By EUDO-CITIZENSHIP expert Alberto Martín Pérez
In June 2012, the Spanish Minister of Justice charged 1,000 commercial and property registrars with the task of processing the ever-increasing number of pending applications for naturalisation. The Ministry of Justice –which up to this date centralised the processing of all naturalisation applications in Spain – had accumulated up to 400,000 pending applications over the previous two years, with 10,000 more pending cases every month. By the time the agreement was signed, the number of applications delegated to registrars amounted to 478,233, at an additional cost of around 1 million euro.
One year later, according to data from the National Association of Registrars, 420,051 or 88% of all applications, had been processed. 250,000 applications were accepted and 22,000 were rejected, while 55,000 were returned for further attention. Another 18,000 were still pending and the remaining applications are still to be computerised by the relevant administration and sent to registrars. Prior to this exceptional measure, the central authorities of the Ministry of Justice were only able to process 130,000 applications per year at the most.
The naturalisation procedure, on the other hand, has not been significantly changed: candidates are still required to file their application before their local civil registry and the interview is still carried out by the judge in charge of that registry. Nevertheless, in order to relieve the pressure on overcrowded civil registries, candidates whose application is accepted can now pledge the oath of allegiance to the King and to the Constitution before one the 3,000 notaries working in Spain. This new procedure, however, does not change the content of the citizenship ceremony and will in any case only operate until 31 December 2013. Ultimately, the question of whether or not the Ministry of Justice will have the administrative capacity to process applications as fast as registrars and notaries did once the agreement comes to an end is left open.
Read the news report in Europa Press.