The Spain visa from Pakistan

The short answer. Spain is a Schengen country, so the visa is the standard short stay type C and the document list is the Schengen one. Spain splits evenly between holidays and family visits, and the two need different files. Portugal is a separate country for the main destination rule even though the trip feels like one. What every Schengen file needs

Spain gets two completely different kinds of application from Pakistan, and the office can usually tell which within a sentence.

The holiday file

Barcelona, Madrid, Seville, Granada. Often two weeks, often a couple or a family, and often somebody's first time in Europe. This is a straightforward Schengen file: your own money, your own accommodation, your own return booking, your own reason to come home.

The thing that trips this file up is not Spain. It is the rest of the itinerary.

Spain and Portugal are two countries. A trip that spends six nights in Spain and five in Portugal is a Spanish application; eight in Portugal and three in Spain is a Portuguese one. They share a border and a holiday but not a consulate. The same goes for a trip that crosses into southern France.

The visa, once issued, works across all twenty-nine Schengen countries. The restriction is only on where you apply.

The family file

There is a settled Pakistani community in Catalonia, concentrated around Barcelona, and a steady stream of people going to see relatives in it. That file leans on the host:

• A formal invitation from the relative in Spain, in the form their own

town hall uses.

• Their residence card or Spanish passport.
• Proof of what they earn, and of the housing you will stay in.

And on you, for the half the host cannot answer: your own ties in Pakistan, your own insurance, and your own booking home. A sponsor proves you can afford the trip. He cannot prove you intend to leave, and that is the question that refuses people.

Summer, and why it is worse here

Spain is the holiday Europe takes, not just the one Pakistan takes. From June to September the whole continent is applying for the same weeks, and the appointment calendar is the bottleneck rather than the paperwork.

Three months for a summer trip, and more if the dates are fixed by school holidays. Six to eight weeks from October to April, which is also, incidentally, the better time to see Andalusia.

Q: Can I enter through France and still use a Spanish visa?

Yes. Once the visa is issued it is valid for the whole Schengen Area and you may enter wherever you like. The rule about where you apply is about where you will spend the most nights, and it is applied when the application is made, not at the border. What you should not do is apply to Spain with an itinerary that is mostly France, because that is the version a consulate refuses.

Q: Does a Portugal leg go on the Spanish application?

The nights count towards the comparison, but they do not make it a Spanish trip. Add the nights up by country: whichever has the most is the consulate you apply to. Spain six and Portugal five is Spain. Spain three and Portugal eight is Portugal. We work it out from the itinerary before anything is booked.

Q: How much money do I need to show for Spain?

There is no single figure anybody can honestly quote you, because it depends on how long you are staying, whether somebody else is paying, and what the consulate is seeing that year. What matters more than the balance is the shape: six months of statements that look like a real financial life, rather than a large sum that arrived last week. A sudden deposit raises exactly the question it was meant to answer.

Q: My relative in Barcelona will host me. Do I still need hotel bookings?

No, their housing documents take the place of a hotel booking for the nights you are with them. If part of the trip is elsewhere in Spain, you need bookings for those nights. The file has to account for every night, one way or the other.

Before you pay anything

Requirements change, and the form a Spanish invitation has to take is something your relative should confirm with their own town hall rather than take from any website. We check the current position before every submission, including against this page.

Send us the passports and the dates, and say whether somebody in Spain is hosting you. We will tell you what your file needs before you spend anything.