Scenes of chaos and desperation were recorded in recent days in front of the Visa Application Center for Spain in Cuba, located on Avenida 31 between 14th and 18th Streets, in the Playa municipality of Havana, where hundreds of people gathered under deplorable conditions in an attempt to submit their documentation, and many left without being able to do so.
According to a testimony shared on social media, this Wednesday there were thousands of people gathered in front of the center, some of whom had been sleeping on the street for up to three days to secure their spot. A widely circulated complaint claimed that, despite the massive turnout, only about a hundred applications were collected.
The videos circulating on social media show a crowd surrounded by overflowing garbage containers, with waste scattered across the ground. "Look at how many people are here... a dumpster just like everything else in Havana," is heard from a person in one of the clips.
The user Maria Vianney described the situation on Facebook as "the sad reality of Cubans who have to depend on a devilish mechanism, for which no one is accountable," and added that officials at the center informed that on that day they would only assist people arriving from the provinces, and that the emails received could have been the result of a hacking of the system, although this claim was not officially confirmed.
Among those who were unable to complete their paperwork were families with children and elderly adults arriving from various provinces of the country, as reported by El Toque. The situation caused particular outrage among those who incurred transportation and accommodation costs in Havana to carry out a procedure that ultimately turned out to be fruitless.
The origin of the collapse was a failure in the appointment scheduling system: the center had sent emails authorizing numerous applicants to show up during an open window from October 26 to 30, between 9:00 AM and 4:00 PM, without assigning them a specific day or time. This led to a massive influx of people arriving simultaneously, far exceeding the daily capacity of the facilities.
In the midst of chaos, the General Consulate of Spain in Havana announced the reassignment of all affected appointments: those who received the open invitation email should disregard it and wait for a new notification with specific date and time from the address info@spainvisa-cuba.com. The center assured that no one will lose their appointment, and the new appointments will respect the order in which the credentials were requested in the previous system.
"Only individuals with a specific date and time appointment whose names appear on the center's lists will be attended to," specified the immigration advisory agency D&D Agency while summarizing the official statement.
The incident occurs just three weeks after the center opened its doors on October 5 as part of the reorganization of Spanish consular services on the Island, with the aim of alleviating the overwhelming demand that had been overwhelming the General Consulate.
The pressure on the system is structural: 252,290 Cubans resided in Spain in October 2026, the Consulate in Havana received over 107,000 nationality applications under the Democratic Memory Law, and the number of registered individuals at the Consulate had nearly doubled over a decade, approaching 185,000. In 2024, around 38,000 Cubans emigrated to Spain, with 40% already holding Spanish passports.
The situation highlights that the new center, despite being established to alleviate the consular collapse, has yet to find a management system capable of meeting a demand that continues to grow.
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