Embassy of (S)pain

It has been a long time since I wrote my last Blog. Apologies for that, but I have been still recuperating from the trip to Delhi.

I thought we were the lucky batch as we had to submit our applications at the IVS centre at Delhi and they would take care of everything else. However, I guess my luck ran out. All long term visa applicants had to go to Delhi and personally submit the document.
I had read a lot about the pain one goes through while applying for a visa at the Spanish embassy. I thought we were much better coz only the long term visa applicant were supposed to come to the embassy. I realized how wrong I was....
I reached the embassy at 8 in the morning. The embassy opens at 9 and i thought that reaching at 8 was more than enough...

I was shocked to see the number of people who had come. It was like a carnival. There were people who had got their own bed sheets and were sleeping on the pavement. apparently, they had been waiting at the embassy since midnight. I realized my mistake. I had come to the embassy on the day it had reopened after a week long holiday. So, the crowd was expected.
Well, I had no choice but to get in the line ( the very end). Luckily for me, I had a couple of IESE batchmates who were also in the same boat. So, I thought it would not be that bad.

Now, let me give some background on how the Spanish embassy works.

They have no reservation system. You can not book any appointment and you are supposed to come to the embassy during the embassy hours and just wait for your turn.
There is no token system in place either. So, you will have to wait in the queue till your number comes. In case you go out of the line, you can just pray that the person behind you is good enough to let you get back into your original place.

There are two kinds of people who come to the embassy (now that IVS takes care of the short term). One is the long term visa folks (includes students, migrants, people going on work permit etc) and the other are the people who come for enquiry. We long term folks are given the lowest priority. Hence, we are let in only after every enquiry candidate has finished.

There are a couple of security guards outside who try to maintain order (and fail miserably). There was this one guard who kept going around and counting the number of people left... and eveytime he counted... my number always remained the same :).

There was this other guard who tried to act tough. Everytime the line used to crawl a bit, he used to come and push everyone back. So, I stayed at the same position that I started from almost till the very end.

June is the wost month to visit Delhi. The heat is at its peak and is just unbearable. It was around 45 degrees average. Luckily for us, it was not very sunny. But we were still sweating like Pigs.

Finally, after 10 long hours in the line ( without any break), my number came at 6 PM.
When you go into the visa section, you realize why its taking so much time. There are only 2 window. One window is where they issue the visa at and the other window is the one where they are accepting the applications.
In other words, only one person takes the visa applications from everyone that wants to apply to Spain :o

Anyways, once I got in, it was over pretty quick. The person just scanned the documents, and asked me to come after a month for the final decision. He didn't even ask me a single question. I don't blame him though. He himself must be pretty tiered, working for 8 hrs straight.

It was such a great relief after getting out of the embassy. Even though it took 10 hrs, I'm sooo happy that I was done with it in the same day and didn't have to come the next day...

I'm sure IESE is worth all the pain that I have gone through.

Now I need to go there again on the 9th of July to get the final verdict. Lets hope that its not this painful :) .. Keeping my fingers crossed...