Japanese-language portal Spain-Press has published a traveller’s guide clarifying how Spain applies the EU’s Entry/Exit System (EES) two months after it became fully operational. The 12 June article walks readers through the fingerprint and facial-image capture process now mandatory for non-EU nationals at first entry into the Schengen Area. According to the guide, Spain’s busiest hubs—Madrid-Barajas, Barcelona-El Prat and Málaga-Costa del Sol—have each installed more than 250 biometric kiosks to meet summer demand. The average first-time enrolment takes 74 seconds; subsequent entries should drop to under 20 seconds once data are in the central database, airport operator Aena told the outlet. Importantly for travel managers, the article confirms that the EU’s separate travel authorisation system, ETIAS, has been postponed until “end-2026 at the earliest”; travellers therefore need take “no immediate action” beyond ensuring passport validity. Confusion between EES and ETIAS has spawned a cottage industry of unofficial websites charging fees for non-existent registrations.
![New Guide Explains Spain’s Post-EES Border Routine and Confirms ETIAS ‘Not Yet Required’]()
Travellers looking for an authoritative source on what documentation they actually need can bookmark VisaHQ’s Spain portal (https://www.visahq.com/spain/). The service collates the most up-to-date entry rules, offers reminder tools to check passport validity, and provides live customer support to steer users away from scam sites—making it a handy companion while the new EES beds in.
The guide also offers practical tips: keep fingers dry to prevent scan errors, remove glasses before facial capture and carry a pen to fill out airline contact-tracing forms because kiosks do not print receipts. Spain-Press quotes a Tokyo-based tour operator who successfully processed a 32-member incentive group in Madrid without missing their connecting flight to Bilbao—evidence, she says, that the system is coping with group traffic. While the tone is reassuring, both the International Air Transport Association (IATA) and Airports Council International Europe maintain calls for “operational flexibility” after long queues were reported in Alicante and Lanzarote last weekend. They want permission to waive fingerprint capture for children under 10 and elderly passengers during peak surges—an exemption Spain has so far resisted.
Travellers looking for an authoritative source on what documentation they actually need can bookmark VisaHQ’s Spain portal (https://www.visahq.com/spain/). The service collates the most up-to-date entry rules, offers reminder tools to check passport validity, and provides live customer support to steer users away from scam sites—making it a handy companion while the new EES beds in.
The guide also offers practical tips: keep fingers dry to prevent scan errors, remove glasses before facial capture and carry a pen to fill out airline contact-tracing forms because kiosks do not print receipts. Spain-Press quotes a Tokyo-based tour operator who successfully processed a 32-member incentive group in Madrid without missing their connecting flight to Bilbao—evidence, she says, that the system is coping with group traffic. While the tone is reassuring, both the International Air Transport Association (IATA) and Airports Council International Europe maintain calls for “operational flexibility” after long queues were reported in Alicante and Lanzarote last weekend. They want permission to waive fingerprint capture for children under 10 and elderly passengers during peak surges—an exemption Spain has so far resisted.
