<h6><strong>Eduardo González</strong></h6> <h4><strong>A total of 414,652 people are now guaranteed access to Spanish nationality under the 2022 Democratic Memory Law, and the Minister of Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory, Ángel Víctor Torres, announced in Buenos Aires that the application period, which expires on October 22, could be extended if political circumstances permit.</strong></h4> During a working visit to Buenos Aires, the minister reported on Wednesday that, as of July 31, 876,321 people worldwide have now applied for Spanish citizenship. Of these, 414,652 descendants have already consolidated their right, and within this group, 237,145 are already registered and have received their passports. During a ceremony honoring the Spanish victims of the Argentine dictatorship (1976 and 1983), Torres stated that Argentina is the country that has registered the highest number of applications, with 366,579, representing 40% of the total number of applications. Of these, 174,277 have already been approved, and 61,499 are already registered. Torres noted that the deadline to apply for nationality expires on October 22, after an extension was approved on July 9, 2024. However, the minister himself assured the newspaper Clarin that "the door is not closed to extending the deadline," but that this requires achieving the necessary "majorities" in Parliament. According to Torres, within the framework of the Democratic Memory Law, "a deadline was first established to apply for that nationality, with the possibility of an extension that we saw as necessary." “We would have liked to have more options to continue extending, but there are certain limits,” he added. The Democratic Memory Law (popularly known as the “Grandchildren's Law”), of October 2022, allows access to Spanish nationality to people who were unable to apply for it between 2008 and 2011 under the Historical Memory Law approved in 2007 by the government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. Under this law, around 250,000 descendants of Franco exiles were naturalized, primarily in the consulates of France, Mexico, Argentina, Venezuela, and Cuba. The current law 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.” It also mentions other cases, such as those for descendants born abroad to Spanish women who lost their nationality for marrying foreigners before the 1978 Constitution came into force. A two-year deadline was set for formalizing applications from the Law's entry into force. However, 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 22, 2025, after the General Council of Spanish Citizenship Abroad (CGCEE) warned that staff shortages were causing "saturation" in the "consulates general, which are understaffed for this process." The Spanish consular offices in the various countries are responsible for processing these applications. More than 95% of these applications have been received at Spanish consular offices in Latin America and at the Consulate General of Spain in Miami. Specifically, the five consulates in Argentina account for 40% of the total applications and, together with the one in Havana (Cuba), exceed 53% of the total.
