Hello all, I?m looking for some advice on a sticky situation

my question is this…..I will soon be coming to the end of my 90 day stay.
However, I have no plans to leave as my girlfriend is Catal? (we are living together in BCN and I am looking for ways to stay legally) actually 2 questions…

1. I have a friend from Ecuador who now lives in Holland, another Schengen country. She was able to get a visa under a “visa de conviviencia” (living together..they only had to show proof of responsibility on the part of the EU citizen, they were married 6 months later, but this had nothing to do with her visa and it was put through rather quickly, 3 weeks!).......does anything like this exist in Spain? I have looked, but can?t find ANYTHING that resembles it. She tells me that as a partner Schengen country that it is sure to exist.

2. I must return to the States to visit family…but if I leave after I have overstayed my 90 days, and want to return, what are the repurcussions…...will I be allowed to re-enter after the 3 months, or will I be red-flagged and be penalized upon departure or not allowed re-entry?
I would really appreciate any advice, as I have only about 2 weeks left and am frantic about finding any options that would be better than being on some nasty list!

i don’t know anything about the conviviencia thingy, but knowing spain and its ludicrous paper-processing policies, i’d doubt they do it. good luck checking and if you find out anything DO POST IT!!

going back home is a mostly safe risk. normally, they won’t even bother to check what is up with you when you are leaving. you are LEAVING after all. if they do, and stamp or mark your passport in any way…be wary. that will make your return very tricky.

upon arriving in the US, i have had immigration quiz me there about why I was so long in Spain. tell them you are a writer, writing a book about bullfighting, tapas, the spanish civil war. being a writer (i am) seems to cut you a lot of slack. or just say you were backpacking around. don’t say you live with your catalan girlfriend and teach english!

but let’s assume they don’t notice you at all on either side of the atlantic. you have two options for returning. one i’ve used, in a moment of total paranoia, was to lose my passport. when i got home, i applied for a new “lost” passport and voila…no stamps. no problems at all returning.

all the other times, i’ve just prayed. there is always a chance they could flip through your passport and ask you want you are doing in spain. this has happened to me twice and both times i’ve just used my worst spanish accent and said YO ESTUDIO ESPANOL. Soy estudiant—-AY. and the frustration over my mangled Spanish seems to work.

BUT…this is all just luck. if you come back, you are coming back illegally and they do not have to let you into the country. this happened to one friend of mine…but in her case, she had been stopped on her way out and had had her passport stamped with some advisory stamp. silly her, she came back on the same passport. she was sequestered and questioned for a while. she concocted a story of love and that she was living with her spanish fiancee and they were getting married. it was really her roommate and he was gay, but he did go down to the airport and verify her story. in the end, they let her back in but warned her to register with the police department. she didn’t. she stayed another year and went home happily.

there are no guarantees about what will happen, just keep in mind, fresh-faced americans are the least of their worries in this post- 9/11 days. still, it is a gamble, and you have to decide if you want to take it or not.

Thanks for the very quick reply!  And good advice all the way around…kinda reinforces what i?ve thought all along, comes down to take the risk or not.  Thing is my 90 days is up very soon, so I will be leaving in the summer for a stateside visit.

You said:  if you come back, you are coming back illegally and they do not have to let you into the country

if I am out of the country for 90 days, will it still be considered illegal to come back? I would think not.
I actually just got a brand new passport (chipped and everything! lucky me) and have no entry stamps….at the airport do they normally stamp you out of the country? otherwise I have a clean passport.  It?s not so much getting out that worries me, it?s being flagged as an overstayer and not being allowed back in!
Thanks

I’m trying to understand here…

If I come on a tourist visa, is it possible, at the end of the ninety days, to just leave and go to France, for example, and then re-enter Spain for another 90 days?

When I lived in Thailand, people working illegally in Thailand would do that.  At the end of 90 days, they would go to Laos or Cambodia, cross the border for a day or so, and then come back into Thailand for another 90 days.  In that way, they worked for several years in Thailand.  It was a hassle, but it worked.  Can you do that with Spain, continually crossing into France and coming back, or is there a time period they won’t let you back in?

Also, even if you do find work illegally, is it common for employers to blackmail workers, threatening to report them if the worker gets on their bad side or what have you…?

your 90 days is very 6 months .... ha try it could get in thinks here get lot harder and with hee and new passport controls no one knows whats happen yet go to diffrent airport , that many work

jurdy

90 days inside the schengen area, then you must be 90 days out before you can legally re-enter, having said that its likely spain will let you back in if you wear a smile, however legally your commiting an offence, and upon leaving europe you will be caught (unless your lucky) and it depends on the coutry you exit from.

My situation, overstayed my tourist visa by 2 weeks, left to morocco, upon exiting spain i was questioned as to why a i had overstayed my visa, but luckily i was waved through after pleading ignorance (which is the reality for most non EU’s i know travelling europe… my advice is not to accept advice of people who have no experience!!!!) i did this, and got burnt.

After a week in morocco i reentered spain via malilla, by rights they should not have let me back in, but again, spain is generally quite lax with people holding favourably coloured passports, so i got back in no problems, however i wasnt stamped on exit, or on reentry (thats their way of bending the rules and not breaking them, because obviously it would be illeagal for them to stamp you knowing full well your breaking the law- they would be risking their jobs) so getting new stamps does not happen (unless your eligibal for it, or your very very lucky)

so i stayed a further 3 months in spain, my flight was due to leave for australia from barcelona… to helsinki.. no problems getting out of barcelona as technically i was traveling within the schengen zone (to finland) then upon exit in finland the passport control thoroughly checked my passport, calculated that i was 100 days over my tourist visa and quickly shuffled me into a side room where i was drug searched and questioned by 5 uniformed men.. i was threatened with a 3000 euro fine and being banned from re entry for 5 years… ouch… considering im in love with a spanish girl and have intentions to get married and live permenantly in spain this was a very very very frightening prospect…

however, again i pleaded ignorance saying i didnt know about the 3 month in 3 month our rule.. saying i thought all i had to do was leave the country and i could come back in (a surprising amount of people offered me this utterly WRONG advice) in the end after much pleading and appologising they let me off with a 150 euro fine, but the problem is… i dont know if i can return… they didnt mention it, and in my haste to catch my flight i didnt ask…

Hey All.

Same deal for me here.  I Spent 10 months last year (Early September to end of June 2008) in France and Portugal, so basically overstayed the 90 day limit by more than 7 months.

When I returned to Montreal (I’m US citizen, BTW) from Paris, Paris officials said nothing; likewise, when I flew from Biarritz to Paris, nothing, no raised eyebrows, no, “what? you stayed 10 months with no Visa?!!”, nothing at all.

Might be different when I try to go back for another 10 months starting this September.  Passport was stamped for September 11, 2007 in Dublin; then again on the 12th when I arrived in Nice, France; and again when I left Paris at the end of June. Thinking of flying into Italy, or some France bordering country, and taking a train/bus across the border.  I know driving across the border is cake—did that several times driving between France, Spain and Portugal, and was never pulled over at the borders, which seem to be like WWII relics from lack of use ;—)

The, “ooooops, I lost my passport” solution sounds like a good idea—a clean slate as far a your passport is concerned is probably a good idea when you blatantly overstay the 90 day limit.  Amazing that coming with a blank passport can work—you would think that your entry/exit dates would be recorded in a Shengen visitor record in some massive database…

I’m just there to surf—be great if there was a surfer’s visa, lol.

Any other creative solutions/advice for getting around this problem much appreciated.

Good luck to all the posters in this thread!

Hypothetically speaking if someone has 2 passports one from the usa and a mexican one could you feasibly enter spain and leave on one, go back to the usa and enter on the other?

But surely they have computers at immigration clearance that has the arrival and departure records??!! Countries have known about the “lost pasport” game for decades, surely they are better equipped than reliance on a paper passport. I think the comment about not stamping on illegal re-entry is the best explanation. Don’t ask don’t tell. If you don’t say anything I won’t. If you have a problem leaving the second time the officers stamp is not in your passport so he or she cannot get in trouble. There is no one to ask how you got in. Years ago, 1992, pre-Schengen, I stayed in Spain 110 days in Tenerife, Gran Canaria, and Sevilla. I flew into Reina Sofia airport on Tenerife and departed at the Portugal border by bus where there was no border control. However, when departing Europe by air at Lisbon airport they went through everything with a fine toothed comb like had never happened to me before anywhere. But they never directy asked me why I was in Spain 110 days.