Eduardo González
This past Tuesday, the Council of Ministers granted Spanish nationality by letter of nature to a new group of six Nicaraguan opponents, which brings to 116 the number of beneficiaries of this measure after having been expelled and stripped of their citizenship by the regime of Daniel Ortega.
At the proposal of the Minister of the Presidency, Justice and Relations with the Cortes, Félix Bolaños, the Council of Ministers granted these six people Spanish nationality by letter of nature, an exceptional procedure that is much faster than the usual channels and that prevents them from prolong their statelessness for a long time.
On February 9, 2023, the Government of Managua expelled 222 opponents (diplomats, former state officials, human rights defenders, Sandinista dissidents, opponents, journalists, academics, students, businessmen) from the country to the United States and stripped of their nationality. and merchants) accused of treason. After learning of the decision of the Ortega regime, the Government of Pedro Sánchez offered to grant Spanish nationality to those declared “stateless” by the Nicaraguan regime.
A week later, Daniel Ortega decreed the withdrawal of nationality and the seizure of his assets from 94 other opponents for the same reasons, after which the Spanish Government extended its offer to this second group. In addition to Spain, the Governments of Chile, Colombia, Brazil and Mexico have also offered nationality to the “stateless” of the regime.
The six beneficiaries on this occasion are Jimmy Alfredo Guevara Hernández, a ‘Criterios’ journalist and Nicaraguan music producer in exile, who appears on the second list of the 94 “stateless” opponents; Alejandra de los Ángeles Pérez González, included in the list of 222 political prisoners banished to the United States and who had been sentenced to eight years in prison for promoting “foreign interference” (specifically, for publishing images on social networks in which applauded the sanctions against the regime); and Manuel Jacinto Díaz Morales, lawyer and director and founder of the Bacanalnica blog, declared stateless in February 2023 and “definitively” suspended from his office, along with 24 other jurists (including Sergio Ramírez), in May 2023.
Two priests also appear on the list (José Luis Díaz Cruz, first vicar of the San Pedro Cathedral of Matagalpa, and Erick Mauricio Díaz Fernández, parish priest of the San José Obrero de El Tuma church, in Matagalpa, both included in the list of 222) and Yader Alfonso Morazán Flores, lawyer and former prosecutor of the Judiciary, who was imprisoned in October 2022, declared a “traitor to the country”, included in the list of 94 and stripped of his nationality in February 2023.
Among the 116 nationalized by Spain are diplomats, former state officials, human rights defenders, Sandinista dissidents, opponents, journalists, academics, students, businessmen and merchants, and such important figures as Cristiana Chamorro, presidential candidate in the 2021 elections; journalist Carlos Fernando Chamorro Barrios, founder of the local newspaper ‘Confidencial’ and son of former president Violeta Chamorro; the sociologist Gertrudis Guerrero, wife of the exiled Nicaraguan writer Sergio Ramírez; or the writer Gioconda Belli.
