Albares expresses “full support” for granting nationality to Sahrawis, a measure rejected by his party in Congress

Eduardo González Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares has stated that he is “full support” for the bill to grant Spanish nationality to Sahrawis born before 1976, a proposal that has been systematically rejected by his party, the PSOE, in every parliamentary vote. “I’m going to be very clear and I’m going to say it publicly: I am fully in favor of this law, of granting Spanish nationality to Sahrawis who were born under Spanish administration,” Albares affirmed this Wednesday before the plenary session of Congress in response to a question from MP Francesc-Marc Álvaro Vidal, of the Republican Parliamentary Group. “There is no obstruction, and I, as Spain’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, am in favor of it,” he insisted. In his speech, Álvaro Vidal criticized the minister, saying that “his cabinet has blocked the law granting Spanish nationality to Sahrawis.” “In this House, many groups are willing to move this project forward,” he continued. “We don’t understand this double standard unless, despite being the most progressive government in history, they have surrendered to the dictates of (US President Donald) Trump and the monarch of Morocco (Mohammed VI). The truth is that the PSOE has voted against, on two separate occasions, successive bills proposed by Sumar, their junior partner in the government, to grant Spanish nationality to Sahrawis born before 1976, when the territory was still under Spanish administration. The first vote took place in February 2023, during the honeymoon period between Spain and Morocco following the decision by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez to support the autonomy plan proposed by Rabat for Western Sahara. On that occasion, the plenary session of the Lower House approved the consideration of the bill with only the Socialists voting against it, but the processing of the text was interrupted due to the sudden dissolution of Parliament for the snap elections. At the end of In 2023, Sumar revived the same issue and presented a new Bill to grant “Spanish nationality by naturalization to Sahrawis born in the territory of Western Sahara under Spanish administration,” taking into account “the strong ties” between the Sahrawi population and Spain. The vote on whether to consider this bill was held in February 2025, and the Socialists once again stood alone in their opposition. Once the debate on its consideration was over, the bill was referred to the Justice Committee of the Congress, thus beginning the process of submitting amendments to the entire bill and to specific articles. After this phase was completed, the Plenary of the Lower House decided, in December 2025, to proceed with the debate and final vote on the text at the request of the Popular Parliamentary Group in Congress, with 347 votes in favor, no votes against, and no abstentions. The legal arguments To justify its position, the PSOE has relied on mere legal technicalities. Specifically, the Socialists reject the legal-technical procedure proposed by Sumar, arguing that the Polisario Front, a private entity not recognized by Morocco, should not be the one to certify the documentation necessary for citizenship. Furthermore, they oppose the naturalization process for granting citizenship and propose, instead, the procedure established by a 2016 non-binding resolution that allows Equatorial Guineans, as residents of a former colony, to opt for the expedited procedure to apply for Spanish citizenship. In March 2024, the Government itself, in a written parliamentary response to Sumar, merely stated that “the proposed reforms to nationality law to extend Spanish nationality to Sahrawis raise technical and legal certainty issues that must be resolved in accordance with current legislation, and taking into account the negotiation process within the framework of the United Nations, whose centrality must be ensured in all cases.” In June 2020, the Supreme Court ruled that being born in Western Sahara before 1975 does not confer the right to obtain Spanish nationality by origin because the former province could not be considered national territory during Spanish administration and, therefore, “being born in Sahara” during Spanish rule cannot be equated with “being born in Spain” for the purposes of nationality by origin. From a legal standpoint, the Sahrawi people are stateless, although they do possess Algerian passports for humanitarian reasons, which serve as travel documents but do not grant them citizenship. However, Sumar has pointed out that in 1958, Francisco Franco's dictatorial regime decided to transform its African colonies into overseas provinces of Spain. This allowed the then-called "Spanish Sahara" (under Spanish control since 1885) to become known as the 53rd province, with the status of a metropolitan province. As a result, its inhabitants had representation in the dictatorship's Cortes (Parliament), possessed Spanish national identity cards, and were able to study at Spanish universities, access the civil service, and even serve in the armed forces and participate in the 1966 referendum on the proposed Organic Law of the State. Twenty years after its transformation into a metropolitan province, Spain definitively ended its presence in the territory on February 26, 1976. A Royal Decree of August 1976 established that those who met certain requirements could opt for Spanish nationality within one year, “but the Spanish administration had already abandoned the territory, thus making the effective exercise of that option impossible, as the Supreme Court made clear” in 1998 and 1999, Sumar recalls. Since Spain's departure, the territory of Western Sahara has been controlled by Morocco, whose sovereignty over the former Spanish province lacks international legal recognition.

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