Getting a Spanish passport - – Emigration attorney

As of January 2022, Israelis of Spanish descent will be able to, once again, after a few years’ break in accepting applications, apply for Spanish citizenship and become European Union citizens. Unlike under the previous legislation, now candidates will not have to pass a Spanish language test, physically come to the country for a comprehensive interview with the Spanish authorities or be involved in any other test to assess their familiarity with Spanish culture and history.

Our law office, specializing in immigration to the US and EU countries, deals extensively with tracing the roots of Sephardi expellees in the Mediterranean countries, South America and Asia. We have a team of experts and genealogists who regularly help us locate roots of descendants of Spanish expellees around the world.

How to obtain a Spanish passport – updated for 2022

The Spanish passport has been returning to the headlines in the last few months thanks to recent legal amendments by the Spanish government ministers. According to the new legislation, Israelis with a Spanish background will once again be able to apply for a Spanish European passport and obtain it under convenient conditions.

Due to the enormous amount of applications that piled up until 2019, there has been a drastic delay in everything connected to the application process for descendants of Spanish expellees. However, the Spanish legislature understands that this delay constitutes a ethical problem regarding millions of Sephardic expellees and Marranos, who were forced to leave the country in large numbers about five hundred years ago.

Recently the law was renewed in the Spanish parliament, and its ministers decided to grant additional opportunities to those eligible for a passport, but who were prevented from receiving it for political reasons. This concerns a large population of some eight million eligible people around the world. In Israel alone, around 2.5 million are eligible for the passport.

Who is eligible by the Spanish law?

First and foremost, the law concerns people born in North African countries and their descendants. Others are those from Mediterranean and Eastern countries such as Iraq, Greece, Syria, Lebanon, Bulgaria, and even Yemen and Uzbekistan.

It is important to remember that there are cases in which the connection to the forefather of Sephardi origin is unclear, requiring the involvement of a genealogist. In these cases, a detailed genealogical report must be produced for the Spanish authorities proving that in the past there lived a Spaniard (not necessarily a Spanish expellee) who was the head of the applicant’s family, whether the Spaniard was the great-grandfather or great-grandmother and whether the ancestor lived 50 or 250 years ago.

In many cases we have helped our clients provide the required report to the authorities in charge of approving the applications, and after an extensive examination they accepted our application, despite a rejection or request for additional documents after the client initially applied.

Which surnames indicate a Spanish connection?

These are names such as Caro, Calderon, Sevillia, Toledano, Bardugo, Biton, and many other surnames which are discussed in this article on our site.

However, the initial stage in determining eligibility relies on the parents’ country of origin. Countries such as those mentioned above are known by the committees in charge of approving the applications as having a Jewish Spanish character. Therefore, in these cases there is not much doubt because it is known that large numbers of Spanish expellees flocked to North Africa and the Mediterranean countries about five hundred years ago, as well as Portuguese expellees.

People from these countries are considered today to be direct descendants of Spanish Jews and are therefore largely eligible for Spanish passports. If in the past your family spoke Ladino or the Jewish-Spanish which was spoken in North Morocco known as Haketia, you are eligible as well. Language is considered a clear sign of ethnicity to this day, and so it is clearly identified as an indication of belonging to the Iberian Peninsula where Spain is located.

Contact us

Contact us to look into obtaining Spanish citizenship at our law offices in Jerusalem and in Tel Aviv. The office provides comprehensive service for obtaining European citizenships based on familial roots and specializes particularly in Spanish and Portuguese citizenships.