Your FBI background check, its federal apostille, the sworn Spanish translation, and your state vital records with their state apostilles. One online order, itemized so you pick exactly what you need, correctly sequenced so nothing expires before your consular appointment.
Most people arrive thinking this is one apostille. The consulates ask for eight things, each with its own authority, its own clock, and its own way of failing.
Sources: Spanish consulate instructions for Washington DC, Chicago, Houston, Boston, Los Angeles, New York, Miami, San Francisco and San Juan. Requirements verified July 27, 2026.
The six month window runs from the date the FBI issues your summary to the date you submit at the consulate, not to your travel date. The federal apostille and the sworn translation both happen inside that window. Order the FBI check before you have a realistic appointment and you can watch it expire while you wait for a slot.
The apostille certificate is itself a page that has to be translated. Translate first and the apostille page arrives at the consulate untranslated, which is a documented rejection reason. Apostille, then translate. Never the reverse.
An FBI check is a federal document and takes a federal apostille from the US Department of State. A birth or marriage certificate is a state document and takes an apostille from the state that issued it. The two are not interchangeable, and using the wrong one voids the document.
It is good for 90 days, not six months. Get it at the same time as the FBI check and it will usually be dead before you submit. It also has to be signed by a physician, not a nurse practitioner or a physician assistant, and it must carry the exact 2005 International Health Regulations wording.
No US consulate requires the medical certificate, the bank documents, or the insurance policy to be notarized or apostilled. People pay for it anyway and add weeks for nothing. We will tell you to stop.
The Houston consulate warns in writing not to remove apostille staples, rivets or security seals. Detaching the apostille from the document it certifies invalidates the authentication, and the fix is starting that document over.
These carry the authentication, sequencing and expiry risk, and they are the ones you cannot fix quickly if they come back wrong.
Captured and submitted through an FBI approved channeler. Results typically the same day. We time the order against your appointment so the six month window is not burned before you use it.
We hand carry your FBI summary into the US Department of State in Washington DC. Seven to ten business days, against five to twelve weeks by mail.
Produced after the apostille so the apostille certificate is translated with the report, by a translator meeting the Traductor Jurado standard the consulates enforce.
Fresh certified long form copies of your marriage certificate and your children's birth certificates, apostilled by the state that issued them, then translated. Priced separately from the core order because the cost depends on the issuing state. Some posts require the certificate itself to have been issued within the last six months, so we order new copies rather than using what is in your drawer.
We are telling you this so you do not pay to authenticate documents that no consulate asks to be authenticated.
Built backward from your consular appointment, because that is the date every clock is measured against.
Tell us your BLS or consular appointment date, or when you expect one. Nothing gets ordered until that is realistic.
The FBI background check starts with your fingerprints. Near our Virginia locations, we take them, results as fast as 30 minutes. Anywhere else, use any FBI approved channeler near you and upload the PDF to us.
Hand carried into the Department of State. 7 to 10 business days.
Sworn Spanish translation of the full apostilled set, then shipped to you, sealed and intact.
State vital records run in parallel on their own track, since state apostille turnaround varies by issuing state.
Bringing family? Marriage certificates and children's birth certificates are issued by a state or by Washington DC, and they are apostilled by whoever issued them. We handle the Washington DC ones at $175 for the first record and $125 for each additional. A record from another state has to go to that state.
Check what you want us to handle. The order form opens with it already set up, and it collects everything we need from you up front: documents, scans, and details. No calls needed.
Every line is a service we publish a price for. Nothing is bundled or buried inside a round number. You add each piece yourself on the order form.
The documents are the cheap part. The expensive part is a file that comes back rejected with three months left on a six month clock, because the translation was done before the apostille, or a state apostille went on a federal document, or the certified copy was eleven months old.
There are 41 documented ways this specific corridor gets rejected. Our process is built around avoiding them, not around the paperwork.
If the consulate rejects a document we produced, for a reason that is ours, we redo it at our cost and we move it to the front of the queue. That covers the apostille, the translation, and the sequencing.
What we cannot cover is a rejection driven by a document you supplied, or by a consulate changing its published requirements after your file was built. Spanish consular practice varies noticeably between posts, and we track those differences, but we do not control them.
Consulate requirements for this corridor were last verified against official sources on July 27, 2026.
Everything is collected up front in the online order form: your documents, your scans, and what the order is for. Itemized pricing, one order, and the documents that have to be right.