Eduardo González
The Council of Ministers approved on Tuesday the Royal Decree granting Spanish nationality by naturalization to the descendants of the volunteers who served in the International Brigades, specifically to 54 children and 117 grandchildren of international brigadistas “who voluntarily came to Spain to defend the republican government against the military coup of 1936.”
With this recognition, according to the Government, “the legacy of the brigadistas, who embodied the values of freedom, equality, and solidarity, is honored,” and the Executive’s commitment “to a democratic memory that does not forget those who fought against fascism” is reaffirmed. “This is a gesture that acquires significant symbolic importance in a global context marked by the rise of revisionism and the delegitimization of democratic values,” it added.
The granting of Spanish nationality is carried out under the provisions of Law 20/2022, of October 19, on Democratic Memory. Article 33 of the law stipulates that volunteers of the International Brigades who participated in the Spanish Civil War and their descendants who demonstrate a continued commitment to promoting the memory of the conflict and defending democracy may acquire Spanish nationality by naturalization.
The children and grandchildren of brigadistas who are being granted nationality are citizens of countries such as Cuba, the United States, Poland, the United Kingdom, Australia, Italy, and France. All of them are members of the memorial association Friends of the International Brigades.
The decision to grant nationality to nearly 170 descendants of members of the International Brigades who applied for it in accordance with the provisions of the Law on Democratic Memory was announced last Friday by the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez.
“For the free and democratic Spain that we are, it will be an honor to call them compatriots,” Sánchez declared during the closing ceremony of the event commemorating the ‘Day of Remembrance and Tribute to all the victims of the military coup, the War, and the Dictatorship,’ held at the National Music Auditorium in Madrid. “By recognizing this right, we are appealing to the very defense of democracy in a time of threat and regression throughout the world,” he added.
At the closing ceremony, the Prime Minister emphasized that the Government is undertaking this commitment along with two other tasks: accelerating the legal proceedings to dissolve the Francisco Franco Foundation and the approval by the Council of Ministers, before the end of November, of the Royal Decree regulating the Catalogue of symbols and elements contrary to democratic memory, “so that they may be removed once and for all from the streets, without excuses and without delay, out of common sense, because no democracy, least of all ours, honors coup plotters.”
