The Odyssey of getting a visa in Senegal | Spain

Martha Pérez del Valle is about to give birth. But he will do it alone in Spain. Her husband, the Senegalese Ousmane diallo, will not be able to be in childbirth because the consulate of Spain in Dakar has denied the permission and visa that she requested for family regrouping. Married since October 2023, both initiated the procedure in May 2024, but the answer was overwhelming. The Consulate claimed « doubts about the authenticity and reliability of marriage » and reproached that it is not clear that the conjugal union « does not have a different purpose than obtaining the legal residence of the interested party in Spain. » The Consulate also denied the appeal they filed. From his home in Torremolinos, Pérez del Valle says that « it has been a tremendous emotional, physical and economic wear. The hardest thing is to doubt something that is very real. Until recently I was apathetic and depressed, I could not even talk about it. » However, he decided to tell his story through social networks and received dozens of messages from people in a similar situation. « I thought we were three or four, but we are hundreds. I have already assumed that my daughter will be born without her father next to her, but hopefully my story serves not to happen to others. » The woman defines the attitude of the consulate as « institutional abuse » and reveals that, in their despair, they came to consider that Oumane He climbed a Cayuco to get together with her in Spain. « But the risks are huge and, in addition, I am Spanish citizen, I have the right to have my husband with me, » he adds.

The discontent current with consular services in Senegal (and in other countries) has grown in recent months. The difficulties in obtaining an appointment to request visas, the irregular business that has emerged around this procedure and the numerous denials have led dozens of people to publicly denounce their cases. Complaints for oneword and another have always been present, but now there is a group of Spanish and Senegalese citizens who even organized a concentration in front of the consulate door. Scheduled for this Tuesday, the protest at the end was not authorized by Dakar’s Prefect. But these citizens have managed to bring the focus to a visa policy that prevents traveling to Spain legally which, in the opinion of the organizers of this demonstration, stimulates the irregular roads.

Several years ago the Ombudsman receives « repeated » complaints against this consulate. In October 2023, he recommended that the Foreign Ministry adopt « the necessary measures so that the General Consulate of Spain in Dakar has the appropriate personal and material means that allows to meet the existing demand already foreseeable in the coming years. » This year, in his latest report, he speaks of « inasumable delays. » At present, some 83,000 Senegaleses reside legally in Spain, according to INE. It is a diaspora with a lot of roots in Spain and that is increasing: They are already the second African nationality after Morocco in number of citizens. In addition, according to the Ombudsman, some 10,000 Senegalese have acquired Spanish nationality between 2013 and 2023, which gives them the right to request the regrouping of their relatives, as well as mixed couples between Spaniards and Senegalese.

The case of Pérez del Valle is far from being the only one. The Catalan Ivet Pérez has been in Senegal longer in recent years than in Spain. For work, participate in several cooperation projects in the country, but also for love. In 2023, Pérez, who asks that his true names be published for fear that his case will complicate even more, he fell in love with Bouba, the translator who attended him in one of his missions. And they married. The couple requested a visa to be able to live together in Spain and, as part of the procedure, an official interrogated them. « There are marriages of convenience, I know it, but I think there are ways to ask. You can question me if I am aware that I get a man in a country where there is polygamy, but it is not necessary to tell me if I know that they will put on my horns or ask me if I am prepared to have ten children, » recalls the young woman, 26. Her husband’s visa was finally denied because they did not « reliably » a physical and continuous coexistence or dependence (economic). Like the rest of the affected, Pérez, who for a moment trusted his « white privilege », is excited. « Now that I know many more cases, what I see is arbitrariness. What is the criterion to question my marriage? »

« They are months of struggle, stress and rage, » says Awa Ndiaye from Fuerteventura, a 26 -year -old Senegalese who has been in Spain for more than half of his life. Ndiaye married in Senegal in 2023 with a boy from his town and a year later they began with the family regrouping procedures in a foreigner office in the Canary Islands. At three months he already had the answer: the residence for her husband approved. They were happy because they thought they were going to be able to say goodbye to the distance, but there was a last process: request the visa at the consulate of Spain in Dakar. « It was the beginning of our nightmare, » he says. The appointment gave it, but by April 2026. Two years of paralyzed life. It is no exception. The Ombudsman collects a similar case, a family regrouping granted in August 2024 for a three -year -old girl who needs medical treatment and an appointment to get her visa in November 2026. « He already has the approval, what more gives them, there is only a seal in the passport!”, He regrets. At this time, Ndiaye has diagnosed a disease and regrets that he now has even more reasons to want to be close to her husband. He has sent almost twenty emails trying to move that appointment. « Nobody answers me, » he complains.

The Spanish of Senegalese origin Sofiatou Ndeye lives in Gran Canaria. « My case is an odyssey from the beginning. They have requested information that does not appear in the procedure and have determined to demand the registration of our marriage in Spain, knowing that the Central Civil Registry takes up to three years to do that procedure, » says Ndiaye. Beyond the required documents, it is that for the Spanish consulate in Dakar his marriage, held last year by powers, he is also suspicious. « I taught you photos that prove our beginnings, but they have not even made an interview, how can people’s life appraise for papers? » « We have all cried a lot with this. We have done a lot of damage as a family and also economically, » he says.

Family regrouping, because of the importance it has for those affected, are the bulk of complaints, but the strict visa policy goes further. For thousands of Senegalese who intend to go to Spain to visit relatives, act in a concert, give a conference for an NGO or simply do tourism, The Odyssey is not only to achieve a visa but to get an appointment. The businessman Ibrahima Gueye (fictitious name) recounts a reality that is lived in Spanish consulates around the world: « You enter the BLS company platform (the company where exterior subcontracts the management of appointments) is already five minutes already blocked. It is time to wait for the next month. OR PAY, » he says. The young Astou, who works for a Spanish company in Senegal, reveals that she paid 350,000 Franks CFA (about 475 euros) to an intermediary who sold an appointment to ask for a visa. « Everyone knows that it works like this, they approach you at the door of the consulate or they call you once you have entered the platform, » he reveals.

The consulate of Spain in Dakar did not respond to the request for information from this newspaper, but exterior sources assured that “the high demand for visa in some countries tension the dating system, so it is more difficult to obtain them. The presence of processors outside the consular offices is an existing phenomenon in some countries and that cannot be avoided by the offices, given the idiosyncrasy of each country and its local uses”.

The Senegalese deputy Guy Marius Sagna, a member of the ruling party, was especially critical of the Spanish consulate at a press conference last Friday announcing the manifestation planned for this Tuesday. “I am here to protest against the diplomatic mafia, the consular mafia, the mafia of visas that Africans support here in Senegal, but that also support the Spaniards (…) that pushes young people to take the cayucos of irregular emigration (…) in reality, the embassies and consulates of the Schengen space, and in particular of Spain, contribute to the people who die in the people The Sahara and in the Mediterranean, ”he said. The deputy accused European consulates and embassies of being accomplices of these « mafias » that resell the appointments.