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BREXIT

Brits in Spain hope for dual citizenship legislation in 2019

UK nationals in Spain are concerned about the ongoing campaign for joint citizenship, as well as how Spain will avoid hundreds of thousands of Brits from becoming illegal residents overnight in the case of a no-deal Brexit.

Published: 8 January 2019 14:56 CET
Updated: 10 January 2019 10:59 CET
Brits in Spain hope for dual citizenship legislation in 2019
Photo: ruskpp/Depositphotos

A key hurdle for Brits looking to become Spanish is the Iberian nation’s strict rules on dual citizenship. Under current Spanish law, Brits cannot officially obtain Spanish citizenship and retain their British passport.

Only countries that came under the 16th century kingdom of Philip II, and a few groups in other exceptions – including Sephardic Jews – can hold dual citizenship in Spain.

This prevents nearly 50,000 Brits who live in Spain, pay their taxes and make regular social security contributions from applying for citizenship, states a recent report by citizens' rights group EuroCitizens.

“We encourage the Spanish government to consider facilitating, by means of a special and limited piece of legislation, double citizenship for Brits who can prove they have lived and/or worked in Spain for 10 years,” states a December 2018 report by Madrid-based lobby group for UK nationals in Spain EuroCitizens.

Giles Tremlett, a Guardian journalist who launched a campaign shortly after the Brexit referendum to encourage Spain to allow Brits to hold both British and Spanish citizenship, is still pushing for that objective.

“Joint nationality would express my cultural reality,” Tremlett, who has been based in Madrid for 25 years, told The Local. The author, who says he is “bilingual and biculturual,”  says he has an added incentive in fighting to obtain citizenship for his children. 

Tremlett and EuroCitizens’ campaign hopes to help around 50,000 Brits who have been resident in Spain for a long time – the proposed residency duration criteria is either five or ten years – to apply for a Spanish passport.

An author of historical biographies, Tremlett says he hopes the regional governments in Valencia and Andalusia, where there are large communities of settled Brits, can be convinced to discuss the issue.

Tremlett, EuroCitizens and colleagues have already drafted the legal text. All that remains is for a party in one of those regional administrations to endorse it politically.

If that were to happen, the regional administrations could then send the law on to Madrid for review at a national level.

The number of Brits applying for Spanish citizenship has nevertheless more than tripled since 2015. 166 Britons requested Spanish citizenship in the first 10 months of 2018 alone.

Waiting times however can be long. Tremlett says he applied for his Spanish passport just six months ago. Michael Harris from EuroCitizens has been waiting for years. 

READ ALSO: Brexit: New data reveals surge in Brits applying for Spanish citizenship

More than a quarter of all the registered Brits in the EU27 live in Spain. Unlike Brits in Germany, France or Italy, who have been given some reassurances, UK nationals in Spain still await news of how their futures in the Iberian country could continue should the United Kingdom crash out of the EU without a deal that would govern their future rights.

Spanish PM Sanchez has said that it will publish contingency plans for a no-deal Brexit in February and urged British nationals not to worry about their futures.

“I want to send a message of calm to Spaniards who live in Britain and also to Britons who live in Spain: their rights will be maintained whatever the scenario,” Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez told a year-end news conference following a weekly cabinet meeting.

Official figures say there are 314,000 Brits in Spain.  According to Michael Harris from Madrid-based citizens' rights organisation EuroCitizens, February is too late – such guidelines could have been published earlier, Harris told The Local. 

“The British community needs to know sooner rather than later how this change will be made and what documentation Brits will have to provide to be able to continue residing legally,” states a December 2018 report by EuroCitizens and British in Europe.

Spain has said that the rights of Brits will be protected but it remains unclear what Brits will have to do to reside in the country after Brexit, which changes their automatic right to be living there. 

Governments in Italy, France, Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands have all now published, or made clear, contingency motions for British nationals living in those countries.

If the UK self-implodes in the coming weeks and exits the EU with no deal that outlines the rights of its citizens living throughout the 27-country political bloc, Brits in Spain will have to hope the Spanish government will be accommodating. EU Commission no-deal contingency guidelines from November 2018 state:

“It has always been the European Union's intention that citizens should not pay the price of Brexit. This will require Member States to take a generous approach to the rights of UK citizens who are already resident in their territory.”

READ ALSO: An open letter from the British ambassador to British citizens living in Spain

Harris told the Local in early January 2019 that it is vital that Brits are given time to prepare for any change of residency status, as outlined by Article 17.4 in the Withdrawal Agreement.

Many Brits are also worried what the potential forthcoming Spanish legislation could mean for their lives. “We want to see what they’ll do with us if there’s a no-deal Brexit,” EuroCitizens founder and British in Europe steering committee member Michael Harris told The Local.

The fear of becoming what some have described as “third country nationals overnight” concerns the Spanish contingent of citizen-focused groups.

Debbie Williams, a British resident of northern Valencia and founder of Brexpats Hear Our Voice, says there are key concerns for Brits in the case of a no-deal exit from the bloc.

One is that British citizens who are not employed may not be able to meet the financial criteria required as “economically inactive” people. In other words, unemployed Brits will have to demonstrate an income of €26,500 per year. This will affect pensioners and economically vulnerable groups, says Williams.

READ ALSO: 'No deal' Brexit could leave British pensioners in Spain reliant on NHS

Unsurprisingly, some of the first and most active voices and groups expressing concerns about the rights of British nationals in Europe vis-a-vis Brexit emerged from Spain.

Three out of ten core founding member groups of pan-European rights group British in Europe are based in Spain: Bremain in Spain, Brexpats in Spain and EuroCitizens. Each group has its own focus. 

EuroCitizens is now in touch with the office of Vice President Carmen Calvo Poyato, head of the inter-ministerial committee mandated with managing any eventualities or contingency plans in the case of a no-deal Brexit. In other words, the woman most Brits in Spain right now hope could secure their rights.

A recent EuroCitizens paper looks at the impact a soft and a hard (no-deal) Brexit could have on Brits in Spain, the third largest group of migrants in the country after Moroccans and Romanians. From coast to coast and throughout Spain’s islands, the British community in Spain is the largest of any in the EU. 

Nearly half of the total number are people of working age and their families, situated in the capital Madrid or major provincial cities. The other half are pensioners living mainly in the coastal areas or islands, according to statistics from Spain’s statistics office INE.

READ MORE: Gibraltar rejects joint sovereignty talk 'as dead as a dodo'
 

SPANISH CITIZENSHIP

Numbers of foreigners acquiring Spanish nationality hits record levels

The number of foreigners acquiring Spanish nationality shot up by a third in 2023, with certain countries of origin and regions of Spain dominating the figures.

Published: 17 June 2024 11:50 CEST
Numbers of foreigners acquiring Spanish nationality hits record levels

New data released by Spain’s National Statistics Institute (INE) has revealed that the number of foreigners acquiring Spanish nationality has increased by a third in the last year alone.

In 2023 the number of foreign born people naturalising and getting Spanish nationality increased by 32.3 percent, to 240,208 in total, the highest figure for a decade.

INE data shows that of the near quarter-million foreigners who acquired Spanish nationality in 2023, 54.8 percent were women and 45.2 percent were men.

READ ALSO: Spain’s population inches closer to 49 million with 900 new residents a day

By age, people between 30 and 39 years of age made up the largest group acquiring Spanish nationality, followed by the 40 to 49 age group.

In terms of origin, Moroccans were most likely to get Spanish nationality, with 54,027 cases, followed by Venezuelans (30,154) and Colombians (18,738). Other South American and Central American countries, such as Ecuador, Argentina and Bolivia, rounded out the top 10.

READ ALSO: When’s the deadline for Spanish citizenship through the Grandchildren’s Law?

Of the 240,208 people who acquired Spanish nationality in 2023, 21.2 percent of them had always lived in Spain. The remaining 78.8 percent had previously lived abroad and then moved to Spain. On average, it took them roughly five years to acquire Spanish nationality.

Catalonia was the region that had the most naturalisations in 2023, with 60,846, followed by Madrid, with 50,049, and the two regions between them accounted for almost half (46.2) percent of the total acquisitions. Third was Valencia, with 25,119, and Andalusia, with 24,059.

La Rioja (952) and Extremadura (1,309) were the regions with the lowest number of foreigners acquiring Spanish nationality in 2023.

In terms of how foreigners acquired Spanish nationality, INE states that “212,779 cases were by residence and 26,844 by option.”

To gain Spanish nationality, most foreigners need to reside legally and continuously in Spain for ten years, depending on where they come from.

INE defines nationality ‘by option’ as “a benefit that the legislation offers to foreigners who meet certain conditions in order to acquire Spanish nationality. Persons who are or have been subject to the parental authority of a Spaniard, or persons whose father or mother was Spanish and who were born in Spain, are entitled to acquire Spanish nationality in this way.”

Nationality by option was much more common among those under 20 years of age, representing 95.7 percent of the total.

The period of time foreigners must wait before applying for nationality may vary depending on family ties:

  • 10 years is the normal rule
  • 5 years if you are a refugee
  • 2 years if you are from a Latin American country, Andorra, Equatorial Guinea, Philippines or Portugal. In all of these cases, you will not need to give up your original nationality, and you will be granted dual citizenship.
  • 1 year for those married to a Spanish national or children/grandchildren of Spanish citizens born in Spain. 
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