Procedures: Less queue at the new Spanish visa center in Havana

Havana/Its service had just started last Monday, and the new Visa Application Center The Spanish Consulate in Havana, located on Avenida 31 between 18 and 14, in Miramar (Playa), already looked full. In front of the brand new office, created to decongest the main headquarters, a large queue was waiting, although much less than in Old Havana. “We already had this appointment before they moved,” he explained to 14ymedio one of the women who were waiting.

According to more users, those who went last week to the traditional headquarters of the Consulate, both the Velasco Palace and the Lonja del Comercio, to deliver the receipts of their applications, were sent to the center located in Playa as of October 5. “They notified us by email of the changes and gave us the option to come in person and choose later dates at our convenience,” says one student.

The conversations took place amid the stunning sound of the premises’ heavily guarded generating plant.

“Any hiring of personnel that the Consulate General of Spain carries out in Cuba, to provide services in its different departments, must be linked to the hiring with a state company”

The Spanish Embassy on the Island announced two weeks ago the opening of the new center, managed by an external company, with the aim of streamlining the work that is accumulating at the consular headquarters. Although the name of the firm was not specified, it is known that it is BLS International Services Limited which has provided the same service in almost 60 countries since 2016, when it won the tender from the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The company recently renewed the contract to adjust the rate to the 17 euros it now charges users around the world. This money is allocated not only to renting the offices, but also to processing documentation, taking biometric data and returning documents already processed. Without the details having been revealed, the system must associate with a Cuban state company to be able to operate within the Island, given that, despite the fact that the regime has just published the new regulations by which foreign companies are exempt of the obligation to resort to a State employing entity, embassies and official organizations remain subject to intermediation.

Official documents from Spain prove the Palco hiring –for more than one and a half million euros– to reinforce the office and domestic staff in the consulate itself. Furthermore, in response to a written question to the Spanish Congressthe Government of Pedro Sánchez recognized at the end of September that “any hiring of personnel that the Consulate General of Spain carries out in Cuba, to provide services in its different departments, must be linked to the contracting with a state company, in this case the Palco Employing Company, there being no other modality of hiring local personnel in the country, which explains why this operation has been followed since 2017.”

Palco even serves as an intermediary-employer in the United States Embassy in Havanadespite the fact that Gaesa, the all-powerful military conglomerate to which it belongs, is sanctioned by the Asset Control Office of the State Department. This organization pays Palco for the local employees it has in its diplomatic headquarters in Cuba an amount that, according to official data, ranges between 100 and 200 dollars, of which, as happens with medical missions, they then pay a portion to the workers in pesos.

As announced by the Spanish Embassy, ​​the transfer of functions would begin on October 5 with the management of short-stay Schengen-type visas, would continue on October 12 with the inclusion of national study or work visas and would conclude on October 19, when they planned to include applications from family members of community citizens, thus completing the total transfer of visa services.

As the Spanish Consulate warned, the reorganization implies the definitive closure of the old reservation system through the Bookitit platform and the suspension of receipt of credentials by email, which in fact stopped providing this service on September 18.

“If you pay 10 euros, they look for your passport and give it to you in the morning. If not, you have to wait for them to give it to you at 3:00 pm. They collect a maximum of approximately 30 receipts”

Those who did not have any appointments booked will be able to start trying the platform of reserves on-line on December 1st. Until that date, the consulate will only handle cases of extreme urgency duly accredited electronically. In fact, if you go to the official website, a sign gives the news and invites you to visit the site “later to check the availability of appointments.”

The site additionally has “VIP” services, which can be contracted voluntarily, and which range from providing assistance in filling out forms, taking photographs and photocopying. The Spanish Administration has stressed, however, that contracting these options does not influence the final decision of the file nor will it speed up the resolution of the visa, something that will continue to be carried out by Foreign Affairs officials at the Consulate.

About these services, one of the men who were waiting details: “If you pay 10 euros, they look for your passport and give it to you in the morning. If not, you have to wait for them to give it to you at 3:00 pm. They collect a maximum of approximately 30 receipts, so not everyone who comes manages to deliver it. In other words, if you want to insure and collect it on the same day, you pay or arrive early.”

An employee clarified doubts upon entering, joking that there are no coleros: “Now we do the work of the choleras.”

Others lamented how complicated a procedure that previously took little time and cost less has become complicated. “A long time ago, once you handed in your visa application receipt, you picked up your passport the same day, in the afternoon, in alphabetical order by the initials of your last name,” says a resident of Pinar del Río with family in Soria who has been doing this type of procedure for years. “When long lines began to form, you already handed in the receipt and they gave you a date one or two days later to pick up your passport. Everything became more cumbersome: going again another day, standing in line again, paying the waiters again.”

The transfer of the logistics of these procedures in Cuba, the most requested, to an external company was a demand for years to the Government of the Island by Spain, but now it has become peremptory. The Embassy in Havana has accumulated years of collapse in its services, since officials must resolve countless files, not only those linked to visa applications, but, now, especially, to grants of nationality, so saving them time in the mere processing of visa documentation was key so that they could focus on other procedures, as well as the analysis and decision for each case.

The Spanish Consulate in Havana has received an avalanche of applications, only behind Argentina, although in that country It has been working for years the outsourcing of the visa service. Sources from the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs revealed at the end of last year to 14ymedio that more than 600,000 Cubans have requested or started the process to obtain Spanish nationality by Democratic Memory Law. The figure includes both those who have already formally submitted the file and those who requested an appointment before the deadline, on October 22, 2025.