The Diplomat
Yesterday, the Dual Nationality Agreement between Spain and France came into force, which will allow citizens of both countries to acquire the nationality of the other without having to renounce their nationality of origin. France thus becomes the first country outside the Ibero-American sphere with which Spain has an agreement of this nature.
“This agreement, signed in the French city of Montauban a year ago, settles a historical debt with the Republican exile, at the same time that it reinforces the citizenship rights of Spanish residents in France and of the French in Spain, which means an improvement of their conditions in the country of residence”, the Ministry of Justice indicated in a press release.
The text, which “will be published in the BOE imminently”, will also benefit, with retroactive effect, any Spanish or French citizen who, prior to yesterday’s date, had acquired the nationality of the other country after having renounced their own. From now on, these persons “may avail themselves of the provisions of this new Agreement and enjoy their dual nationality from the date on which they request it”.
“Such a text, which has a great symbolic and historical value, aims to put an end to the asymmetry that exists between France and Spain in matters of dual nationality and to strengthen the links between our two countries,” said yesterday the French Embassy in Spain, which highlighted the fact that Spanish nationality is allowed to be recovered “to Spaniards who have lost their nationality of origin when acquiring French nationality.” “In this way, it recognizes the deep roots of the Spanish presence in France, marked by the reception of more than 500,000 refugees at the time of the 1939 withdrawal or by the contribution of Spaniards to the development of post-war France: the 600,000 Spaniards living in France in 1969 represented at that time the first foreign community in the country,” it added.
Until now, Spain only had dual nationality agreements with Latin American countries, specifically with Chile (1958), Peru (1959), Paraguay (1959), Nicaragua (1961), Guatemala (1961), Bolivia (1961), Ecuador (1964), Costa Rica (1964), Honduras (1966), Dominican Republic (1968), Argentina (1969) and Colombia (1979).
The agreement was agreed by both governments in September 2020 after negotiations that began in March 2019. The first official announcement was made in July 2020 in Paris during a joint press conference between the then Minister of Foreign Affairs, Arancha González Laya, and her French counterpart, Jean-Yves Le Drian, in the presence of the then Spanish ambassador to France and current head of diplomacy, José Manuel Albares. The agreement, Gonzalez Laya declared that day, sends “a very clear signal to the more than 275,000 Spaniards living in France and a nod to the more than 125,000 French residents in Spain”.
Finally, the agreement was signed on March 15, 2021 by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, and the President of the French Republic, Emmanuel Macron, during the XXVI Spanish-French summit, held in Montauban, in the southwest of France.