The General Directorate of Legal Security and Public Faith (the former General Directorate of Registers and Notaries) is the Ministry of Justice’s body entitled to process and, where appropriate, resolve Spanish nationality applications. By means of a resolution issued last March 27^th, it has declared the resumption of the processing of applications for Spanish nationality by either residence in Spain or the Spanish origin of Sephardim. Until such date, the processing of these nationality files was suspended due to COVID-19 virus.

According to the referred resolution, "the granting of Spanish nationality is an act which constitutes one of the highest manifestations of the sovereignty of a State, carrying with it a set of rights and obligations, the granting of which is conditional upon the applicant's fulfilment of certain requirements, and which, pursuant to Article 21 of the Civil Code, may be denied on grounds of public order or national interest. Nationality, therefore, grants both status and rights that are superior to those derived from the mere legal residence in Spain. Bearing in mind that, at present, a large number of applications for the acquisition of nationality are pending -some of them with a considerable delay in their processing-, with respect to both the Regulation established by Royal Decree 1004/2015, of November 6^th, which contemplates the procedure for the acquisition of Spanish nationality by residence, and the procedure established by Law 12/2015, of June 24^th, concerning the granting of Spanish nationality to Sephardic individuals with origins in Spain, it is essential for the protection of the general interest to adopt measures to continue their processing in order to reduce the impact of paralysing the instruction and resolution of such applications".

Terms:

The above-mentioned resolution, in accordance with Royal Decree 465/2020, of March 17^th, which empowers the Administration to declare the continuation of such procedures "essential for the protection of the general interest or for the basic functioning of services", means the end of the suspension of the terms fixed for these procedures and their resumption as from April 8^th, the date of their official publication.

Exceptions:

Exceptions to the application of this regulation are the terms for filing appeals against the decision or against qualified acts of procedure issued, insofar as the state of alarm may hinder the mobility of persons as well as the normal functioning of the postal services, affecting the terms fixed for filing and resolving them.

The full resolution is available at https://www.boe.es/diario_boe/txt.php?id=BOE-A-2020-4351.

Alejandro de Vicente de Rojas. Lawyer

Larrauri & Martí Abogados

Obtaining spanish nationality for jewish descendants