If you live in the Midwest and plan to get a tourist visa to the Schengen area through Spain, especially for the first time, read on. I’ll summarize how we got on and hopefully it will be useful to you.

Book an appointment

There are multiple application centers around the US and each has jurisdiction over a specific region of the country. Chicago is the center for Midwestern states. Overall, these are the high-level guidelines, straight from BLS in Chicago:

It’s very important to know roughly when you plan to travel to Spain. That will determine when you can start booking an appointment and affect everything else. Just because you want an appointment at a certain time doesn’t mean you’ll get it. We originally wanted to travel to Italy, but we didn’t know that we couldn’t have an appointment in time for our plan. So we changed course and split our vacation between Spain and Italy so that we could qualify for a Spain tourist visa. Hence, it’s very important to know when you can book an appointment at BLS in Chicago.

The website is pretty straightforward. If there is more than one person, you have to choose the family option and fill out information for everybody. All can be booked in the same time slot. If you see a certain time and date is available, yet the website keeps erroring out, it’s likely that slot is no longer free and you should choose another one. That’s what happened to me and my wife. To book an appointment, you don’t have to submit any document yet so you don’t need to prepare anything in advance.

Forms

You can find the Application Form and Checklist on this page. When we were at the application center, they made us fill these forms again because there were newer versions and they didn’t update the website yet. Regardless, you should have all your forms ready in advance.

The application has a section where you are supposed to elaborate where you are staying. If your trip has multiple destinations, you won’t have enough space to list every accommodation. Instead, list the first one and explain everything in details in a cover letter.

Photo requirements are available here. I saw different specifications on the Internet, but we followed that website and it worked for us. You can glue a photo onto an application in advance, but there is also glue at BLS, so you can save your photo till then, especially in case they ask you to use the newer form.

Payments

Bring a debit card. It’s the preferred payment method. If you use a courier service, likely you will pay $216 in total like we did. Not just the $89 that the BLS website shows.

Insurance

My friend, who is going to Italy this summer, and I used “this web”Seven Corners Travel Medical Choice – Non-USA” from visitorscoverage. The policies are cheap enough and they are accepted.

Required documents

The full list of required documents is available here. I’ll just touch upon a few things:

• Passport copy: you don’t need to make a copy of all pages in your passport. Just the main ones in the beginning and a few that had previous visas and stamps. It took us 10 days to get back our passport. Plan ahead and ensure you won’t need yours shortly after your visa apopintment.
• Travel: make sure that the reservations have your name and the names of your companions. Even when you travel with your spouse, make sure their name is also on the confirmations. AirBnb, after a booking is accepted, can export a PDF confirmation for visa purposes. Otherwise, we just printed out the email confirmations. I’d recommend that you book cancellable/returnable flights and hotels for every destination on your itinenary. Print them all out. It’s quite easy to get a Spain tourist visa, but still you never know.
• Proof of financial assets: if you are working and have more than 3 paystubs and bank statements available, you don’t need to print out your latest W2. They won’t care.
• Proof of employment: do ask your HR for a letter confirming your position, start date, salary and time of your vacation. I’d recommend having it on your company’s letterhead.

The Appointment

The application center is located downtown Chicago next to the river. I liked the people working there. They were so friendly and helpful. We arrived 30′ prior to our appointment time. They directed us to fill out the new versions of the forms as mentioned above. While we were doing that, a lady took some information from us to start the process. There was no interview. She just went through our papers, put them in specific order, took our fingerprints & photo and processed our payments. Depending on how long it took to process fingerprints (my wife particularly took longer than usual), you can be in and out in less than an hour.

I saw one person come in 4 hours earlier than her appointment time. The folks at BLS still processed her. I think it was possible because there weren’t too many applicants at the time. Hence, keep in mind that it is a possibility that you can try, but don’t bank on it.

Overall, I think it’s relatively easy to apply for a Spain tourist visa. The most difficult part is to plan your trip and make necessary reservations beforehand.