We may have mentioned previously in this blog that our initial visas were issued for one year. At the end of that year you need to renew your visa or leave the country. The renewal is for two years and the process can be initiated up to 60 days before or 90 days after your visa expires. Our initial visa began on January 16, 2025, so we could begin the renewal in mid-November. If we were not approved we would need to be out of the Spain (and any other Schengen country) by April 16th.
We were visiting Valencia in mid-November, but upon returning
we started collecting documents and contacted an immigration lawyer to help us
with the application.
One of the documents that we needed was an updated marriage
certificate from the State of New Hampshire.
We decided to have Maureen’s sister send the application, a copy of
Maureen’s ID, and a check to the vital records department to expedite the
process. The document needed to be
mailed to Gilford, NH (our US address on our driver’s licenses) and then Dennis’
brother Steve would send it to us via overseas mail. He was also going to be mailing
us a dividend check we had received and the original title for our car (we are
considering selling it).
The marriage certificate was received in a timely manner and
everything seemed to be on track. We
felt we had plenty of time.
We checked the mail daily for the envelope to no avail. In
the past it had taken from 2 to 4 weeks to receive a letter from the US, but
before we knew it we were into February. We began to fear the envelope had been
lost. We checked at the post office to
see if it was being held there for some reason, but they could not find it. We
finally gave up and re-ordered the marriage certificate, but this time we planned
to have Steve send it to us priority mail expedited with tracking.
The re-ordered marriage certificate was received in Gilford
on March 12th. Our window was closing rapidly. We had Steve scan a
copy of the document and email it to us so we could forward it to our lawyer.
Then came another curve ball. The immigration office was
tightening their requirements for proving that you have the financial means to
support yourself while in Spain. For the original visa it was enough to show
that we had investments in the US and Social Security income. Now they wanted “certification”
from the bank of the money.
Getting that certification and translating it to Spanish
proved unworkable (our US bank told us we would need to personally appear in
the branch office to prove identity for them to issue such a document) so our
only option was to transfer the required amount of money to our Spanish bank.
Cue the frantic call to our financial advisor to have her
transfer the necessary funds to our US bank account (have we mentioned that she
is a superstar?). Once the money was in the US bank we began transferring money
to Spain.
To transfer money to Spain we use a service called WISE which
is very reasonable and usually fast. They do have limits on how much money you
can send at one time so we had to do two transactions and, of course, there was
a few days between for the funds to clear (in today’s day and age of technology,
that does not really make sense to us, but it is what it is).
We met with the lawyer on March 17 and went over our application
with her. She related that we were down to the wire and needed to get the money
confirmation by the end of that week. Fortunately,
the money was in our Spanish bank on the 19th and we were able to
send her the confirmation from the bank.
Now all we could do was wait and hope. We began mapping out
scenarios of where we would go if we did not get the renewal. One option was the “Schengen shuffle” where
you go in and out of the Schengen (most of Europe) area so that you never
violate the “90 days in any 180 days rule”. Great Brittain and Ireland were top
contenders since they are not in the Schengen area. Certainly workable, but not
preferable.
We were doing chores in downtown Alicante when we got a message
from our lawyer saying that our visa renewals had been approved! A huge weight
had been lifted and a visit to our favorite tapas bar was warranted for
celebration.
The next step was to apply for the renewal of our national ID
cards. This had been difficult the first time (because we initially relied on
an immigration lawyer to make our appointments). We learned from our experience
and after several days of Maureen obsessively checking for appointments to be
made available, we were finally able to get them. Another victory!
So, by the end of May we should have our new cards in hand
and not have to worry about dealing with the Spanish bureaucracy for another couple
of years.
And now the kicker. Remember that first envelope that Steve sent
to us? It finally arrived (3 months after being mailed)! Apparently, it had
been “missent to Bermuda”. A fitting end to this tale we think.
