(It may take from 2 business days to 2 business weeks - as I was told, but thank God and thanks to the staffs, especially the young gentleman with long hair interviewed me, I got my visa on the next day.)
I have been here twice already and in both instances I have had pleasant experiences. I prepared my documents in order and placed them all inside a brown envelope together with the $64 money order visa fee. Note that it has to be exactly $64, which I bought ahead of time from the post office nearby. I showed up on time and was called to see the consul right away. With my visa, it was released less than 10 minutes after the lady consul went over my documents. For my son, it took about 15 minutes, which I still consider to be really short, for his visa to be released. Before leaving, some of the staff even talked to us in our national language from back home---which I personally find endearing. I consider my experience at the Spanish embassy to be fair and very professional. Spain is huge and beautiful. We will keep coming back here to get our visas.
Slow and lazy service. The phone number might as well be removed from the page because they will not pick up. Took over 4 weeks to receive my student visa which was missing the NIE number. Turns out this number is given arbitrarily on US passports. This severely delayed the already slow and unorganized process of setting up a bank account and getting an ID in Spain. If you apply for student visa, check for the NIE number in your passport and if it is missing make an appt right away in Spain to get the number. Definitely not worth the $ paid for terrible service.
+ Don't waste your money buying a prepaid express shipping envelope since the consulate don't keep then send your passport back anymore. You may have to wait for their call after the interview, bring your own passport and get it stamped.
Cons:
+ Print out banking statements of the last 3 months at least, even when it was indicated on the website that you need the latest banking statement.
I took 1 star off because their website was not informative enough nor friendly to use either, which was so confusing and time consuming, especially for people from further places.
In my long life of dealing with government offices, this must be among the top 3 best offices I have ever visited. No, not just top-3; this was the best I ever had. Friendly, efficient service. The person I dealt with was the young gentleman with long hair and his supervisor. But I observed that everybody there was helpful and friendly. I have to commend the Consul General for creating this service culture and the Spanish Government for this excellent New York service.
+ Check visa fee 24h before coming to the consulate with your money order. It has just been changed from $64 to $72 recently.
We were in and out in 45 minutes. They are very fast, efficient and pleasant. Great experience!
Pros:
Great experience overall. Just take all your supporting documents and you will be fine! Remember they only accept money order from USPS.
Before choosing the consulate in NY, I have read some reviews from Google and this one was the best so far. I am happy because I have made a good choice, thanks to all of reviewers. The staffs were extremely nice and helpful. Their instructions were super detailed as well. I got my visa just in time as expected.
We were called to the window right at the time of our appointment. (She knew my wife also had an appointment so she asked me to call her and our case was processed together.) The girl who handled my case was very efficient and pleasant. She greeted us with a smiling face. She quickly looked at all our supporting documents, kept what she needed and returned the rest. Then we were asked to take a seat till the time they prepared our visa stamp. We got the visa ten minutes later.
(There was a woman coming on the same day with me got trouble with visa fee. Luckily, the staffs were very nice and they accepted to receive $8 extra in cash along with her $64 money order.)
Some advices from my point of view:
Consulate General Of Spain is a US Embassy based in Manhattan New York, New York. Consulate General Of Spain is located at 30, 150 E 58th St, New York, NY 10155, USA.
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