada Secretary of State’s office in Carson City multiple times. The people there are very nice to us. They push our paperwork through very quickly. They are pleasant. They are part of our feeling that the world is good. Our dear friend Tia accompanies me on a trip to California for more official document officializing. I get an official copy of our marriage certificate from the Plumas County Recorder then go to the California Secretary of State’s for yet more apostille action. Again, the people are nice. They are routing for us. We are checking off documents on the long list of what is required to apply for a visa.

Each document must be translated into Spanish. We are in first semester Spanish. We can’t translate. More help from incredible people. A friend and colleague, Patricia, offers to translate our documents. She and her mother, native Argentineans, know a lot about getting visas. They are angels and translate all those official documents and all the apostilles.

The date of our appointment with the Spanish Consulate in San Francisco is fast approaching as our visa applications become thick with bureaucratic paperwork. We have three copies of some documents; we have four documents of others. We have read and reread the instructions. We convince ourselves that the consulate is going to love us because we are so prepared. We have done such an exemplary job of reading the instructions carefully and following the rules. Nonetheless, we decide it’s best to show up in our Sunday finest and greet our visa application interviewers with the few Spanish words that we know. We are excited. Little do we know…

Adventures with the Spanish Consulate – Round One April 8, 2009

In which we learn
· that we should have started this process a long time ago (see March)
· that no matter how carefully you read the instructions you’ll never get the application right
· and nobody cares if you dressed in your Sunday finest when you arrive at your visa interview –
· oh and lastly, you need a separate appointment for each person applying for a visa. In our case this is four appointments. We end up not applying for a single visa and we reevaluate the advice of our Spain-veteran friends

Adventures with the Spanish Consulate – Round Two May 21, 2009

In which we learn
· that when the rules say your passport must be good for 6 months from the time you apply for your visa, it really means that it must be good for the entire length of your stay plus a little while.
· And therefore, Jack can’t renew his passport in the middle of our proposed stay because when you surrender your passport to get a new one, all visas therein are invalidated.
· Therefore, Jack needs to get an emergency passport renewal. Once again, we are saved by some very nice people at in an otherwise bureaucratic office. Jack proves that charm and persistence pays off.
· We finally have one visa application submitted

Adventures with the Spanish Consulate – Round Three May 27, 2009

In which we learn
· That even Spanish bureaucrats have heart
· There is some remote possibility that we could get 4 visas before leaving in July,
· but more likely Jack will get a visa and the kids and I will have to fly back to SF to pick up visas unless we want to adopt “Illegal Alien” as our theme song
· Surrender to the fact that the kids and I will have to fly from Madrid to SF in order to make this trip work. Surrender.
· Only by surrendering can this work.
· Surrender.

Adventures with the Spanish Consulate – Round Four
Call from Consulate two weeks before departure

In which we learn that
· This whole thing is a crap shot.
· The consulate calls and reports that Spain has told them that we’ve applied for the wrong type of visa.
· The consulate has now resubmitted our visa applications as student applications
· There is a chance that we will have four visas before leaving.
· Surrender. There is no alternative.