Consulate General of Spain — Attraction in Los Angeles

Tips for applying Schengen Visa:

They accept both exact cash amount or money order. This is said on the Schengen Visa website but on the check list pdf document at the end of that website, it only mention money order. A little confusing. I can confirm that they accept both.

Usually the first appointment available is 2 months away. But sometimes there are people cancel appointment, so you need to check their appointment website frequently if you need one sooner. I checked almost every day to snap an appointment happen to be a week away. It's also handy if you have all the documents ready so you can goto a next day appointment if there's one pop up.

If you show up earlier than your appointment time and the staff at the visa window is free, just walk up to the window. They will process your visa documents.

My appointment was at 10am, they emailed me at 3pm on the same day the Visa was ready to pickup. Unexpectedly speedy service.

After calling different companies for comparison, Travel Guard insurance provides the cheapest travel medical plan that meets the requirements for Schengen Visa. They have medical only package without covering trip cancellation, which is around $48(as of 2019) for a senior comes with $50k medical coverage (over the $30k requirement from the embassy) and zero deductible. They can email you a letter spelling out zero deductible besides the plan summary. I print out that letter and the plan summary for the application. No problem at all. All the other places I called are $100-200 per plan.

The consulate staff also asked me for a copy of the driver license, which is not mentioned in their Schengen Visa website. It's used for verifying the applicant's address. If you miss copying some documents, there's a notary store across the street near the Starbuck has copy service for 25cents per copy.

If you need to submit notarized letter from sponsor, the letter doesn't have to be notarized by the Consulate notary office. You can get notary service elsewhere. Some bank offer free notary service to their customer. There are 2 different types of notary, make sure it's the kind for a swore statement.

The Consulate office is on the 8th floor of the building. Parking is like $10 for the 1 hr or so I parked there. Even the upper floor parking says monthly parking, you can still park as a visitor.

You need an appointment to submit the application. The applicant must show up in person cuz they will capture your finger print there. You don't need an appointment to pick...

Absolutely terrible.

I was applying for a Schengen tourist visa via BLS, to travel to Spain. All my documents checked out 100% as per the rules for a visa application itself.

Firstly, the rules were apparently changed literally overnight, on the day of my appointment, requiring people to submit money orders instead of cash. There was no indication of this. The original email confirmation I got is a wall of text anyway, which is completely unreadable. But there was no update I received on this change. On the day I showed up, the BLS center gave an unreasonable 15 minutes, within an already impossibly tight window, to run to a bank and get a money order.

My second point is not necessarily about this consulate but just a general indictment of the Spanish consulate system in the US.

Essentially, I was refused on the basis of jurisdiction. Well, not technically refused, because the BLS center didn’t even want to send my application. Technically, SF is my appropriate consulate. This may seem reasonable on the surface — except when you factor in it is impossible to get an appointment there. I tried multiple times, months in advance. Every email I sent is followed by an automated response asking me to do the exact same thing I already did. Eventually I found out in the wall of unreadable text you get in the email, is that appointments there are extremely backed up. A poorly designed system, making you feel like you’re talking to some outdated chatbot.

I thought the system would at least be fair — the LA appointment confirmation I got said “jurisdiction is ultimately at the discretion of the consulate” — but the BLS center was even unwilling to submit my application even to give it a chance to be refused.

Even so, it’s insane that basically where you live in the United States should essentially stop you from traveling to Spain. It would be one thing if there was a reasonable system for non-jurisdictional processing, or a reasonable online system, which by their way aren’t unheard of as far as consulates go. Otherwise there’s an insane imbalance between regions of the US that makes no sense.

All government bureaucracies are inherently flawed, so none of this is new or particularly remarkable — but the level of horrible service, the terrible communication for someone who simply wants to tour your country, has the money to do so, isn’t violating the rules in any way — it reflects horribly on the Spanish...

This consulate office is run by people who have no understanding of their own procedures and have made my life HELL for 7 months now. They refused my legal representative to collect my visa with a power of attorney signed by me, telling her that I needed to be present, even though the website clearly states that I can have a representative do it. So now, after waiting since May 8th (as of today it is December 20th) my visa is no longer able to be collected because it has passed the one month window (they issued my visa on November 20th). Nobody has bothered to respond to my emails demanding to know why I cannot have a legal representative collect my visa/passport and there is no way to get through on the phone. What an absolute waste of time and money this process has been.

Backstory: I applied for my Spanish visa at the beginning of May and they filed my application with no questions, without telling me that I needed my own authorization of residency for my visa to be accepted. They said my husband’s authorization of residency was sufficient to file. Clearly they were wrong so I waited for over 5 months, emailing constantly, until finally somebody responded telling me that was the reason my visa still had not been accepted. I got my authorization of residency, sent it, and my visa was approved. Still they won’t allow my legal representative to collect my visa OR my passport without the visa! They have no right to keep my passport just because I am physically unable to collect it myself.

I am physically unable to collect my visa myself because I have been pregnant throughout this entire process and had to fly to Spain on a 3 month tourist visa at some point in order to be with my husband who I am financially dependent on. I was issued a secondary emergency US passport in order to do so completely legally. I am living in Spain legally and am 9 months pregnant. I couldn’t fly back to the US to get my passport even if I wanted to because I cannot board an airplane at this point.

This office is an absolute DISGRACE and they have ZERO empathy for a situation that could have been completely avoided if THEY were actually knowledgeable about their own requirements for applying for visas or standard procedures listed on their website. I’m so deeply upset and disappointed with the people who work here and their complete unwillingness to help or show reason in any way...