The citizenship scheme for the descendants of Spaniards who fled Spain during the Civil War and Franco’s dictatorship has seen applications almost triple in a year, new data shows.
Applications for Spanish citizenship abroad via the Democratic Memory Law have almost tripled in a single year, going from 226,354 applications in 2023 to 609,344 received by Spain’s consular network in 2024.
The scheme for citizenship applications via the Law of Democratic Memory (referred to as La Ley de Nietos or Grandchildren’s Law) has been in force since October 2022 and offers a route for millions around the world who qualify via descendants of Spaniards who fled Spain during the Civil War and Franco’s dictatorship.
The majority of these are in Latin America.
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A surge in applications last year forced the Spanish government to extend the deadline and reinforce the most in demand consulates with 150 staff and three deputy consuls in Cuba, Argentina and Mexico. For many in Latin America, the scheme is attractive not only because it offers Spanish citizenship but with it residency and, by extension, European residency.
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Despite the big bureaucratic backlog, as reported previously by The Local, in total the government granted Spanish citizenship to more than 288,000 descendants of exiled Spaniards until the end of 2024 via the scheme, which expires next October.
If the upward trend continues, the Spanish national community abroad will continue to break records. In 2024, the three million mark was surpassed for the first time, some 137,000 more than the previous year.
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In terms of the age distribution of these new Spanish nationals living abroad, according to the Ministry document, 19.68 percent are under 20 years old; 24.74 percent are between 20 and 39 years old; 27.63 percent are between 40 and 59 years old; and the remaining 27.94 percent are over 60 years old.
In absolute terms, most citizens during 2024 were recorded in Argentina, Mexico, the United States, France and Cuba.
In March 2024 the Spanish government extended the deadline to apply for citizenship through the Grandchildren’s Law until the end of 2025. It was initially scheduled to be October 2024 but was pushed back to allow for bureaucratic processes to run their course amid the surge in applications.
The Grandchildren’s Law allows for descendants of Spaniards who fled Spain during the Civil War and Franco’s dictatorship to claim Spanish citizenship, even if they or their parents haven’t ever lived in Spain.
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