Working in the EU - I am super fortunate to be working for the next 3 weeks. I can’t quite believe it. I’m doing the job I love - directing an opera. And in Spain. In the EU. I thought it might be useful to describe my experience for those who are trying to organise visas etc.

Brexit means we now all need a visa to work in the EU. I applied online at the Spanish visa centre for a standard work visa. The cost of this was £114 plus £5 for some new passport photos.

The visa app requires lots of paperwork: flight details, accommodation address, letter of invitation from host company, letter from accountant, proof of taxes paid over past year, 3 months of original bank statements (not ones downloaded from internet) plus travel insurance

So: trip to bank to get them to print statements, trip to photo booth to get new photos, calls to my accountant and purchase of travel insurance. All rather time consuming and fiddly.

Once submitted, the visa interview was relatively quick and painless. The staff were friendly & helpful. And sympathetic to the ridiculousness of the situation. All this extra bureaucracy when we used to travel without it.

The staff said it would take 15 days to get the visa approved but because no one is travelling at the moment due to COVID, the visa arrived within a week. What it will be like in normal times when the centre is busy, I dread to think.

The company I’m working for had to do a lot behind the scenes to get the Spanish consulate to understand the speed with which we needed to get our visas and the urgency of the situation. Without this, I think it would have been more challenging.

The added complication of travelling to EU at the moment is COVID travel ban. More time was spent by host company trying to solve this issue than with the visas. For me it meant a PCR test 48 hours before travel. Cost: £164

I arrived at Heathrow last Monday armed with all my paperwork but was refused permission to fly despite my name being on an exemption list

Host company had to book me on another flight with a different company and I was able to fly four days later. This delay was due directly to COVID travel bans not Brexit.

Returning to the UK will also be challenging what with 10 days quarantine and 3 COVID tests (one before departure and two when I get back to London) total cost approx £450

Another thing that remains unresolved is getting a Certificate of Residence from HMRC. Without this the Spanish company will have to deduct 25% from my fee for Spanish taxes. And I’ll get taxed in the UK as well. Previously I could apply for an A1 form which prevented this.

It was by no means easy but I made it to Spain in the end with a lot of support from my host company. Without that, I dread to think what it would have been like and my heart goes out to anyone trying it solo.

I’d be very interested to hear other people’s experiences so that together we can work out how to make it less painful, less fiddly and, hopefully, less costly. And we can use our collective experiences to lobby our government to sort out this very messy situation.