Last Updated on March 18, 2026 by Bruno Bianchi
Washington DC Consulate – non lucrative Spain visa
For anyone going through DC – here is a a breakdown of the time it took for each step for me. I’m based out of Virginia and had my non lucrative Spain visa appointment yesterday (10/10/22). They said it’s taking a bit longer than the standard 4-5 weeks to get the visa so that’s still TBD.
- FBI background check: 1 week to receive results (overnighted paper card fingerprints to them)
- Apostille through the state dept: 6 weeks
At the 6 week mark, I did reach out to my congressman and got a reply, but before they could assist, the Apostille arrived. - Acquiring a health insurance: allow 3-7 days total between communications and receiving the certificate. (Get your Medical Certificate to apply in any Spanish consulate (US, UK, etc) for any Spanish Visa! Certificate issued by registered Spanish Doctor, that doens’t need translation nor apostille. 100% online.)
- Request to consulate for appointment: 1 week response time
- I emailed the consulate on Sept 27 and they gave me an appointment for Oct 10.
- If you’re having difficulty compiling your documents to send the PDF email, there’s a free app called “Image to PDF converter”… use this to create the PDF and then use the free Adobe website to compress the file so that it fits in the email. (Google “compress pdf file with adobe” and it will walk you through it).
- I began the whole process July 20, so it’s taken around 3 months to get to this point, plan accordingly!
Also, notice that no translation services are required for DC. The only document that needs translation was the medical certificate and the consulate website provides the English and Spanish version already. They only want the Spanish version of the health insurance.
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Author: Christy Mennel
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