A 2015 law allows descendants of Sephardic Jews expelled by Catholic kings to XVe century of acquiring Spanish nationality. But, faced with the risk of fraud, the Spanish state has tightened the screw in the examination of applications, creating a bureaucratic mess, analysis The confidential.
She had to repair “A historical error”. In 2015, a law allowing the descendants of Sephardic Jews expelled from the Iberian Peninsula by the Catholic kings in 1492 to access a Spanish passport, without losing their other nationality, came into force in the Pyrenees.
Between 2015 and 2020, the Spanish Ministry of Justice, competent on this point, gave the green light for the naturalization of 20,908 people, for a single rejected application, confirm the site The confidential, liberal conservative tendency.
A deadline of September 2019 was prescribed by law for requests, and at the time thousands of people came forward at the last minute. Today, thousands of requests are still pending. In recent months, although most have resulted in the issuance of a passport, “The number of refusals has continued to increase” : 7 during the year 2020, 236 at the score of last March and 2,980 according to the latest figures for September.
In a very detailed survey, The confidential provides explanatory elements:
The Spanish project […] was born with the best of intentions, but ended up going down the drain, fraudulently granting passports to hundreds – if not thousands, the exact number is impossible to determine – of foreigners with more than questionable documents. ”
Applicants from Latin America
Faced with this situation, the Spanish State is showing an excess of zeal in examining the requests. Except that this hardening has generated on the one hand “Bitter complaints from many law firms, notaries and Jewish organizations” – they consider, among other things, that it is unfair that the examination of applications has been tightened a posteriori – and on the other hand a “Big mess” administrative, because the delays are piling up.
At XVe century, the first expelled Sephardic Jews found refuge in neighboring European countries. “However, it is not in any of these places that the greatest explosion of demands for Spanish nationalization by the Sephardic route has taken place in the last five years”, remark The confidential.
The site evokes Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Argentina and the Dominican Republic. In these countries, “Law firms or genealogy experts came out of nowhere”, ready to establish links between the current applicants and one of the estimated 100,000 Sephardic Jews expelled by the Alhambra decree of 1492.
Today, some Spanish offices no longer hesitate to redirect requests to neighboring Portugal, assures the online media. Portugal also adopted a law similar to that of its Spanish counterpart in 2015. It had caused an explosion in the number of applicants, seduced by the idea of taking advantage of the advantages of a European passport.
Source
Founded in 2001, this Madrid site – launched in a garage in the suburbs of Madrid – defines itself as “The newspaper [numérique] which is aimed at those who have influence ”. At the time, he mainly wanted to target the world of economics and finance,
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