Diego Herrera walked away from a 3,000 EUR scam because our directory existed

Diego had been in Barcelona for just over three years, working on and off in the back of a Raval restaurant, when a man introduced himself at the restaurant’s delivery entrance and said he was a "gestor administrativo" who had regularised twenty-two Peruvians in the last twelve months. The price was three thousand euros, half upfront, in cash. Diego had almost that much saved. He asked for a day to think about it.

He typed "abogado de extranjería Barcelona" into Google that evening. The first six results were advertisers. The seventh was an article on illegalin.eu about how to vet a gestor — including a specific warning not to pay more than one thousand euros for an Arraigo Social filing. The article linked to our vetted-consultants directory. Diego scrolled through the Barcelona listings for twenty minutes, picked a mid-sized firm whose profile mentioned Peruvian casework, and booked a free thirty-minute first-contact call for the following morning.

The lawyer he spoke to charged a flat fee of 400 euros for the Arraigo Social filing, with a 150-euro top-up only if the Subdelegación requested additional documentation. She asked Diego to send her his padrón, his contratos (he had kept copies of two older cash-paid offers of employment, which she said could serve as evidence of social-economic ties even if they did not count as formal employment), his A2 Spanish certificate — he had passed it the previous summer at the Escola Oficial d’Idiomes — and the oferta de empleo from his current employer, who was willing to sign a formal contract.

The filing went in eight weeks after the first call. The resolución favorable came back in sixteen weeks. Total cost: 550 euros of legal fees, 10.72 euros of tasa, and roughly 300 euros of translations and apostilles. Diego has his Tarjeta de Identidad de Extranjero. He also still has the two and a half thousand euros that the gestor at the delivery entrance would have taken.

Diego has told that story to every undocumented friend he has in Barcelona. He warns them specifically about cash-only "gestores" who refuse to meet in an office. The gestor from the delivery entrance has, as far as we know, not reappeared.