Spanish Embassy (part 510)

Spanish Embassy (part 510)

Yesterday, we received an email from the Spanish Embassy to say that my wife’s passport was ‘ready for collection’. No mention of whether she had been granted a visa or not. Last year, this caused us considerable concern for twenty-four hours until we picked it up, but this year I simply told my wife that her visa was ready, because she gets very worried about things like that.

So, at nine thirty, after the morning rush hour in Bangkok, we embarked on the two-hour taxi ride to the Spanish Embassy, which is located in a swish, modern building called Lake Rajida – the rush hour is never quite over in Bangkok.

When we got to the Spanish Embassy on the twenty-third floor, there was only a young woman and her Spanish father in front of us, but we were dealt with and on our way back to the ground floor within ten minutes.

The official’s advice was replaying in my mind.

‘Don’t forget’, he had said in a friendly manner, ‘the papers I have just returned to you are adequate to obtain a residency card in Spain. Should your wife wish to go down that route, she cannot leave Spain until after the acceptance, rejection or appeal have been finalised, or you will have to start the whole process again from here’.

That visa and those papers were the result of a year’s research and preparation; 35,000 km of travel and about £10,000

I’m sure that it could have been brought about in a far quicker and far cheaper fashion, but it is easy to make mistakes (and we made many), and advice, even official advice, is not always correct.

I have booked the nineteen hour flights from Bangkok to Malaga for Friday morning, so we will be in Andalucia before midnight.

The only fly in the ointment, is that I am now an illegal alien, and as such am obliged to leave the country as soon as possible, but my wife’s daughter’s graduation ceremony from university is in two weeks. All three of us would have dearly liked us to be there.

You can’t have everything, I suppose, but it is still very sad.

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All the best,

Owen

Podcast: Spanish Embassy (part 510)