The Diplomat
The Spanish consulates abroad attended more than 8,800 cases of collective and individual emergencies in 2023, 1,200 more than the previous year, and responded to 160,000 emergency calls, according to data from the Balance of Consular Activity 2023, presented yesterday in the Council of Ministers by the head of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, José Manuel Albares.
Spain has 178 consular offices, one of the most extensive networks among the Member States of the European Union, to serve a Spanish community that has practically doubled since 2009, reaching nearly three million residents abroad (the 59% of them in America and 38% in Europe), as reported yesterday by the Ministry. To these figures we must add the millions of Spaniards who travel abroad for tourism or business. In 2023, 142,000 people were registered in the Traveler Registry, 30% more than in 2022.
Victims of violence against women abroad are a particularly vulnerable group, according to Foreign Affairs. Ignorance of the reality of the country and the foreign language, as well as the lack of one’s own social and family network, aggravate, in many cases, an already very difficult situation. For this reason, the Spanish consular network attended to a total of 428 new cases in 2023, and we managed to repatriate 26 women and 14 minors.
Regarding care for Spanish detainees abroad, as of December 31, 2023, there were 940 detainees (823 men and 117 women). The countries with the highest number of detainees are France, Germany and Morocco. Since 2022, the number of detainees has increased after a gradual decrease in previous years, which is mainly explained by the reopening of borders after the end of the COVID-19 crisis.
Conflicts in Africa and the Middle East
The year 2023 has been very marked by the crisis in the Middle East. In October, after the Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel, a special operation was launched to care for the relatives of the two Spanish citizens who died in the attacks and to repatriate the Spaniards who were traveling at that time and who were affected by the successive cancellations of their flights. In total, 334 Spaniards and 95 other nationalities were transported to Spain on two Air Force planes. Furthermore, since the start of the war in Gaza, the departure from the Gaza Strip of 100 Spanish-Palestinian citizens and 87 Palestinians, mainly relatives of the former, has been facilitated.
The outbreak of a new civil war in Sudan in April 2023 led the Government to organize an operation in which a total of 34 Spanish citizens and 70 citizens of nine different nationalities were evacuated from the country, including 50 citizens of Member States of the Union. European. Months later, before the coup d’état in Niger, a total of 74 people flew from Niamey to our country on an Air Force plane: 16 Spaniards and 58 citizens of eighteen different nationalities, including 9 EU citizens.
Attention to Spaniards abroad
The consular offices also carry out daily service procedures for Spaniards in many areas, such as the documentation of those registered in the Consular Registration Registry. In 2023, 388,722 passports and 9,530 safe-conduct passes, and 69 provisional travel documents, were issued to European citizens.
In addition, 128,179 birth registrations, 21,459 marriage registrations and 6,865 death registrations were made. This represents 39% more registrations than in 2022, due in part to the increase in birth registrations of beneficiaries of the Democratic Memory Law who opted for Spanish nationality.
Finally, consular offices processed 1,609,047 visas, which is almost 20% more than in 2022 and more than three times more than in 2020, a year marked by travel restrictions related to the global COVID-19 epidemic. 19. Around 85% of the visas issued are short-term, although study visas have also increased significantly, reflecting the efforts of the Administration as a whole to promote internationalization in the educational field. In 2023, about 6% of visas issued were study visas.
Foreign vote reform and Democratic Memory
The new system of voting abroad approved in September 2022 has facilitated the participation of Spanish citizens abroad, by eliminating the “requested vote” and easing some of the procedures that Spaniards who usually reside outside our borders had to carry out. . Thus, in 2023, with the application of the new regulatory framework in the regional elections of May 28 and the general elections of July 23, 2023, the voting figures have increased slightly: from 3.3% (2019) to 7.6% (2023) in the case of regional elections; and from 6.8% (2019) to 10% (2023) in the general elections.
Additionally, in application of the Democratic Memory Law, from October 21, 2022 to December 31, 2023, 226,354 applications were received in the consular network, of which 110,540 files were approved and 69,421 were registered.
