<h6><strong>Eduardo González</strong></h6> <h4><strong>The Consulate General of Spain in Havana has launched a new appointment request system to apply for Spanish nationality under the Democratic Memory Law.</strong></h4> "As announced on May 21, 2025, the implementation of the new appointment request system to apply for Spanish nationality under Law 20/2022 on Democratic Memory has been completed today," the Consulate reported in a press release this Friday. Through this new system, applicants for nationality will be able to access their credentials using a form published on the Consulate's website. Furthermore, from now on, all appointments must be requested through this new system; therefore, the previous email for requesting credentials is permanently closed. One of the new features of this platform's appointment system is that it will allow people who initiated the process within the validity period of the Democratic Memory Law to appear in person at the Consulate General to submit their application beyond the October 22, 2025, deadline. Another important change in the new platform is that it will allow multiple applications to be submitted from a single email address, provided that the email address is for personal use and is constantly accessible to the applicant. Once the form is submitted, a receipt with a Secure Verification Code (CSV) will be automatically generated and sent to the email address provided by the user. Starting October 22, all credentials generated by the previous system will be deleted. In any case, the order in which appointment requests were submitted will continue to be respected. Therefore, those who requested their credentials through the previous system and have not yet received them will receive their corresponding receipt in chronological order and, when the time comes, their username and password. Those who have already requested their credentials through the previous system should not repeat their credential request through the new platform, as they will also receive their electronic receipt in their email. <h5><strong>“The Law of Grandchildren”</strong></h5> The Democratic Memory Law (popularly known as the “Grandchildren Law”), of October 2022, allows access to Spanish nationality to people who were unable to obtain it between 2008 and 2011 under the Historical Memory Law approved in 2007 by the government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. Under this law, approximately 250,000 descendants of Franco exiles were naturalized, primarily 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 of 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 religious reasons, or due to sexual orientation and identity, have lost or renounced their Spanish nationality.” More than 500,000 people have applied for Spanish nationality under the "Grandchildren's Law," according to Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares, who announced last January during the opening of the 9th Conference of Ambassadors. According to consular data, Cuba, Mexico, and Argentina are the three countries with the most applications. In July 2024, the Council of Ministers extended the deadline for applying for Spanish nationality through the Democratic Memory Law for a third year, until October 2025, after the General Council of Spanish Citizens Abroad (CGCEE) warned that staff shortages were causing "saturation" in "consulates general, which are understaffed for this process." The Ombudsman's latest annual report, published at the end of March, warns that "the majority of complaints from Spanish citizens abroad" in 2024 focused on "the lack of material and personnel resources of consular services" and specifies that "the greatest number of complaints on this matter came from Cuba and Ecuador." The report also warns that the operation of consular registries prompted a significant number of complaints not only from Spaniards residing in their respective districts but also due to "its impact on nationality applications provided for in the 2022 Democratic Memory Law." A year ago, in April 2024, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs acknowledged, in response to four written questions from the Popular Parliamentary Group in Congress, that the Spanish Consulate General in Havana only had 30 staff to handle the 36,117 applications registered to date. For this reason, on May 5, the Consulate increased its capacity to process nationality applications arising from the Democratic Memory Law by 27.2 percent. An estimated 300,000 Cubans have applied for Spanish nationality on behalf of their parents or grandparents.
