14ymedio, Yoan Molinero Gerbeau, Madrid, 30 March 2024 — Last year, public attention turned to two prominent sports figures — Sara Khadem and the Real Sociedad footballer Robin Le Norman — when it was announced in the Official State Gazette that they had been granted Spanish citizenship along with 106 other people. It bears mentioning that a good number of these people included Nicaraguan dissidents, who received the so-called “letter of naturalization,” a mechanism that allows the government to unilaterally grant Spanish citizenship to whomever it deems worthy by means of royal decree.
As a result of these decrees, the organization Civio performed an interesting exercise, creating a database that indicated how many people had acquired Spanish citizenship this way since 1993.
Only a tiny portion of the naturalizations authorized by the Spanish state during this period were granted by means of this noteworthy though certainly elitist procedure, which allows the government to confer citizenship at its discretion.
To get a broader picture, we can look at data published by Spain’s National Statistical Institute (INE), which indicates that 181,581 people received the full rights of Spanish citizenship in 2022, of which less than 1% were granted through letters of naturalization.
The process of acquiring a new nationality is very intriguing since it involves what Abdelmalek Sayad, a prominent sociologist and expert on migration, called a “rite of transubstantiation.” Effectively, in a world of nation-states, where belonging to one has ethnic, cultural and moral implications, the transformation from being a national of one country into a national of another involves some degree of “magic.”
Analyzing the requirements that those who choose to participate in this rite must fulfill is an interesting exercise as it involves entering into a world of beliefs, revealing what a country considers to be valid criteria for recognizing someone as “one of their own.”
Despite being a noteworthy procedure, only a tiny portion of naturalizations were granted by decree at the government’s discretion
What criteria do applicants have to meet in order to be considered a Spanish national? The answers can be found in the country’s Civil Code.
There are four ways to become a natura