Report failures in the consulates of Spain

From the Writing

Newspaper La Jornada
Tuesday, October 18, 2022, p. 17

The consulates of Spain in Mexico, in particular the one in Monterrey, present flaws in the appointment service for the renewal of passports of their residents in the country. This is due to the fact that the Internet page marks an error all the time, nobody answers on the telephone lines and an automated response is given by e-mail asking for patience.

About, the day consulted Fernando Hernández Cobo, adviser of the communication office of the Spanish embassy in Mexico, who replied that they are working normally. The phone is saturated and they do not have enough staff to answer the calls, but when they finish one they answer the next.

María Castresana Martínez and her brother, Spanish residents in Monterrey, have been trying for five days to get an appointment to renew their passport, but they have not been able to arrange it. They have the urgency of obtaining the document to travel to the United States and go to a medical appointment, which in case of losing it will be difficult to obtain again.

The normal procedure is that the appointment is made on the Internet, but the page marks an error after the consular registration and password are entered. This happens all the time, explained Castresana Martínez. Also, by marking mistakethe system reads the IP address, blocks the equipment for 24 hours and you can no longer do the process with it, so they have used up to five different computers, but all of them were blocked, he explained.

Faced with this situation, they called the consulates of Monterrey and Mexico City, but they did not answer. They also sent an email and received the following response: We are receiving hundreds of emails and all are answered. Please be patient and wait for a response, do not write again.

Castarena Martínez added that you can only enter the consulate with an appointment and suggested that these difficulties be a public policy of the embassy itself. You are facing deaf ears and the insensitivity of a terrifying bureaucracy, he pointed. She recalled that the Spanish consul in Monterrey, Carolina Manueles, has recently reached that position.