ASSURANCES HAS been given to British citizens in Portugal that their passport applications will be given top priority at the new UK Passport Service Iberia in Madrid.
The British passport issuing service in Lisbon was transferred last summer to Madrid as part of a regionalisation programme by the Foreign Commonwealth Office.
With the closure of the operations in Portugal, concerns from the British community in Portugal that the country was losing its status to Spain arose.
In an attempt to bring clarification to British citizens in Portugal, a group of journalists from the English language media in the Algarve, including The Resident’s editor Inês Lopes, was invited to the British Consulate General in Madrid, where the new consular services for Iberia are set up.
British Consul in Madrid Sarah Anderson, who also manages the passport and visa issuing services for Portugal and Spain, told The Resident: “I am very aware that there have been negative reactions from Portugal and we want to make sure that people making applications there didn’t get a secondary service.
“We were conscious that because of the distance, the process would take longer. We’ve adapted a system here to make sure that applications from Portugal get turned around quicker (than applications from Spain) to make up for the extra courier time.”
To find out more about the new consular operations for Iberia, and how it will affect you, please visit our website at www.the-resident.com over the coming days.
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