Spanish Citizenship by Descent

Spanish citizenship by descent is not one procedure. It is four different articles of the Spanish Civil Code, and which one applies to you is decided by two facts about your ancestor: whether they were Spanish by origin, and whether they were born on Spanish soil. Get those two facts straight and the rest of the case follows.

The short answer. If a parent was Spanish when you were born, you are already Spanish and you register it rather than apply for it. If a parent was originally Spanish and born in Spain, you can claim from abroad at any age. If a parent or grandparent was originally Spanish but was not born in Spain, you need one year of legal residence in Spain first. And the grandchild route that let people claim from abroad without any residence, the one everyone still calls the Democratic Memory Law, closed on 22 October 2025.

The route most people are still reading about is closed

Start here, because it saves you months.

The eighth additional provision of Law 20/2022 of 19 October, the Law of Democratic Memory, opened a temporary door for people born outside Spain whose parent or grandparent had originally been Spanish and lost or renounced that nationality after going into exile. It also covered children born abroad to Spanish women who lost their nationality by marrying a foreigner before the 1978 Constitution came into force, and adult children of people who had themselves obtained nationality through this law or through the 2007 law before it.

That provision carried its own clock. It gave two years from the date the law took effect, and it allowed the Council of Ministers to extend the period by one further year. One year, once. The Government used that extension, the window ran to 22 October 2025, and then it shut. There is no second extension available inside the text of the law, so nobody can grant one without passing a new law.

We are spelling this out because a lot of what you will read today has not caught up. Law firm pages written in 2023 still describe the window as open. Forum threads recycle old advice. AI summaries at the top of search results have repeated the claim that grandchildren of Spaniards can apply under the Democratic Memory Law, present tense, months after the door closed. If you were told that, you were told something that used to be true.

Three things survived the closure and get lost in the noise. Files lodged before the cut-off are alive and still being decided, so if you got yours in, you are fine. If the registry comes back asking for evidence you did not supply, the instruction governing the procedure gives you thirty calendar days from the request to produce it, and that deadline is real. And the ordinary Civil Code routes were never part of the window at all, which is why they are still standing. Those are the ones this page is about.

You missed the October 2025 deadline. What now?

This is the question we now get more than any other, and the answer is better than people expect.

The window that closed was one route among several. It was the generous one, because it reached grandchildren, asked nothing in return and granted nationality of origin. But the Civil Code routes it sat alongside were untouched by its expiry, and for a good number of the families who missed the date, one of them was always the better claim anyway. Plenty of people spent 2024 assembling an exile file when their father had been born to a Spanish mother and they were already Spanish under article 17.

So the honest position is this. If your Spanish parent was born in Spain, nothing you lost matters much, because article 20.1.b gives you a permanent right to claim from abroad. If your claim runs through a grandparent, you did lose something real, and what remains is a year of legal residence in Spain under article 22.2.f. That is a bigger ask, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.

Which route applies to you

Four doors are open to descendants. They are not alternatives you pick between. Your family history puts you in one of them.

Two words in that table do most of the work, so it is worth being precise about them.

Originally Spanish means Spanish from birth, not Spanish later. A grandmother born in Galicia was originally Spanish even if she took Argentine or Mexican nationality at forty and lost the Spanish one. A grandfather who was born Cuban and naturalised in Spain at fifty was never originally Spanish, and that branch of the family does not open any of these doors.

Born in Spain is a separate test that only article 20.1.b imposes. It is the single most common reason a family that expected to claim from abroad ends up on the residence track instead.

You may already be Spanish and not know it

Article 17.1.a of the Civil Code says that people born to a Spanish father or mother are Spanish by origin. Note what it does not say. It does not say born in Spain. It does not say the parent has to have kept Spanish nationality afterwards. It does not care which passport you have carried for forty years. The only question is whether your parent held Spanish nationality on the day you were born.

If the answer is yes, you are not applying for anything. Your birth gets entered in the Spanish Civil Registry through the consulate for your area, and the nationality is recognised, not granted. There is no exam, no renunciation, no waiting period and no residence requirement, because none of those attach to a nationality you already hold.

This is worth checking before you plan anything else, and it is the one part of the process where a lot of people genuinely do not need a lawyer. It comes up more often than you would think in families where a parent emigrated as an adult and only naturalised in the new country years after their children were born. Those children were born to a Spaniard. They have been Spanish the whole time.

One trap. Article 24.3 says that people born and living abroad who hold Spanish nationality because both they and their Spanish parent were born abroad lose it unless they declare their wish to keep it before the Civil Registry within three years of turning eighteen. If that describes your branch, the registration is time sensitive in a way the others are not.

Option from abroad, with no age limit

Article 20.1.b gives the right to opt for Spanish nationality to anyone whose father or mother was originally Spanish and born in Spain. Both halves have to be true at once. A Spanish-born parent who acquired the nationality later does not qualify you, and a parent who was Spanish by origin but born in Havana or Buenos Aires does not either.

What makes this route valuable is article 20.3, which removes the age limit that normally caps the right to opt. Option usually expires at twenty. Under 20.1.b it never expires. A sixty-eight year old whose mother was born in Seville has exactly the same right as her thirty year old son. You claim it at the Spanish consulate covering where you live, and you do not have to move to Spain, sit the language exam or the constitutional knowledge test, or wait out a residence period.

It is the closest thing left to the route that closed, and for families with a Spanish-born parent it is often better, because it has no deadline attached to it at all.

The renunciation declaration, and why it caught out the Democratic Memory crowd

Here is the part that most pages about descent either skip or get wrong, and it matters most to Americans, Britons, Canadians and Australians.

Article 23 of the Civil Code sets the conditions that make an acquisition of Spanish nationality valid, and it applies to option, to carta de naturaleza and to residence alike. Letter b requires the person to declare that they renounce their previous nationality. The article then exempts two groups: nationals of the countries listed in article 24.1, which are the Ibero-American countries, Andorra, the Philippines, Equatorial Guinea and Portugal, and Sephardim originating from Spain. A nationality convention with France in force since 2022 has the same practical effect for French nationals.

The United States is not on that list. Neither is the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Israel or Germany. So an American opting under article 20.1.b makes the declaration.

The confusion comes from the closed route. The Democratic Memory option did lift the renunciation requirement, and the Directorate General for Legal Security and Public Faith said so directly in its instruction of 25 October 2022, listing the absence of renunciation as one of the differences between that provision and ordinary option under article 20.1.b. The instruction sets out the same distinction in the other direction too: it describes people who opted under 20.1.b as having acquired Spanish nationality not of origin, and the Democratic Memory optants as acquiring nationality of origin. The February 2023 correction to that instruction went further and struck the words “and, where applicable, the required renunciation” out of the procedural paragraph for the Democratic Memory files. When the window shut, that exemption shut with it. There is one wrinkle we would rather put in front of you than leave for you to find. A few lines further down, the same instruction lists among the features the two routes have in common that adult applicants must meet the conditions of articles 20 and 23 of the Civil Code “except for the renunciation of the previous nationality”. Read on its own, that sentence would extend the exemption to article 20.1.b, and the February 2023 correction did not touch it. We do not read it that way and the Civil Registry does not apply it that way. Article 23.b is statute and exempts only the article 24.1 countries and Sephardim, an instruction cannot waive a requirement the Civil Code imposes, and the same instruction places the absence of renunciation among the differences between the two routes rather than among the things they share. So we work on the basis that an American, Briton, Canadian or Australian opting under article 20.1.b makes the declaration. If your file turns on this point, say so before you book the appointment.

Now the practical half, because the legal half frightens people more than it should. The declaration is made before a Spanish official, under Spanish law, and Spain does not notify Washington or London. Under United States law, nationality is lost only through the specific acts listed in 8 U.S.C. 1481 carried out with the intention of giving it up, and a formal renunciation has to be made before a United States consular officer abroad. In practice Americans who make the Spanish declaration keep their United States passport. That is the reality, but it is a declaration you are signing, so go into it knowing what it says rather than being told it is a formality.

The three year rule nobody mentions

There is a consequence to the renunciation that follows you afterwards, and we have not seen a single competing page in English that raises it.

Article 25.1 applies to Spaniards who are not Spanish by origin. Letter a says they lose Spanish nationality if for a period of three years they use exclusively the nationality they declared they were renouncing when they acquired the Spanish one. Because option under article 20.1.b confers nationality that is not of origin, article 25.1.a reaches the people who take that route. It did not reach the Democratic Memory optants, because that provision gave them nationality of origin, which is a large part of why the two were never the same thing.

What this means day to day is undramatic but not nothing. If you become Spanish by option and then spend the next three years travelling only on your United States passport, never renewing a Spanish document, never using the nationality at all, you are in the territory the article describes. Using your Spanish passport when you enter Spain, keeping your consular registration current and keeping the Spanish documents alive is what keeps you outside it. It is a housekeeping problem rather than a legal cliff, but it is real, and it is the sort of thing that is easy to fix in year one and awkward to fix in year four.

One year in Spain if a grandparent was Spanish

Article 22.2.f is the route that most families who missed the October 2025 deadline end up on, and it is the only open route that reaches grandchildren directly.

It cuts the residence requirement to a single year for anyone born outside Spain whose father, mother, grandfather or grandmother was originally Spanish. Read that list again: grandparents count, and unlike article 20.1.b there is no requirement that the ancestor was born on Spanish soil. Only that they were Spanish from birth. For a family whose grandmother was born Spanish in Morocco or Cuba, this is often the only door.

The price is that you have to live here. Article 22.3 requires the residence to be legal, continuous and immediately before the application, which rules out tourist stays and time on a stamp. You need a residence permit first and the year runs from there. For most people arriving from outside the EU that means a non-lucrative visa if you are living on savings or a pension, or the digital nomad visa if you work remotely. Twelve months on either one, then you file.

Two extra conditions come with any residence-based application, and they surprise people who were expecting the descent claim to carry them through. Article 22.4 requires good civic conduct and a sufficient degree of integration into Spanish society, and integration is tested by examination. Royal Decree 1004/2015 sets those tests as the DELE at A2 level or above and the CCSE constitutional and sociocultural test, both run by the Instituto Cervantes. Nationals of Spanish-speaking countries and anyone who already holds a DELE at A2 or above skip the language paper. Americans and Britons sit both.

Where the year most often goes wrong is not the exams. It is a gap in the permits. A renewal filed late, a card that lapses between one status and the next, and the continuity requirement resets the clock. If you are on this track, protecting the sequence of permits is the whole job.

Two years for Latin Americans and Filipinos

Article 22.1 sets ten years of legal residence as the general rule, drops it to five for people granted refugee status, and to two years for nationals of origin of Ibero-American countries, Andorra, the Philippines, Equatorial Guinea or Portugal, and for people of Sephardic origin.

Two words again: of origin. The two year period is for people who hold that nationality from birth. A British national who naturalised in Argentina at thirty is not an Argentine national of origin and does not get the two year period on that basis.

If you are a Mexican, Argentine, Colombian, Venezuelan or Filipino national by birth with a Spanish grandparent, you are covered by both this article and article 22.2.f, and the one year period in 22.2.f is the one that applies. The 22.1 route matters when there is no Spanish ancestor at all, or when the ancestor cannot be documented.

Great-grandparents

We get asked this constantly and the honest answer is short: no open route reaches a great-grandparent directly. Article 20.1.b stops at a parent. Article 22.2.f stops at a grandparent. The Democratic Memory provision was the one that reached further down the line for some families, and it is closed.

What is worth checking instead is whether the chain broke where you think it did. A great-grandparent claim often turns out to be a grandparent claim once the intervening generation is examined properly, because the middle generation was Spanish and nobody in the family realised. That is the question to ask, and it is answered by documents rather than by a rule.

A Spanish surname is not a claim

Enough people search for citizenship by last name that it deserves a straight answer rather than a polite one. There is no provision anywhere in Spanish nationality law that attaches any right to a surname. Not García, not a name traced to a village in Asturias, not a name on a ship manifest. The Civil Code asks who your parents and grandparents were and what nationality they held. It never asks what you are called.

The idea persists partly because Spanish surnames really are excellent evidence, just not of the thing people hope. They point you at the right parish, the right province and the right archive when you are trying to locate an ancestor’s birth record. Spanish naming convention helps too, because carrying both parents’ surnames means a certificate often names the previous generation outright. So the surname is where the research starts. It is not where the claim comes from.

The same goes for the related idea that Sephardic surname lists confer eligibility. They never did, and the law they were attached to has closed.

If your parent got Spanish nationality through the window

This one is missed constantly and it changes everything for the people it applies to.

The Democratic Memory option granted nationality of origin. The instruction of 25 October 2022 is explicit about it, and explains that it is nationality of origin acquired after birth, with effect from the moment of acquisition and no retroactive reach. That last clause is the one that matters, and it cuts both ways.

Because there is no retroactive effect, a child born before their parent went through the window was not born to a Spaniard, and article 17 does not make that child Spanish. A child born after their parent had already acquired it was born to a Spaniard, and article 17.1.a does apply. Same family, same parent, different answer depending on a date.

So if a parent of yours came through before 22 October 2025, check the dates before assuming you missed out. You may be the child of a Spaniard rather than the grandchild of one, which puts you under article 17 rather than in a queue that no longer exists.

Where you are from changes the answer

United States

Americans face the renunciation declaration under article 23.b on every route except article 17, and article 25.1.a follows them afterwards if they came in through option. There is no bar on an American becoming Spanish, and there is no Spanish rule that takes the United States passport away. The two nationalities are governed by two legal systems that do not talk to each other, and American law is what decides whether the United States nationality survives. It does, unless you go to a United States consulate and formally renounce it. Puerto Rico, Guam and the United States Virgin Islands are United States territory for this purpose, so a Puerto Rican applicant is in the same position as one from Florida.

Mexico

Mexico is an Ibero-American country for the purposes of articles 23.b and 24.1, so a Mexican national is exempt from the renunciation declaration entirely. That single fact makes the Mexican position much more comfortable than the American one. Mexican nationals of origin also get the two year residence period under article 22.1, and one year under 22.2.f if there is a Spanish parent or grandparent. Article 24.1 works in the other direction as well: a Spaniard by origin who takes Mexican nationality does not lose the Spanish one on that ground.

The Philippines

The Philippines is named expressly in articles 22.1, 23.b and 24.1, which puts Filipino nationals in the same privileged group as Latin Americans: no renunciation declaration, two years of residence rather than ten, and no loss of Spanish nationality of origin on acquiring Filipino nationality. The obstacle in Philippine cases is almost never the law, it is the paperwork. Spanish civil registration in the islands ended in 1899 and records from that period are scattered, damaged or held in archives that are not obvious. The claim usually turns on whether the line can be documented at all.

Cuba, Argentina and Venezuela

All three are Ibero-American countries, so the renunciation exemption and the two year residence period apply. These are also the countries where the Democratic Memory window was used most heavily, which means a lot of applicants now have a parent who came through it. If that is your family, read the section above about dates before you do anything else. Cuban cases in particular often involve a grandparent who was born in Spain, emigrated, and was still Spanish when your parent was born, in which case the question is not descent at all but whether your parent is already Spanish under article 17.

United Kingdom

British nationals are in the same position as Americans on renunciation, with the added weight that Spanish nationality restores freedom of movement in the European Union that was lost in 2020. British nationality law does not strip you of British citizenship for acquiring another one, so the declaration made in Spain does not cost you your British passport.

Sephardic descent: what closed, and what did not

This is a subject where almost every page online is either a year out of date or conflates two different things.

Law 12/2015 created a dedicated naturalisation route for Sephardim originating from Spain. It came into force on 1 October 2015 and its first additional provision gave applicants three years, extendable once by one further year by agreement of the Council of Ministers. Both periods have long since run. That route is closed and it will not reopen without new legislation.

What the same law left permanently in the Civil Code is a different matter, and it is still in force today. Article 22.1 gives Sephardim of Spanish origin the two year residence period instead of ten. Article 23.b exempts them from the renunciation declaration. Neither of those was temporary and neither expired in 2019. So if you are of Sephardic origin, the special fast track is gone, but you keep a materially better position on the ordinary residence route than a non-Sephardic applicant from the same country.

Proving the line

Every one of these routes turns on documents, and the documents are where cases die.

What you are proving is a chain: your ancestor’s Spanish status at a specific moment, the link from them to you, and your own identity. In practice that means a literal Spanish birth certificate for the ancestor, which is the full transcription rather than the short extract, because the short one omits the marginal notes that record loss or recovery of nationality. Then the birth and marriage certificates that connect each generation, legalised or apostilled depending on the country, and translated into Spanish by a sworn translator.

Where families get stuck is a village record that was destroyed, a name spelled three different ways across three certificates, or a Spanish birth registration that nobody can locate because the town of origin was recorded wrong two generations ago. Those are solvable, but they are archive work, not form filling. We do the genealogical research and the sworn translations in house, so you are not managing a translator, a genealogist and a consulate at the same time.

One document warning about option files. The general rule is article 227 of the Civil Registry Regulation: if the requirements are not proved when you make the declaration, you have to complete the evidence within the period the registrar sets, and the registrar decides what that period is. In the Democratic Memory files the Directorate General fixed it at thirty calendar days. Either way it is short when the missing paper sits in a parish archive on another continent, which is the argument for assembling the file fully before you book the appointment rather than after.

If the registry says no

A refusal is not the end of the file. The Civil Registry official’s decision can be appealed to the Directorate General for Legal Security and Public Faith, and if that fails the matter goes to the administrative courts. Refusals on descent cases are usually evidential rather than legal: the registry is not satisfied the ancestor was Spanish by origin, or that the chain of filiation is proved. That means the answer is normally more evidence rather than a different argument, which is a much better position to be in than it feels at the time.

Working with a Spanish citizenship by descent lawyer

Not every case needs one, and we would rather say so. If your parent was plainly Spanish when you were born and you have the certificates, the article 17 registration is something you can take to the consulate yourself.

Where it is worth having someone run the file is when the facts are not clean. When you cannot tell whether your grandmother was still Spanish when your father was born. When the Spanish birth record cannot be found. When a parent came through the Democratic Memory window and you need to know what that did to your own position. When you are choosing between opting from abroad under article 20.1.b and moving to Spain for a year under 22.2.f, and the answer changes what you do with the next two years of your life.

Our immigration lawyers handle nationality files end to end, including the archive research, the legalisations and the translations. If you want someone to take the case rather than explain it, see how we work on Spanish citizenship lawyer, or read the wider guide to all five routes to Spanish citizenship if you are not sure descent is your best line. To have us look at your family history and tell you which article applies, book a consultation and send us what you have.

Questions we get asked

Can I still get Spanish citizenship through my grandparents?

Yes, but not from abroad any more. Article 22.2.f cuts the residence requirement to one year for anyone born outside Spain with a father, mother, grandfather or grandmother who was originally Spanish, and the ancestor does not need to have been born in Spain. You live in Spain legally for a year on a residence permit, then apply. The route that let grandchildren claim without moving, under the Law of Democratic Memory, closed on 22 October 2025.

Is there a new law replacing the Democratic Memory route?

Not as of the date on this page. The eighth additional provision of Law 20/2022 allowed a single one year extension, the Government used it, and the period ended on 22 October 2025. Reopening the route would take fresh legislation passed by the Cortes, not an administrative decision, and nothing of the kind has come into force. Be careful with pages promising an extension.

Do I lose my United States citizenship if I become Spanish?

No. Article 23.b of the Spanish Civil Code requires an American acquiring Spanish nationality by option, carta de naturaleza or residence to declare before the Spanish Civil Registry that they renounce their previous nationality, because the United States is not among the countries exempted by article 24.1. That declaration is made under Spanish law. United States nationality is lost only through the acts listed in 8 U.S.C. 1481 performed with the intention of relinquishing it, and formal renunciation must be made before a United States consular officer abroad. Americans who are already Spanish under article 17 never face the declaration at all, because they are registering a nationality they already hold.

Is there an age limit on claiming Spanish citizenship by descent?

Not on the routes that matter here. Option normally expires at twenty, but article 20.3 removes the limit for the 20.1.b route, so a child of an originally Spanish parent born in Spain can opt at any age. There is no age limit on registering under article 17 either, and none on the residence routes.

Do I have to speak Spanish?

Only if you are applying on the basis of residence. The DELE A2 and CCSE exams set by Royal Decree 1004/2015 are conditions of the residence route under article 22, where you have to show integration into Spanish society. Registration under article 17 and option under article 20.1.b carry no language test at all.

My great-grandfather was Spanish. Do I qualify?

Not through him directly. The open routes reach a parent, under article 20.1.b, and a grandparent, under article 22.2.f. Nothing currently in force reaches a great-grandparent. What is worth checking is the generation in between, because a claim that looks like a great-grandparent case often turns out to be a grandparent case once the middle generation’s status is properly established.

What does “originally Spanish” actually mean?

Spanish from birth, as opposed to Spanish through a later acquisition. Every descent route depends on it. An ancestor who was born Spanish and later lost the nationality still counts as originally Spanish, which is why emigrant families who naturalised elsewhere are not shut out. An ancestor who acquired Spanish nationality as an adult does not count, no matter how long they held it.

Can I keep my Spanish nationality if I never use it?

If you acquired it by option under article 20.1.b, this is worth attention. Article 25.1.a says Spaniards who are not Spanish by origin lose the nationality if for three years they use exclusively the nationality they declared they were renouncing. Keeping your Spanish passport current, using it to enter Spain and keeping your consular registration up to date puts you outside that provision. People who are Spanish by origin under article 17 are not affected by article 25 at all.

Are applications filed before 22 October 2025 still valid?

Yes. Files lodged inside the window are being processed normally, and an amendment made in November 2024 to the governing instruction confirmed that people who booked a consular appointment through the official online tools before the cut-off could attend and hand in their originals afterwards, on the strength of the receipt proving the booking date. Watch the thirty calendar day deadline if the registry asks you for anything further.

Can I get Spanish citizenship by last name?

No. Spanish nationality law contains no route based on a surname, and no list of surnames confers eligibility on anyone. What decides your case is who your parents and grandparents were and what nationality they held, under articles 17, 20 and 22 of the Civil Code. A Spanish surname is a useful research lead, because it points at the province and parish where the birth record is likely to sit, and Spanish naming convention often names the previous generation on the face of a certificate. It is a starting point for the archive work, not a legal basis.

Does Spain have birthright citizenship?

Not in the American sense. Being born on Spanish soil does not by itself make you Spanish. Article 17 grants nationality of origin to people born in Spain only in narrower situations: where at least one foreign parent was also born in Spain, where the parents’ law would leave the child stateless, and where the child’s parentage cannot be determined. Spain is a descent country first. Who your parents were matters more than where you were born, which is exactly why descent claims work at all.

How long does a Spanish citizenship by descent claim take?

We are not going to give you a number, because the honest answer is that it depends on which consulate holds your file and how complete it was when it arrived, and any single figure would be wrong for most readers. What we can tell you is where the time actually goes. Assembling the evidence usually takes longer than the procedure, especially when a Spanish birth record has to be located in an archive. Appointment availability at your consulate is the other variable and it is outside anyone’s control. A file that arrives complete moves; a file that triggers a request for missing evidence has to be completed inside the period the registrar sets, which in the Democratic Memory files the Directorate General fixed at thirty calendar days, and that is where the months go.

Which is better, option under 20.1.b or one year of residence?

They are rarely both available. Option only works if your parent was originally Spanish and born in Spain, and if that is your situation it is almost always the better answer, because you claim it from home with no exams, no move and no age limit. The one year residence route under 22.2.f exists for the much larger group whose Spanish ancestor was not born in Spain, or who are claiming through a grandparent. For them it is not a second choice, it is the only choice.