Spanish government approves dual citizenship for sephardic descendants

The Spanish authorities approved the final details for the law to grant the citizenship to sephardic jews descendants; there is no official last names list which will make you available to obtain the spanish nationality for being descendant or sephardic origin, but the sephardic jews that attest and prove their condition can request for the citizenship.

 At Tolentino Abogados de Extranjería, we’ve kept you informed with all the novelties about this procedure and we would like to keep helping you in the process to obtain your sephardic jew certificate that links the origin of your lastname with sephardic descendants, so you could request your spanish citizenship; to obtain more information go to our SEPHARDIC CITIZENSHIP section. If you’re interested in more information or want us to help you transact your citizenship, email us at info@tolentinoabogados.com and we’ll respond as soon as possible.

 One of the main requirements is to demonstrate your sephardic bond and for that, we can help you get this certificate of origin of your lastname.

 Some criteria have been established for this concession, including a reform to the article 21 of the Civil Code to allow the dual citizenship, maintaining your principal citizenship along with your new nationality. The sephardic condition can be accredited by many means, and a “special link” with Spain will be required, demanding to pass an evaluation test of spanish language and culture, issued by the Cervantes Institute, as a prove of your knowledge of spanish traditions.

 Also, the Council of Ministers has approved the remission to the General Courts of the draft law that modifies the articles 21 and 23 of the Civil Code to facilitate and establish the objective standards for conceding the citizenship by naturalization to sephardic descendants that wish to apply. This reform will also allow the dual citizenship, as occurs with iberoamerican countries and their nationals.

 At present, sephardic descendants can acquire the spanish citizenship by two means: After a continuously and legal residency for two years, as the nationals from Ibero America, Portugal and Philippines; or by letter of naturalization. In the second case, the valuation of the exceptional conditions of links with Spain it’s left to the discretion of local governments. With this new law, you can attest your condition of sephardic descendant and opt to a citizenship, without having a prior residency period in spanish territory.

 How to attest the condition? You must declare before a notary.

It will be a notary who writes affidavit of the condition of Sephardic and the special relationship with Spain, and its conclusion will be forwarded to the Directorate General of Registries and Notaries, which will decide whether to grant or deny nationality requested. If so, the nationality shall be registered in the competent registry, depending of your address (the corresponding consulate, if you live outside Spain), once made the requirement swear or promise loyalty to the King and obedience to the Constitution and the laws.

 Among the documents allowed to prove this sephardic condition are:

• A certificate issued by the General Secretariat of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Spain certifying that the person concerned belongs to the Sephardic Jewish community.
• A certificate issued by the President or his equivalent, in  the Jewish community where the applicant resides, or
• A certificate from the competent rabbinic authority, or
• The family language
• Birth certificate, or
• The marriage certificate attesting the traditions of Castile.

 The draft law cites an inclusion of other probative documents for the petitioner or his ancestry in the lists of Sephardic families protected in Spain by the Law of December 29, 1948, or those who obtained the nationality with the Royal Decree of 20 December 1924, and the applicant who are blood related with any of them. Studies of Spanish history and culture will also be assessed, as well as charitable activities on behalf of persons or Spanish institutions. You may provide any other circumstances to prove your status of Sephardic originary from Spain. Surnames with a Sephardic lineage may be valued as an additional element.

 Evaluation test.

To demonstrate the special relationship with Spain, you must pass a knowledge and evaluation test of the Spanish culture and language, and it’s developed by the Cervantes Institute. Applicants where Spanish is an official language, will be excluded from this requirement.

This measure, announced by the Minister of Justice on April 22, applies to all citizenship applications. The main objective pursued is to establish a clear criteria for the test of integration required to obtain Spanish nationality. And the discretion with which every evaluation is done, depends on the registry office officials, as some are limited to assessing language skills, while others resort to general knowledge questions of spanish culture, which can be complicated for non-spanish speakers.

 Electronic platform.

The application shall be submitted in spanish language, thru an electronic trading platform that will be enabled for that purpose and through which the applicant must pay the fee that has been set, after studying the costs of the procedures of acquisition of Spanish citizenship. The amount of 75 euros is substantially lower than that of neighboring countries such as the UK, Germany or the Netherlands.

The electronic platform will host in the coming weeks other national procurement procedures, which will help shorten the current processing times and increase the safety of the procedure. Thanks to this tool, which comply with the measures most demanding security systems, we will avoid situations such as the jam of more than four hundred thousand files for citizenships that were unresponded at the end of 2011 and that has been reduced with the Intensive Plan Processing, put in launched in November 2012 and that has allowed in nineteen months to processes 450.964 records.

 Appointment with the notary.

The draft law approved today to facilitate the citizenship to Sephardic descendants states that the Directorate General of Registries and Notaries will communicate all the applications received the General Council of Notaries, so the interested candidate can make an appointment to appear before a notary, who will deliver all documentation attesting to their status considering the documents deposited, along with revising the criminal record.

 The notary will forward an electronic copy of the notarial act to the Directorate General of Registries will be who will decide whether to grant or deny the requested citizenship. When the decision is affirmative, the interested parties will have one year to notify the Civil Registry corresponding to address and apply for registration.

 Any person that wishes to apply for Spanish citizenship, must formalize their request no later than three years after the entry into force of the Act. It may be extended to one year if so determined by an agreement of the Council of Ministers.The text includes the Sephardics who have applied for Spanish nationality before this law reform and whose case has not yet been resolved, in which they should continue according to the procedure provided in this law.

 Historical links.

This bill highlights the special relationship of the Sephardic community in Spain since their expulsion in 1492 and this has been symbolized with keys that many sephardics still retain in their homes in Sefarad (Spain in Hebrew). They have kept intact their culture, customs and language, despite the time elapsed.

 Memory and fidelity of these “Spaniards without a country” in 1990 made them worthy of the Prince of Asturias Award for Concord. Although this is not the first example of the existence in Spain of a current of opinion favorable to the Sephardim: in the time of Isabel II, they were allowed to possess its own cemeteries and synagogues open.

As Minister of State Fernando de los Rios, he considered to grant citizenship to the Sephardic Jews from Morocco, but finally the project was frustrated. In 1886, with the support of Praxedes Mateo Sagasta and in 1900, with Senator Angel Pulido, they started an approach to Sephardic communities which concluded with the authorization to open synagogues, the foundation of the Spanish-Hebrew Alliance in Madrid (1910) and started the Constitution of the Universal House of Sephardim in 1920.

In 1924, it was approved a Royal Decree intended to grant citizenship to the “old Spanish protected or descendants of those, and generally individuals belonging to families of Spanish origin”, which is not explicitly names the Sephardics, but this allowed, in WWII, many to be saved from the gas chamber, as a result of the humanitarian mission that made Spanish diplomats Ángel Sanz Briz in Budapest, Sebastian Romero Radigales in Athens, Bernardo Rolland de Miotta in Paris, Julio Palencia in Sofia, Javier Martinez Bedoya in Lisbon, Jose Rojas in Bucharest or Eduardo Propper de Callejon in Bordeaux.

Tolentino Attorneys 2015