The rules are national, but the experience is local: which office handles your file, how long it takes and how hard the appointment is to get all depend on your province. This is the practical picture for anyone living in Alicante, El Campello and the l’Alacantí district — one of the Spanish provinces with the largest foreign population, with everything that implies for the queues.
In Alicante, the fingerprint appointment is the classic bottleneck: slots are released in batches and vanish in minutes. What works: trying first thing in the morning, checking several towns across the province (sometimes there is a slot at a police station 20 minutes away), and daily persistence rather than luck. What you must not do: pay for appointments — reselling them is illegal, feeds the problem and exposes you to fraud.
The legal resolution deadlines (3 months in many procedures) coexist with the reality of a high-volume office: agile seasons and clogged seasons. The practical Alicante rule: file complete, clean applications — the request to remedy deficiencies is the great thief of months — and file online whenever you can, which also leaves a dated trail. And remember: in renewals, filing on time extends your authorisation while they decide.
No real disadvantage: your files go to the same provincial Immigration Office, your municipality’s padrón counts the same, and you can do the fingerprints wherever you find an appointment in the province. The closeness that does matter is a different one: that whoever handles your case knows the concrete practice of the Alicante office — what they ask for, how they issue requests, what speeds things up.
Whatever your procedure — arraigo, renewal, family reunification — the first step is knowing where you stand and what you are missing: assess your case for free.