Administrative hurdles at Spanish consulates could impact the lives of over half a million Spanish citizenship applicants, especially in consulates located in Latin America and in the United States.
These delays are causing the processing time to be incredibly slow, thus, fewer decisions are being issued to applicants, Schengen.News reports.
According to El País, 30 per cent of 680,000 applicants, which represents about 200,400 individuals, have received a decision on their application for Spanish citizenship, while another 474,000 are still on the waiting list.
Spanish Consulate General in Havana Most Affected by Delays
Applications filed at the Cuban capital, Havana, have been in the process since 2022, when the Democratic Memory Law came into effect. This law permits descendants of people who were persecuted during the Spanish Civil War to obtain Spanish citizenship.
Nearly 56 per cent of the 87,000 applications that were received by this consulate were immediately registered with the authorities. The delays in initial access to the process are significant.
Currently, those who submit their application by email are automatically informed that they can wait up to ten months just to obtain the credentials necessary to request an in-person appointment.
Organisations such as the Association of Spanish Descendants in the World (ADEM) have described the situation in Havana as “critical.”
Cuban Applicants Could Miss the Opportunity to Become Spanish Citizens
The law, which was introduced in 2022, will only be effective until October 2025. This leaves only a few months left for Cuban applicants to complete their application.
Considering the delays, these applicants are likely to remain unprocessed for the upcoming months, as the president of ADEM denounces the authorities responsible for this situation.
Estela Marina Pérez has revealed that many Cuban applicants waited almost a year to receive their credentials, and they also risk being excluded from the process if they fail to complete their application by October.
The Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs claims that the staff has been raised by 35 per cent at the Havana consulate. New IT tools that facilitate appointments will soon be implemented, but applicants remain largely dissatisfied, and there are many applications stuck in the process despite these efforts taken by the Ministry.
One of the consulates with the highest volume of applications, the one in Sao Paulo, Brazil, is also impacted by similar issues, with only 4.5 per cent of the nearly 55,000 requests received having been registered. Consulates in Mexico, Miami, Bogotá, and Montevideo are also facing severe delays.