We had our appointment at the Manchester consulate on 17th June so what happens at other consulates may vary. I must admit it has been very stressful at times as there is so much conflicting information and wrong advice as well as a lot of very helpful advice out there, the difficulty ...
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...was in knowing which was which! The man at the consulate even admitted that some of their info on the website is wrong but they don’t have access to change what is on there. I was reluctant to pay €500 each plus tax to one of those agents to have someone just guide us through the process when I would still have to pay for documents to be legalised and translated so decided to do it ourselves confident that if anything was missing we would just be asked to submit it belatedly. Here’s what we did. We got to the consulate 45 minutes early but we were shown straight to a booth and were seen together whereas I’ve heard that some consulates insist on seeing you separately.
You need 1 copy of the National Visa application form. When I clicked on the link on my iPhone it always took me to an English version of the form however when I used my iPad it took me to a Spanish/English version which is what we used. It’s very easy to fill out as all the questions are repeated in English after the Spanish. Here is a link if it’s still working.
https://www.exteriores.gob.es/en/EmbajadasConsulados/Documents/Consular/20210611-Formulario%20nacional%20espa%c3%b1ol-ingl%c3%a9s.pdf1 copy of EX01 form. Here is a link that will help fill it out even though the form is in a slightly different format. In section 4 on the second page you only tick INICIAL and leave all the other boxes unticked in that section. If in doubt leave anything you’re unsure of as the guy we saw at the consulate happily corrected any errors or filled in any bits we missed.
https://www.exteriores.gob.es/DocumentosAuxiliaresSC/Estados%20Unidos/LOS%20%C3%81NGELES%20%28C%29/Instrucciones%20EX%2001.pdf1 passport photoValid passport plus a photocopy of the pages that show your photo and details. Passport must have at least two blank pages. Proof of financial means. We took proof of my husbands private pension which we had translated and also got our bank to print a bank statement which they stamped for us. We didn’t get the bank statement translated. Because the money from the sale of our bungalow was showing on the bank statement he gave us back the pension letter and said it wasn’t needed as our balance was way in excess of what was required.Health Insurance. Because we are too young for an S1 we took out a policy with ASSSA. You can only request a start date up to 2 months ahead but we had to accept a start date of 1st July in order to receive the cover note in time even though our planned move date is 1st September. I wasn’t sure this would be acceptable but the man at the consulate said that as the policy showed it was on automatic renewal it should be fine. Criminal Record certificate. This was easy and straightforward following this link
https://www.acro.police.uk/Police-Certificates-Online and our certificates arrived about 10 days later. We then sent them off to get The Hague Apostille directly to the FCO,
https://www.gov.uk/get-document-legalised you don’t need to pay an agency extra to do it for you as it’s incredibly straightforward. Once we got them back we sent them to be translated but we later found out that we didn’t need to wait for the legalised copy but could have sent our documents off to the FCO and emailed copies to the translator to be done at the same time as the apostille stamp doesn’t need translating.Medical Certificate. We did this the easy and cheap way so you don’t need to pay extra to get the document translated. If you email Jane at
[email protected] she will put you in touch with an English speaking doctor in Spain which works out much cheaper. The doctor emailed us in advance with a questionnaire and requested our vaccination records if possible. Our GP surgery happily printed them off for us and we emailed a copy back with the questionnaire. We then had a video call at an arranged time for him to confirm some details so that he could issue the certificates. We made payment via our Wise debit card to the bank details he sent us and the fee was €70 each. He then emailed us the certificates which were in Spanish so perfect as they needed no translation or legalisation. We just printed them off. Proof of residence in the consular district. We don’t currently have a property in Spain so we just put a friends address on our forms and nothing further was required. Payment of fees. This caused a lot of problems as the system doesn’t allow you to save and print the Modelo 790-052 form if you don’t have an NIE number. I emailed the consulate and they advised to just print a copy of the page after I’d filled the form out without trying to save it. When we got to our meeting the form was no good but the man said it was no problem and printed and completed the forms for us and we just paid the fee. This needs to be done by credit or debit card and not cash since covid. The fee was £516 each plus £9.30 each for the NIE. Marriage Certificate. We had this apostilled and translated but apparently it wasn’t necessary so that would have saved us some money. As we had a joint bank account he said he didn’t even need the marriage certificate to prove our family connection but he took a copy of it anyway.
I’ve seen many people have had documents notarised after they were translated but this isn’t necessary. I think the confusion comes from the term “sworn translation” but what you need is a sworn translator to do the translations. The consulate website now says an “official translation”. We used Talking Heads in Sheffield and it can all be done via email. I made a point of saying it must be a sworn translator and this increased the cost by just a few pence for each document. You also get a certificate of sworn translation which is important as it shows the consulate that the translator is approved. Eileen Enos is the director at Talking Heads and was incredibly helpful. [email protected]
In summary the man at the consulate said the only documents that needed The Hague Apostille were the ACRO police checks and the medical certificates if you don’t use a Spanish doctor like we did. The only documents that needed a sworn translation were our ACRO’s. Although the website says you need originals and a copy of some of the documents this was not the case and no duplicate copies were needed however if you feel unsure take copies too.
We were asked if we needed our passports or if we were able to leave them. We said we’d leave them so he sent us to the post office further along the road to buy a special delivery envelope so our passports will be posted back to us once the visas are hopefully granted so we won’t need to return to Manchester to collect them.
This is not intended to be a definitive guide to an NLV process but is hopefully a helpful guide of what we went through in the hope it makes it easier for someone. We took a few other extra documents just in case but they weren’t needed. Don’t panic if you’ve filled anything out wrong as our guy made good use of his tipex mouse to correct our forms although there is no guarantee you’ll get such a helpful guy as we had!! I obviously can’t say anyone else’s experience will be the same as ours but it hopefully doesn’t vary much from one consulate to another. We should get a result in about 3 weeks so fingers crossed.
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