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Old August 20th, 2016, 12:03 PM posted to rec.travel.europe
Athel Cornish-Bowden
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Posts: 28
Default Rant about Spanish visa rules

On 2016-08-14 01:05:47 +0000, Happy.Hobo said:

If I want to spend 90 days in Spain, I just go there. Easy.

If I want to spend 91 days in Spain, I assemble half a kilogram of
documentation:

http://tinyurl.com/Visa-for-Spain

and then wait two to four months to see if it's approved. And even
though the approval (or not) comes from people in the Spanish consulate
in USA (who speak English fairly well), they require "certified"
translations of everything. Even though I speak Spanish well, I'm not
anxious to translate umpteen pages of insurance policy. Not to mention
getting someone to "certify" it.

There must be a better way.


I have no specific knowledge about Spanish visa requirements for
visitors from the USA, but I would guess that it's reciprocal, that
Spain just imposes the same requirements, whether silly or not, that
the USA imposes on visitors from Spain. That's how it works for
numerous countries. For a long time Brazilians had to go in person to
Brasilia to get a US visa, and the US authorities were deaf to protests
that Brazil is a very large country and that nearly all of its citizens
live a long way from Brasilia. Eventually the Brazilians said OK, US
citizens wanting to visit Brazil need to go in person to Washington DC
to get their visas, with no exceptions for Alaska or Hawaii. After that
I think the silly rule was dropped. Likewise countries whose citizens
have to pay to enter the USA require US citizens to pay an equivalent
amount. It gets quite expensive if you want to visit several countries
in South America on the same trip. On leaving the flight in Chile, for
example, there is a big notice with flags of USA, Canada, Mexico,
Australia and Albania saying that their citizens have to pay before
going through immigration. I was quite surprised to see Albania on that
list, but presumably it's reciprocal. Anyway the fee is only $5 for
Albanians, about $30 for Mexicans, and a lot more for the others. I
expect that the sort of Albanian who can afford to fly to Chile can
also afford $5.


--
athel