Sunny Spain remains one of the most popular tourist destinations in Europe among Russians - about a million Russian citizens visit it a year. In addition to recreation and visiting numerous attractions, many Russians are also investing in the economy of this country - 10% of investments in the purchase of Spanish real estate are accounted for by citizens of the Russian Federation. However, in order to properly plan a trip, you need to know at least the approximate deadlines for processing all the necessary documents. Therefore, you should find out how you can check the readiness of a visa to Spain.
How long does it take to apply for a visa
According to the Spanish visa legislation, the deadline for considering an application and sending a decision to a tourist visa applicant is 3 months from the date of submission of the package of documents. However, in practice, such a long registration of a permit is extremely rare and is mainly associated with cases when some documents require clarification.
Speaking about how long it takes to get a visa to Spain, it should be noted that it depends on many factors. First of all, the duration of registration depends on which organization you contact.
The fastest way to get a ready-made permit is by contacting the country's embassy in Moscow - on average, the process takes 4-5 days (provided that the application is submitted on Monday).
In case of contacting the Consulate General of the Kingdom in St. Petersburg, the period for issuing a visa to Spain will be from 4 to 6 days (in practice, this means that if you submitted an application on Monday, but the decision is not yet ready on Friday, then you are unlikely to have it before Monday get). Similar terms are typical for visa application centers (VCs) in these cities. But in the case of contacting the Computing Center in other cities of Russia (for example, Yekaterinburg or Nizhny Novgorod), 2 more days should be added to the specified waiting period, which takes to send documents from the Computing Center to the Consulate and vice versa.
In addition, how much a visa to Spain is issued also depends on the workload of the employees of the diplomatic mission, which in turn largely depends on the time of year. For example, during the high tourist season, when many Russians are preparing to go on vacation, or before the holidays, the consideration of an application can take up to 10 days.
Finally, the presence of errors or inaccuracies in the submitted application can also affect the duration of its consideration. Clarification of the submitted documents or an additional interview add another 2-3 days to the expected processing time.
If the need for a trip has arisen unexpectedly (urgent business trip, buying a "hot tour"), then by paying double the consular fee (70 euros instead of 35), you can apply for an "urgent" visa, the deadline for consideration of the application for which is up to 3 days. Moreover, in practice, it is sometimes possible to obtain it within a day.
The article “A trip to Spain: how to open a visa for Russian citizens” will tell you in detail not only about the terms and cost of a visa to Spain, but also about the types of visas, documents required for this, actions in case of refusal.
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Methods for checking the readiness of a document
Despite the fact that when submitting the documents, the diplomatic mission officer will tell you the approximate time for processing a visa to Spain, you will not be informed of the specific date of its readiness, since it is impossible to know in advance. Therefore, in order to be able to plan your time, it becomes necessary to check the status of the application.
Five years ago, for this it was necessary to call the consulate or even go there in person (this can be done even today). However, as of 2021, it became possible to check the readiness of a visa to Spain online.
Let's take a closer look at how this can be done.
What you need to check
For verification, you will need your application number - you will be informed about it when you receive the package of documents. In addition, the number of the check for payment for the services of the VC may come in handy, as well as information about your civil or foreign passport - in particular, its series and number. Since the passport is usually submitted to the embassy along with the visa documents, it would be reasonable to rewrite its data in advance or make a scanned copy. Some of the ways in which tracking the readiness of a Spanish visa is carried out requires the indication of the applicant's date of birth.
How to check
For verification, you need to contact the very organization to which you applied, be it an embassy, consulate, visa center or an intermediary firm. The main ways to check:
- online tracking;
- phone call or personal visit;
- SMS notification.
Consider ways to track a visa to Spain.
Internet check
Online methods are available if you applied to the consulate or one of the official VCs in Spain, as well as if the intermediary agency of your choice provides such a service. In case of contacting a private company, the possibility and procedure for verifying the application via the Internet should be immediately clarified with the employee.
For example, in the Moscow Visa Application Center, the Spanish visa readiness check is carried out by filling out a special form on the organization's website. It is necessary to enter the registration number of the application and the date of birth of the applicant received when submitting a package of documents to the CC. Slightly below you should check the box on the agreement with the terms and enter the captcha, then click "Finish".
If everything is done correctly, you will receive a notification about the status of your application. In case of an error, the system will issue a corresponding notification.
Sometimes it happens that a message about the readiness of documents appears in the database before they physically arrive at the visa center. Therefore, even if the online system says that your visa is already ready, it is worth further clarifying this fact by phone.
Personal visit
The most popular and common way to check the status of a Spanish visa is to call the organization that accepted your application, or even visit it in person.
Please note that you will have to make an appointment by phone in advance for an appointment at the consulate or official EC of Spain.
If you applied to the Consulate General of the Spanish Kingdom in Moscow, located at 31/1 Stremyanny Pereulok, you can make an appointment or clarify information about the readiness of your visa by calling: +7 (495) 234-22-97 (this line is serviced answering machine) and +7 (495) 234-22-98 (here the operator will answer you during business hours). If you are unable to get through, you can send an email to: [email protected].
If you applied to the consulate in St. Petersburg, located at Furshtatskaya Street, 9, then you can ask your questions or make an appointment by phone: +7 (812) 644-65-70 or write an e-mail to: cog .sanpeter.vis @ maec.es.
If you submitted a package of documents to the Moscow EC (Kaluzhskaya square, 1, building 2), you can clarify the status of your application by phone: +7 (499) 504-28-07, +7 (495) 134-45-68 , +7 (499) 350-83-10. Center email - [email protected].
The contact details of the EC in other cities of Russia are indicated on the official website of BLS International, which is the operator of Spanish visa centers.
A phone call will not take much more time than online tracking, but it will allow you to communicate with an employee of the Computing Center or consulate and ask him any additional questions.
The main disadvantage of this method is that the hotlines of the consulates are often busy, so it is difficult to get through to them.
Verification via SMS
Official diplomatic missions of Spain, as well as most of the visa centers, when submitting an application, offer to connect the option of SMS informing about the status of the application. In most cases, this service costs about 100 rubles. Its purchase allows you to receive a message about the readiness of the visa to the number indicated in the application as soon as it is ready.
Possible statuses
In order to understand whether it is already worth going for the document or it is not yet ready, it is not enough just to find out the status of the visa to Spain, you also need to understand what it means.
In the case of an SMS notification, everything is simple - receiving a message means that the document is ready. By calling by phone and with a personal visit, you can clarify all the incomprehensible details directly from the employee with whom you are communicating.
In the case of verification via the Internet, the document may have the following statuses:
- “Documents accepted at the visa center” - consideration of your application is still in the process;
- “The processed application arrived at the Visa Application Center at…. and can be obtained by the applicant ”- your documents are ready and you can make an appointment.
Please note that the appearance of the second status does not mean that you have been given a visa and you can start collecting things. It only means that a decision (and not necessarily a positive one) on your application has been made and you can familiarize yourself with it in the Computing Center.
If it is necessary to clarify the data or pass an interview, a special status is not assigned to the application. Instead, an employee of the consulate or the VC will contact you at the phone number indicated in the package of documents and personally invite you to visit the diplomatic mission.
How to get the document correctly
Let's say the check of the readiness of the visa to Spain showed that your document has already been processed and a decision has been made on it. All that remains is to make an appointment at the EC (consulate) to which you applied, or contact a travel agency (a company that provides intermediary services) and get your passport with a long-awaited entry permit.
You can pick up the finished document:
- the applicant personally by presenting a passport and a receipt with the registration number of the application;
- a close relative of the person who submitted the application, presenting documents confirming the relationship (for example, a marriage certificate with him);
- any person authorized by the applicant, subject to the availability of a notarized power of attorney.
It should be borne in mind that entry into the country is only possible with a valid and correctly issued visa. In order to avoid possible problems when going through passport control when obtaining a visa, you need to check:
- availability of all necessary details, seals and signatures;
- absence of errors in your personal data (name, surname, passport data);
- the correctness of the dates indicated on the visa (date of issue, validity period);
- compliance of the issued type of visa with the purpose of the trip (so as not to go to study on a tourist visa).
In addition to SMS notifications, official Spanish VCs provide their customers with the following additional services:
- receipt of finished documents after the end of the official working hours of the CC. This service allows you to get a passport on a weekday from 16.00 to 20.00, it will cost 500 rubles;
- delivery of the finished passport by courier to the specified address. The cost of this option is about 250 rubles.
Finally
The answer to the question of how many days a visa to Spain is being prepared depends on many factors: the status of the organization to which you are applying, the city where it is located, the time of year, the presence of errors in your documents and the type of visa you are applying for. You can save time by ordering an expedited application review, but this will cost an additional 35 €.
You can check the readiness of the visa online on the website of the consulate or the EC, as well as through a personal visit or a phone call. In some VCs, the option of SMS notifications about the readiness of the document is available. For online tracking of the visa application process, you need to know the age of the applicant and the number of his application.
