A Letter from Tenerife's New British Consul

I’m Matthew Vickers, the British Consul for the Canary Islands, and Bruce and Mary have kindly given me the opportunity to use the newsletter to tell you a bit about the work that the team and I do on Tenerife.

Originally I’m from Liverpool and I’ve spent my career up to now in retailing and in sales and marketing, looking after everything from meatballs to soft drinks to headache tablets. In January of this year, I moved to Tenerife from Glasgow. As you can imagine, I’ve spent the first few months of my new job getting to know about the Consulate and finding out where we’re best placed to help British tourists and residents.

A good place to start is with the areas that we can and can’t get involved in.
 

We can

•    Help if you’re a victim of a crime or are in hospital
•    Offer an emergency passport if yours is lost or stolen
•    Provide information about transferring funds in an emergency
•    Support and help in a range of cases such as death of a loved one overseas, missing persons, child abduction or kidnapping
•    Give you details of local English speaking lawyers, interpreters, doctors and funeral directors
•    Help people with mental illness
•    Do all that we can to contact you within 24 hours of being told that you’ve been detained
•    Provide a range of notarial services including legalising and verifying documents, dealing with marriage paperwork, witnessing signatures etc.

However, we can’t

•    Get you out of prison or intervene in court proceedings
•    Give you legal advice or become involved in property disputes
•    Pay bills or give you money
•    Make travel arrangements for you
•    Get you better treatment in hospital or in prison than local people receive

There are five of us in the team based in Santa Cruz (Helen, Christine, Mary, Monica ad me) and you can call us on weekdays between 8am and 4pm on 922-286-863. We know that it’s not always easy to get to Santa Cruz, so we do come to the south of the island every week to hold a surgery at the LloydsTSB bank in Costa Adeje.  If you want to see us, you should call the Santa Cruz office number so we can arrange an appointment for you.

A lot of people think that we deal with ten year passports and visas too, but in fact all of this work is done in Madrid, although you can pick up application forms to renew your passport either from the Santa Cruz office or at LloydsTSB in Costa Adeje. If you’re looking for more details about passports and visas, or indeed for loads of useful information about living and working in Spain, I’d really recommend our website www.ukinspain.fco.gov.uk.

I hope this very brief overview has given you some idea of the work that we do ansd of how you can get hold of us. Whether you live here, or are just visiting, enjoy your time in Tenerife.


Best Wishes
Matthew