Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Spain, here to ignore you

When a person lives in his home country, the ministry of foreign affairs is only useful to declare wars, sign treaties or visit other countries to tighten bounds, so it is not awfully useful.

Since a lot of money is spent in this ministry, one thinks that the service given to the citizens living abroad should at least be correct. But the Spanish one it isn't, it must be one of the crappiest services of the world. Let's start with the electoral services for example. One of the main duties of embassies and consulates is to allow the citizens living abroad to vote in the elections held back home. When I lived in Catalonia each time there was an election in Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela or other countries people where allowed to vote in the consulate of Barcelona. Spain does not allow to do so, you are forced to vote by mail. This means that to vote you have to do a long and complicated process which starts over a month before the elcetion is held and that involves to go at least twice to the consulate (or embassy) and send the vote by mail. A pain in the ass altogether.

But that is not the worse thing about the Spanish consulates and embassies, the most horrible thing is that the service they prove sucks, its horrible, in fact it could be said that they do not any serviced at all. If you have a problem of any sort they will say: "It is none of our business" or "the consulate is not here to help you in that issue", but the problem is that never is of their business so they never help you.

Let's start with Spanish Consulate of Edinburgh, because is the one I know best. When I came here I had some legal problems and the web page of the consate said that they could help me with that. When I asked for aid their answer was: "it has nothing to do with us", great. A friend's credit card became demagnetised and she went to the consulate to see if they could help her calling to the bank to see how it could be sorted out, they didn't give any help and didn't allow her to use the phone to call to a free(!) number, awesome. In fact nobody that has used the consulate here that I know of, has received any help at all from them.

But the problem is not Edinburgh's consulate, everywhere is the same. I've heard similar situations from Germany, from Manchester, from London, from Paris, and from Rio de Janeiro, where they won't be able to vote because the ballot papers have not been sent yet. All together a shame that moves all Catalans abroad towards willing to be independent from a state that is non-functional.

On the other hand, here in the UK there are commercials on TV from the British Ministry of Foreign Affairs Embassies with the slogan, "we are here to help". What a difference. If Spain was to do the same the slogan could be "we are here to ignore you"

P.S. The picture is from our "great" minister of foreign affairs, mr. Angel Moratinos. An example of "intelligence" and "savoir-faire".