More than 2 million people apply for Spanish citizenship under the ‘grandchildren law’; Brazil is one of the countries with the most requests

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According to the General Council for Spanish Citizenship Abroad (CGCEE), 2.3 million people have submitted citizenship applications based on the so-called “law of grandchildren”, including one million in Argentina alone, the country with the highest volume of applications.

“Cuba, Mexico, Venezuela and Brazil also stand out,” informed the advisory body linked to the State Secretariat for Migration, which predicts that the analysis of all requests will be “long, (…) between 3 and 4 years”.

— Taking into account that a very small percentage (of applications) is usually refused, around one or two percent, we can move towards a doubling of the volume of Spanish citizenship abroad — declared Violeta Alonso, president of the CGCEE, during a conference held in Villaviciosa, Asturias, according to statements cited by the newspaper La Nueva España.

In addition to expanding the Spanish diaspora, the country can record a significant increase in its population, currently estimated at 49.1 million inhabitants.

The Democratic Memory Law, promoted by the government of socialist Pedro Sánchez and approved in 2022, grants the right to nationality to the children and grandchildren of Spaniards who lost it or renounced it when they went into exile “for political, ideological reasons or reasons of belief or sexual orientation and identity”.

Historical estimates vary, but it is estimated that around half a million people left Spain when the Republic’s defeat in the Civil War was inevitable. Many began their exile in France, but most ended up in Latin America.

The legislation, presented by the government as a way to “repay a debt” to the Franco past, covers other measures and is not limited to exiles from the civil war and dictatorship.

The grandfather of Argentine anthropologist Juan Pablo Ferreiro, 66, residing in Jujuy and applying for Spanish nationality, emigrated to Argentina to avoid being drafted into the colonial wars waged by Spain in Morocco in the first quarter of the 20th century.

Born in Ortigueira, Galicia, his grandfather inspired Ferreiro to seek connections with his origins. “I consider myself a Galician of the diaspora,” he told AFP.

— I want to be connected to this, to have a link above all with Galicia, but I also do this for my daughters, so that they have another tool with which they can move around — he explained, detailing the motivations for the request.

In addition to the emotional factor, the Spanish passport offers concrete advantages. Nationality opens the doors to Spain and the European Union, functioning as an alternative in cases of deep crises, such as those experienced by Latin American countries.

According to an index from consultancy Henley & Partners, the Spanish passport is the fourth most advantageous in the world – a position shared with ten other countries – allowing visa-free entry into 187 countries.

The ministries of Foreign Affairs and Democratic Memory did not respond to requests from the AFP to provide the final number of requests before the October 22 deadline.

But at the beginning of August, the Minister of Democratic Memory, Ángel Torres, had already predicted that 876,000 people would have “applied for Spanish citizenship around the world”.

At that time, almost three months before the end of the application period, the queues outside the Spanish consulates were long.

It is now up to the government to process more than two million nationality files, a considerable task.