Good news for Cubans looking to validate their university degrees in Spain

There are good news for the Cuban community in Spain who are seeking to validate their university degrees in order to aspire to a better paid job that matches their professional knowledge.

In Spain, bureaucratic obstacles in the validation process are holding back over 100,000 university degrees of foreign citizens. Recently, the Ministry of Universities announced the hiring of 26 individuals to be incorporated into a task force to move past these delays.

Now, there will be 41 officials dedicated to this work, and therefore, it is expected that the situation will improve. The institutional response comes after a series of public protests by foreign professionals, including Cubans, who have put pressure on the State to shorten the waiting times for validations.

An example is Marcos, a Cuban surgeon and house cleaner in Valencia, who has protested because he is in a state of desperation months after starting his application and still has no response.

According to the Levante newspaper, in that autonomous community there are also Argentine doctors trapped in manual jobs while they wait for their degrees to be validated. Most importantly, Spain needs prepared health professionals, but state inefficiency has such great inertia that it is incapable of resolving this process in a reasonable time.

The collective of professionals with foreign degrees celebrate the Ministry’s decision to approve a plan of action, but ultimately, they consider it “a crumbs plan” that will not solve the significant existing backlog.

In October 2022, the Ministry of Universities had 68 officials working towards the goal of reviewing 50,000 files. However, that plan of action ended with 30,000 degrees not reviewed and 30,000 incomplete, resulting in 80,000 degrees without validation.

At present, between 4,000 and 5,000 new applications are incorporated each month; so there are about 100,000, twice as many as in January 2023, but with a third of the officials.

Steps to validate a university degree in Spain

The validation of university degrees in Spain for foreigners is a process that allows a degree obtained in another country to be recognized and valid in the Iberian nation. This procedure is essential for those professionals who wish to work in their field of specialization in Spain.

Registration of the Validated Degree: If the validation is approved, the degree must be registered in Spain for its full recognition.

Resolution: After the evaluation, a resolution is issued. If it is favorable, the validation is granted. In some cases, additional studies or passing of examinations may be required.

Evaluation: Once the application with all the required documents is submitted, the Ministry assesses the equivalence between the foreign degree and the corresponding Spanish degree. This process can take several months.

Payment of Fees: There is a fee to be paid for the validation process. The amount varies according to the level of studies of the degree to be validated.

Application for Validation: The application is submitted to the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training of Spain. This can be done online through their website or in person at some offices.

Translation and Legalization of Documents: Documents that are not in Spanish must be officially translated. Additionally, they may need to be legalized or have an apostille, depending on the country of origin, to certify their authenticity.

Information and Documentation: The first step is to obtain detailed information about the validation process. It is important to verify the specific requirements, as they may vary according to the country where the degree was obtained and the nature of the degree. Generally, the presentation of documents such as the university degree, the academic transcript and, sometimes, a detailed description of the curriculum, is required.