The Spanish Consulate in Havana has urged citizens to be patient if they are unable to find an appointment through its website for the necessary procedures.
"We appreciate your patience. We are unable to serve more people due to capacity restrictions at our facilities and the high demand for documentation from our fellow citizens," said the consular office in a statement on Twitter.
The message is published following the receipt of numerous complaints and claims from Cuban citizens who find it impossible to request appointments solely through the internet to obtain a visa or Spanish passport.
The Spanish Consulate confirmed that approximately 400 appointments are released each week, which interested individuals can access through the Consulate's website. However, each time someone tries to access one of these services, a message appears saying "No appointment slots available. Please try again tomorrow," as verified by CiberCuba.
We contacted the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Union, and Cooperation to inquire if there was any emergency plan to address the issue, whether they would increase the number of appointments, and if other consulates are facing a similar situation. However, at the time of writing this note, we had not received a response.
Following the publication by the Spanish Consulate in Havana, several users on social media expressed their dissatisfaction with the service.
"The website is barely functional; for the third group, there have been no appointments available for days, and it doesn’t even allow access," reported one person, who also shared a video showing that the site displays an error when trying to complete the process.
Another person criticized that after so many years of service in Cuba, obtaining a Spanish passport had become a problem.
"Why not allow appointments for six months? Everything has been complicated at the Spanish Consulate in Havana since 2009, when Law 52/2007 was enacted up until now," he acknowledged.
The problems at that consular office in Havana are not recent, as there have been backlogs with cases for over a decade, particularly related to the Historical Memory Law, which allowed many descendants of Spaniards living in Cuba to obtain citizenship.
José Antonio Hernández Pérez-Solozano, the Consul General of Spain in the Cuban capital, stated in May that he hoped to resolve nearly 200,000 pending cases by the third quarter of this year.
"My commitment to the applicants is that by October of this year, only 2 to 3% of cases will remain unresolved. These will be the most complicated cases or those in which the applicants are still within the legal timeline to provide additional documents that we have requested," he said.
At the beginning of October, it was announced that the first expedition of passports for Cubans who acquired Spanish nationality would expand to 80 daily appointments. However, this seems insufficient, as the demand for consular services is significantly higher.
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