Again the Mañana Gods have been smiling!

Back when we first decided to make the move to Spain Stuart had to begin jumping through lots of hoops to actually get to the point where he could apply for his Spanish retirement visa. This included having fingerprints taken and over two months later the FBI confirmed he was of good character and wasn't a felon/criminal. He then had to have these stamped by the State Depertment, had loads of documents translated into Spanish and alsorts of other things before he could even make the appointment at the consulate in Los Angeles - the closest place he could apply. Once he made the application in early February they told him it could take 3 - 6 months for the visa to be approved.


To that end we decided to pitch our arrival in Spain as the 1st of April as that would be about 1.5 months into the waiting period and as a Schengen tourist visa traveller from the 1st of April he could stay in Spain until the end of June before potentially we'd have to leave and go back to stay at my good friend's place (Hi John!) near Gatwick pending his visa being ready. We had to plan for all eventualities as you can imagine! 


Now as you've already read elsewhere on the blog we have been very fortunate and things have moved along at a pace we are still trying to take in. This coming Sunday will be FOUR weeks since we landed in Spain! More progress will be detailed in the next blog posting BUT the amazing thing is that on the 24th of April an email came through from the Spanish Consulate in Los Angeles and his visa had been approved and he had to pick it up within the next 30 days! That is approx 2 months and 1 week since he made his application - another major time boost that we were not even expecting!


So on May 6th Stuart flies from Almeria Airport via Madrid & London Heathrow to Los Angeles. They have said that he has to leave his passport with them for anything from 24 - 72 hours for them to put in the visa stamp! So he is returning on the 11th to arrive back in Almeria on the 12th. Sods law they will do it in 24 hours and he'll have to cool his heels in Los Angeles for 4 days waiting for his return flights home to Spain!


BUT as you can imagine we are overjoyed with this as it makes our settling here all the more easy and smooth :)