The Council of Ministers has approved extending the deadline for exercising the right to apply for Spanish nationality set out in the eighth additional provision of Law 20/2022, on Democratic Memory, by a year.
The two-year period established in said provision to exercise the right to opt for Spanish nationality for people born outside Spain to a father, mother, grandfather or grandmother, originally Spanish, and who, as a result of having suffered exile for political, ideological or religious reasons or for sexual orientation and identity reasons, lost or renounced Spanish nationality, and persons who are in the following situations, is therefore extended for a third year:
a) Sons and daughters born abroad to Spanish women who lost their nationality because they married foreigners before the 1978 Constitution came into force.
b) Sons and daughters of legal age born to Spaniards whose nationality of origin was recognised through the right of option under the provisions of this law or in the seventh additional provision of Law 52/2007, which recognises and extends rights and establishes measures on behalf of those who suffered persecution or violence during the civil war and the dictatorship.
The eighth additional provision of the Democratic Memory Law itself establishes that the aforementioned two-year period begins with the entry into force of the law, thus its validity would end on 22 October 2024.
Since the entry into force of this Law, up to 31 March 2024, the Consular Civil Registry Offices received 301,121 applications to opt for Spanish nationality of origin.
More than 95 percent of the applications have been received at the Spanish Consular Offices in Ibero-America and the Consulate General of Spain in Miami. Specifically, Spain's five consulates general in Argentina account for 40 percent of applications, and together with the Consulate General of Spain in Havana, they account for over 53 percent of applications. In all of them there are a number of applicants who are unlikely to be summoned and attended to before the end of the two-year period laid down in the aforementioned eighth additional provision of the Law.
Therefore, the Government is extending the two-year deadline for applying for Spanish nationality by a year, so that all appointment requests already submitted and pending the assignment of a date can be handled, as well as all applications submitted that cannot be processed within the first two years for applications initially established in the law.
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