Spain Schengen Tourist Visa - advice please

[budakhan]

Hi,

I'm a UK national and my girlfriend is a Chinese national, we currently managed to get her an FLR (M) visa for the UK as unmarried partners and I financial sponsor her as she is recently graduated and currently unemployed.

We were wanting to get a late deal to the canaries in October but getting information/appointments for VFS in Manchester is proving a nightmare (Manchester helpline doesn't even seem turned on, just said busy for the 50+ times I tried to call until I found another helpline number for london)

can anyone give me some advice on the following please :

- every time we try to book an appointment for Manchester it doesn't show up in the drop down list (VFS website), we've been trying for 2 weeks now and its always the same. Called the helpline, they said there are no appointments at all, only option is to turn up at 12.30 mon-fri with £60 on the off chance we could get a premium appt.

In other peoples experience is it really this difficult to get a appointment for spain?

- given the she's a UK resident as my unmarried partner and she's unemployed that I'm financially sponsoring what financial document do we need to provide for the visa application?

I asked the helpline and they couldn't even understand our situation, kept saying we need to provide a marriage cert/letter from her parents etc.

Thanks in advance

[Wanderer]

The Spanish staff at Manchester have the worst reputation ever, if I were you I'd get a Schengen visa for a country you don't intend to go to ever, like Poland, Latvia etc, use it for Spain. you probs won't get another Schengen from that State again but when needs must the Devil drives....

Basically pick one of the poorer states desperate for tourist money and doling out easy visas and use your economic advantage.

It's not particually cool to do that of course and I don't condone it except if it affects me!