<h6><strong>Eduardo González</strong></h6> <h4><strong>More than 500,000 people have applied for Spanish nationality under the Law of Democratic Memory (popularly known as the “Law of Grandchildren”) of October 2022.</strong></h4> This was announced last Monday by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, during the inauguration of the IX Conference of Ambassadors, which brought together the 130 representatives of Spain accredited throughout the world at the headquarters of the Department in the Plaza del Marqués de Salamanca, in Madrid, to reflect on the challenges of the international political situation in the new year. “We will continue to respond to the demands that, in accordance with the Law of Democratic Memory, the Consular Civil Registry Offices have received,” said the minister during his presentation of the priorities of his portfolio in 2025. “More than 500,000 requests for the option of Spanish nationality of origin,” he continued. “And in coherence with that democratic memory, and as a mature democracy that we are, in this year in which 50 years have passed since the end of the dictatorship, we will also pay tribute to the diplomats and foreign service personnel who faced the dictatorship and its barbarity in defense of the freedom of all Spaniards,” he added. Last July, the Council of Ministers extended the deadline for applying for Spanish nationality through the Law of Democratic Memory for a third year, until October 2025, after the General Council of Spanish Citizenship Abroad (CGCEE) warned that the shortage of staff was causing a “saturation” in the “general consulates that are understaffed for this process.” The Law of Democratic Memory allows access to Spanish nationality to people who were unable to apply for it between 2008 and 2011 under the Law of Historical Memory approved in 2007 by the Government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, under which around 250,000 descendants of Franco exiles were naturalized, especially in the consulates of France, Mexico, Argentina, Venezuela and Cuba. The current law, in force since October 2022, grants Spanish nationality to “those born outside Spain to a father or mother, grandfather or grandmother, who were originally Spanish, and who, as a result of having suffered exile for political, ideological or belief reasons or sexual orientation and identity, have lost or renounced Spanish nationality”. It also includes other cases of option, such as sons and daughters born abroad to Spanish women who lost their nationality by marrying foreigners before the entry into force of the 1978 Constitution; or the adult sons and daughters of those Spaniards who have had their nationality recognized through the Law of Historical Memory and the Law of Democratic Memory. The law established a period of two years, from its entry into force, to carry out the procedure, although there was the possibility of a one-year extension if the Council of Ministers so agreed at the end of the first two years, as has happened.
