Spain’s Interior Ministry has acknowledged that the online appointment system used to book slots for the 2026 migrant regularisation suffered repeated outages after “acaparamiento masivo” (mass hoarding) of appointments by bots and unauthorised intermediaries. In a written reply to parliament, revealed by La Razón on 28 April, officials said hackers have been blocking legitimate users and reselling appointments despite the process being free of charge. Employee unions CSIF and CCOO report that many of the 1,000 newly designated registration desks lacked training and IT capacity when in-person appointments began on 20 April. Some offices reportedly closed early after processing only a handful of files because the shared software crashed.
![Government admits appointment platform collapse as regularisation applications surge]()
If you’re struggling to secure legitimate immigration appointments, VisaHQ can help by offering real-time monitoring of slot availability and end-to-end document support; find out more at https://www.visahq.com/spain/
The ministry says it is beefing up cybersecurity with the Secretariat for Digital Administration and the National Police’s cyber-crime unit, while also opening criminal investigations into appointment scalpers. Additional server capacity and CAPTCHA filters are being deployed, but officials concede that intermittent slow-downs may persist during peak hours until mid-May. For employers and relocation providers the instability means staff should avoid last-minute bookings and consider using offices in less crowded provinces. HR teams sponsoring candidates should download confirmation PDFs immediately after securing a slot and schedule buffer days before assignment start dates. Long-term, the fiasco is spurring calls for Spain to modernise its extranjería IT—something corporate counsel have demanded for years. Legislators from several parties are now drafting amendments that would enshrine guaranteed digital access standards for all future immigration procedures.
If you’re struggling to secure legitimate immigration appointments, VisaHQ can help by offering real-time monitoring of slot availability and end-to-end document support; find out more at https://www.visahq.com/spain/
The ministry says it is beefing up cybersecurity with the Secretariat for Digital Administration and the National Police’s cyber-crime unit, while also opening criminal investigations into appointment scalpers. Additional server capacity and CAPTCHA filters are being deployed, but officials concede that intermittent slow-downs may persist during peak hours until mid-May. For employers and relocation providers the instability means staff should avoid last-minute bookings and consider using offices in less crowded provinces. HR teams sponsoring candidates should download confirmation PDFs immediately after securing a slot and schedule buffer days before assignment start dates. Long-term, the fiasco is spurring calls for Spain to modernise its extranjería IT—something corporate counsel have demanded for years. Legislators from several parties are now drafting amendments that would enshrine guaranteed digital access standards for all future immigration procedures.
