CGT's Summer Correos Strike Call in Madrid: What Could Be Delayed

If your post has been slower than usual this summer, the strike call CGT has maintained across Correos operations in Madrid since July 1 may be part of the reason — though there's no independent data confirming how much it's actually affecting deliveries. The call isn't scheduled to end until September 30.

CGT (Confederación General del Trabajo), one of Correos' unions, called a full-day strike across every Correos centre and shift in the Comunidad de Madrid, running the full three months — not a symbolic afternoon. Separately, CGT's own material also lists a two-hour-twice-daily stoppage pattern — 13:00 to 15:00 and again 17:00 to 19:00, every day — for what it calls the "Área Centro." That's a Correos-internal operating-zone name, not a description of Madrid's central district or any specific neighbourhood, and CGT's public material doesn't spell out its exact geographic scope or explain how this narrower stoppage schedule relates to the full-day strike call described above. Treat them as two separate things CGT has announced, not one nested inside the other.

A strike call establishes a risk of disruption, not proof that any specific letter or parcel has actually been delayed — nobody has published data connecting this strike to real delivery times. According to early coverage, regular letters, parcels, and administrative notifications — ordinary Correos deliveries — are the categories most exposed if the call is affecting your route. Neither CGT nor the outlets covering the strike have specified exactly which deliveries are affected on any given day or route.

CGT itself says adherence to the strike call varies by sorting centre and by day, and that the impact on any specific barrio depends on how many local workers are following it. Neither CGT nor the outlets covering the strike have published a citywide breakdown of where deliveries are most affected — so don't assume your street is fine just because your neighbour's post arrived on time, and don't assume the worst either.

Here's the correction worth making before anyone panics: your TIE (Tarjeta de Identidad de Extranjero, the physical foreigner ID card) was never coming by post. You collect it in person from the Policía Nacional (National Police) documentation unit that took your fingerprints, following whatever collection instructions you were given at that appointment — Correos is never part of that chain. A postal strike changes nothing about it.

What could genuinely be affected is a different piece of paper entirely: the letter from the Oficina de Extranjería telling you your residency application has been approved, rejected, or needs more documents. That's a separate process, run by a different agency, and it's exactly the kind of item a Correos disruption can slow down if it travels by post.

CGT's complaint is about staffing and heat, not abstract politics. The union says roughly fifteen people leave or go on summer leave for every two vacancies actually filled — in its own words, "not zero hiring, but close to it." According to CGT, the people left behind are absorbing the workload of ten colleagues during a heatwave.

The heat angle matters specifically because of when the Área Centro stoppages are scheduled. Correos' internal heat protocol (known as PT008) tells carteros to return to base or suspend delivery once an AEMET (Spain's national weather agency) heat alert is active — but CGT says the alert windows don't always line up with when it's actually hottest on the street, and that real peak temperatures often land between 17:00 and 19:00, exactly their second daily stoppage window. By the union's own account, that's a pointed choice: it isn't picking a symbolic hour for its Área Centro stoppages, but the hour it says the protocol should already be protecting workers and isn't.

In a protest CGT says took place outside Correos' Madrid headquarters in the final days of July, there was no sign of a resolution — the union says the dispute is structural, tied to years of workforce cuts (CGT cites a loss of more than 22,000 jobs company-wide over the past decade) and a shift toward prioritising large-platform parcel contracts over the traditional postal service. Nothing in that account suggests a quick end before September 30. All of the figures in this section — the staffing ratio, the workload claim, the protocol critique, the job losses — are CGT's own account, not independently verified numbers.

If you have an open residency file with the Oficina de Extranjería (Immigration Office) — a renewal, a first authorization, anything that ends in a resolution letter — you likely chose, at some point on the application form, whether to be notified by post or electronically. That's separate from the physical TIE card itself, which is handled by the Policía Nacional and was never mailed to begin with, as above. If you picked postal notification for your extranjería file specifically, that letter depends on Correos getting through a strike-hit summer without disruption.

Spain's electronic notification system for immigration and most other public procedures is called DEHú (Dirección Electrónica Habilitada Única — Single Enabled Electronic Address), accessible at dehu.redsara.es with a Cl@ve PIN or a digital certificate. Logging into DEHú lets you see any notification that's already been made available to you there — it doesn't, on its own, switch an already-open file from postal to electronic notification. If you're not legally required to receive notifications electronically, you're entitled to request the switch at any time where both methods are available, but that requires formally communicating it to the office handling your file — not just logging into DEHú to look. For anything you file from now on, you can select electronic notification upfront and avoid the question entirely.

If electronic notification is mandatory for you, or it's the method you've expressly chosen as official, a real deadline follows: under Ley 39/2015 (Articles 41–43), once a notification is made available in DEHú, you have 10 calendar days to access it before it's treated as rejected and the procedure continues as though you'd been notified — unless you can show accessing it was genuinely impossible for technical or material reasons. If your file's official method is still postal and you're just occasionally checking a voluntary electronic copy out of curiosity, you're in a different situation, and that strict 10-day clock isn't automatically running the same way against you. If you're not sure which situation applies to your file, ask the office directly — getting it wrong in either direction is a bad outcome, whether that means assuming you're safe when you're not, or panicking about a deadline that was never yours to worry about.

If you're waiting on something right now rather than planning ahead, don't just keep checking the buzón. Start with the Mi Carpeta Ciudadana (My Citizen Folder) portal online, or the government's dedicated Extranjería status checker by SMS to 651 714 610 (message "NIE" plus your number, or "EXPE" plus your file number) — the SMS carries no additional charge. The same service is also reachable by phone at 902 02 22 22, but 902 numbers are typically billed outside inclusive mobile-plan minutes, so treat the phone line as a potentially chargeable fallback, not the default. All of this is explicitly informational only, not a final legal answer, and the SMS/phone service isn't available to EU citizens, who need to check directly with the office handling their card instead. The general public administration line, 060, or the office handling your file directly, are also worth trying for anything the above doesn't answer. None of these guarantee a final answer, but together they're a way to check without depending on a paper letter physically arriving.

CGT has maintained a strike call across Correos operations in Madrid through September 30, with a separately-listed two-hour-twice-daily stoppage pattern (13:00–15:00 and 17:00–19:00) for its "Área Centro" zone — there's no independent data on how much this is actually slowing deliveries, but plan around the possibility rather than assuming it resolves soon. Regular letters, packages, and administrative notices are the categories that could be affected; your physical TIE card was never mailed and isn't affected by any of this either way. If you have an open file with the Oficina de Extranjería on postal notification, you can request a switch to electronic notification through DEHú where both methods are available, but you have to communicate that formally to the office handling your file — logging into DEHú alone doesn't do it. And know which notification rule actually applies to you: the strict 10-day DEHú rejection clock only runs if electronic notification is mandatory for you or you've expressly chosen it as your official method; an occasional voluntary check is a different situation. If you're waiting on a specific answer right now, start with Mi Carpeta Ciudadana online or the free SMS Extranjería status check (651 714 610) before the 902 02 22 22 phone line, which can carry per-minute charges outside inclusive mobile plans — all of these are informational only, and the SMS/phone route isn't available to EU citizens.

We found no public response from Correos addressing CGT's specific staffing and heat-protocol claims as of August 6. If that changes, we'll update this piece.