Madrid/In full discount time for the application for Spanish nationality Through the Democratic Memory Law (LMD), the Spanish Minister of Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory, Ángel Víctor Torres, has visited Chile and Argentina – the country with the most requests – and has multiplied his interviews in Latin American media, where the expectation has been maximum due to the new possibility of obtaining a European passport. In one of them, the minister reveals that there have been difficulties in setting up mobile offices in Cuba that would facilitate the process.
“We have tried to set up mobile offices and it is complicated,” Torres said in specific reference to Cuba and Venezuela. The minister responded to the correspondent from the diary The Country in Santiago de Chile, interested in the complications of managing the avalanche of applications in recent years.
As reported to 14ymedio Sources from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, so far there are nearly 400,000 applications for nationality registered in Havana through the LMD, and between 5,000 and 6,000 more are received every day, so they expect that 500,000 will be reached, and even exceeded. In general, as of July 31, 876,321 people had made the request, of which 414,652 have already had it approved and 237,145 have obtained a passport.
The final data on applicants will be public in December, just over a month since the registration process concludes on October 22
Torres explains that, taking into account the volume, it could be considered that there has been agility in the efforts, although the particular situation of each country has had an impact on the progress. In the case of Chile, with more than 44,181 interested parties, the processing is going smoothly. In Argentina, on the other hand, there are about 600,000 applicants, which has inevitably generated a funnel. In the case of Venezuela and Cuba –even with the high number of applicants–, he describes, the problem has had more to do with “mobility logistics” than with high demand. Although there are no more details in the interview, the response indicates that transportation and fuel problems have weighed on the situation and that under other conditions it might not have been necessary to go to the consulate in Havana to complete the procedure.
The final data on applicants will be public in December, just over a month since the registration process concludes on October 22. However, we will have to wait much longer to know how many of them managed to obtain the long-awaited passport, since, as the note indicates, many consulates are making appointments well into next year.
Asked about the future of this law, Ángel Víctor Torres raises a shadow of doubt. “If they repeal the law, those who have their passport cannot lose it. We understand that whoever already has administrative approval saves it, but all those who have not been interviewed will not have a choice,” he maintains. The approval of the Democratic Memory Law was an arduous process. Presented in the previous legislature, in August 2021, by the Government of Pedro Sánchez, since September it has faced the Congress and the Senate amendments and vetoesincluding all of the right-wing parties, with the Popular Party and Vox at the forefront.
Finally approved, with modifications, in November 2022, both PP and Vox have presented appeals to the Constitutional Court and announced their intention to repeal it. Although most of the alleged reasons are not related to the eighth additional provision that offers the possibility of nationalization to descendants of Spaniards exiled by the Civil War and Francoism, Vox has specifically referred to that point as an objective to eliminate.
However, the LMD instructionpublished a few days after the norm itself in order to clear up, precisely, “possible doubts that may be raised to those in charge of the Spanish Civil Registry Offices regarding the scope and interpretation of the scope of application of the aforementioned eighth additional provision”, interprets that not only the descendants of exiles from the civil war may benefit from it, but all those “born outside of Spain to parents or grandparents originally Spanish.”
Despite Torres’s prediction, nothing is causing the law to falter at the moment. If the planned deadlines are met, the current legislature ends in July 2027. If the Government changes, we would have to wait for the aforementioned repeal to take place – if it does.
According to forecasts, while the final data arrives, some two million people are going to apply for nationality. A good handful of votes at stake.
