My wife and my stepson are Filipinos (I am Swiss). After staying in Spain on a tourist visa, my wife got back to the Philippines in order to get the family regroupment visa. This did take eight weeks! Five to get the visa stamp, and three more for the Spanish consulate to authenticate her papers. After arriving in Spain we went right away to the immigration office. This was October 20. They gave us a list with additional requirements and ask us to make an appointment per Internet (I am wondering how all the people which cannot use a computer or do not have Internet access do this?.?) Anyway the ?Cita? was for today. We went there and everything went fine until the civil servant told us that the birth certificate of our boy has to be authenticated not only by the Philippine authority and the Spanish consulate in Manila, BUT ALSO BY THE ?MINISTERIO DE ASUNTOS EXTERIORES? in Madrid. THIS WAS NOT MENTIONED IN THE REQUIREMENT! They allowed then days to do this; otherwise the application would be canceled! To obtain this authentication it is again necessary to ask an Appointment per Internet and ?GO TO MADRID? (we live in Alicante) in order to get this one stamp on the birth certificate. But this is impossible to do, because they have not a single appointment time available during the next two weeks! So I did write a registered letter and we will see what?s happen. Since my wife will be a spanish resident, I am wondering if they will deport the boy, which is 4 years old? As far as I know, this would even be an offense against human rights! How can a country be so messy? I did live four years in the Philippines, which is a third world country full of corruption, but I never did experience this kind of lack of common sense and bad organization as I did in Spain.