Spain's opposition People's Party (PP) has used its majority in the Senate to remove the direct path to Spanish nationality for Sahrawis born in the Sahara before 1977, replacing it with a requirement of at least two years of legal residence in Spain, according to Spanish news agency Europa Press.
The changes were approved on Wednesday by the Senate's Justice Committee, which adopted nine PP amendments to the bill. The text was promoted by Sumar, a partner in Spain's coalition government, and approved by the Congress of Deputies on 10 September.
The Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) had initially rejected Sumar's proposal before agreeing to back it after negotiating changes with its coalition partner, according to the agency.
The version passed by Congress would have granted nationality by "carta de naturaleza," a discretionary naturalisation decree, to Sahrawis born before 29 September 1977, without requiring legal residence in Spain. Their first-degree descendants would have had five years to apply.
Applicants could have proved their eligibility with documents such as expired Spanish identity cards, birth certificates or documents issued by the Spanish administration, the agency said.
The PP's amendments delete this direct naturalisation route and turn the bill into a simple amendment of Spain's Civil Code, adding Sahrawis to the groups that can apply for Spanish nationality after two years of legal residence in the country.
In practice, this places Sahrawis in the same category as nationals of Latin American countries, Andorra, the Philippines, Equatorial Guinea and Portugal, as well as Sephardic Jews, who already need only two years of residence under Article 22 of the Spanish Civil Code, instead of the standard ten.
The amendments also remove the special civil registry procedures and the dedicated computer application planned in the original text, leave the proof of Sahrawi status to later regulations, and extend the law's entry into force from four to six months. A veto filed by the far-right Vox party, which sought to send the entire bill back to Congress, was rejected in the committee, the agency added.
The PP argued that its amendments give the text greater legal certainty and integrate Sahrawis into a category that already exists in Spanish law, while the PSOE said it was not giving away nationalities, Spanish news agency EFE reported.
The Senate plenary is expected to vote on the amended text next week, according to the agency. The bill will then return to the Congress of Deputies, which must decide whether to accept or reject the Senate's changes.
The Congress of Deputies approved the original text on 10 September with 168 votes in favour, 31 against and 145 abstentions, with the PP and the Catalan party Junts abstaining and Vox voting against, the same agency reported at the time.
The bill follows a ruling by Spain's Supreme Court on 29 May 2020, which held that people born in the Sahara during the Spanish administration cannot claim Spanish nationality of origin as if they had been born in Spain.
In its ruling, the court relied on Spain's 1975 law on the decolonisation of the Sahara, which stated that the territory had never formed part of Spain's national territory. It found that Sahrawis who did not take up the option of Spanish nationality offered by a 1976 royal decree, and who acquired no other nationality, were stateless.
It should be noted that Spain, in a joint declaration with Morocco in April 2022, described the Moroccan autonomy initiative as the most serious, realistic and credible basis for resolving the Sahara dispute.
