Spanish Citizenship by Descent: Who Still Qualifies and How to Apply

Citizenship by descent is still open in Spain, but only through a parent or a grandparent. If your mother or father was a Spanish citizen when you were born, you already hold Spanish citizenship and only need to register your birth; if your link is a grandparent who was a Spanish citizen from birth, you first need one year of legal residence in Spain, because the grandchildren law route stopped taking applications on 22 October 2025.

A great-grandparent alone does not give you citizenship. It can still matter, though, if the citizenship was passed down to your grandparent or your parent, and that is the first thing our lawyers check in a family tree. The rules below are the ones in Spain’s Civil Code today, articles 17 to 26.

Who still qualifies for Spanish citizenship by descent

Find the line that matches your family. These are the 5 citizenship routes open to descendants right now, plus the one people ask about most that is not a route on its own.

If one of your parents still held Spanish citizenship on the day you were born, you never had to apply for anything: Spain sees you as Spanish from birth, and the paperwork only records it. There is one trap. If you were born and live abroad, your Spanish parent was also born abroad, and you hold the nationality of the country you live in, you lose Spanish citizenship unless you declared, within three years of turning 18, that you wanted to keep it (Civil Code, art. 24.3). Many people find this out at the consulate. If it happened to you, recovery under article 26 is usually the way back. Article 26 does not ask emigrants or the children of emigrants to live in Spain, and our lawyers check whether that covers your family.

Example: Spanish grandfather, father born in the US

Say your grandfather was born in Spain and emigrated, your father was born in the US, and so were you. Three things can be true at once. If your grandfather was still a Spanish citizen when your father was born, your father was a Spanish citizen from birth, and if he still was when you were born, you may be Spanish by origin already (row 1). Your father, as the child of a Spaniard born in Spain, can opt at any age (row 2), but his option does not pass to you as an adult. And you, as the grandchild of an originally Spanish man, can apply after one year of residence in Spain (row 4). Which one works depends on dates, so our lawyers start with when your grandfather naturalised, if he ever did.

Is the Spanish grandchildren law over?

Yes. The route in the Democratic Memory Law (Law 20/2022, eighth additional provision), known in Spain as the Ley de Nietos (grandchildren law) because it let grandchildren of exiles and emigrants opt without living in Spain, closed to new applications on 22 October 2025, after a one-year extension. Files that were filed before that date are still being decided by the consulates. Nothing new can be started under it.

You may have read that Spain will reopen it. Proposals to reopen or widen the route have been debated in the Spanish Congress during 2026, but none has been published in the BOE, Spain’s official gazette, so as of November 2026 nothing has changed for new applicants. If a new law is passed, we will update this page the week it is published.

Spanish citizenship through grandparents: one year of residence in Spain

With the grandchildren law closed, a Spanish grandparent gets you citizenship through residence instead. Article 22.2.f of the Civil Code cuts the usual ten years to one year for anyone born outside Spain whose father, mother, grandfather or grandmother was originally Spanish. The year has to be legal, continuous and immediately before you apply. The same one-year rule covers anyone who let an option deadline pass (art. 22.2.b).

So the real question is how you will live in Spain for that year. For most of the Americans who write to us, it is one of two permits:

• The non-lucrative visa, if you live on savings, a pension or investment income and will not work at all, not even remotely.
• The digital nomad visa, if you keep working remotely for clients or an employer outside Spain.

After the year you apply to the Ministry of Justice. You also need to pass the CCSE, a multiple-choice test on the Spanish constitution and culture run by the Instituto Cervantes, and, unless you are a national of a Spanish-speaking country or a Puerto Rican, the DELE A2, a basic-level Spanish exam (Royal Decree 1004/2015, art. 6). Our guide to the Spanish citizenship exams covers both. Spending more than 183 days in Spain in a calendar year also makes you a Spanish tax resident for that year (Personal Income Tax Law, art. 9), so you declare your worldwide income in Spain. Our tax specialist plans that with you before you move, not after.

Can you get Spanish citizenship through a great-grandparent?

Not directly. The descent rules stop at grandparents: no article gives a right to a great-grandchild. A Spanish great-grandparent still opens a door if your grandparent was a Spanish citizen from birth, because then you are the grandchild of an originally Spanish person and article 22.2.f applies to you.

Whether your grandparent was a Spanish citizen from birth depends on the nationality rules in force on the day they were born, and on whether your great-grandparent had already taken another nationality by then. A naturalisation date often decides the case, because under the Civil Code wording of those years a Spaniard who naturalised abroad lost Spanish citizenship, and a child born after that date was not born Spanish. If your great-grandfather became a US citizen in 1921 and your grandmother was born in 1919, the line may hold; if she was born in 1923, it usually does not. We check those dates against the old wording of the Civil Code before anyone spends money on records.

We explain this at length because it is the question we get most after the grandparent one. In the enquiries we receive about Spanish ancestry, a grandparent is the relative people mention most, then a great-grandparent, then a parent. Americans write to us about it most often, followed by British and Canadian readers (My Spain Visa enquiry records, 2021 to 2026).

Documents you need to prove Spanish ancestry

You have to prove each generation between your Spanish relative and you. If one certificate is missing, the claim stops, so we collect these before booking anything:

• The full Spanish birth certificate (certificación literal de nacimiento) of your Spanish parent or grandparent, issued by the Spanish Civil Registry where they were born.
• Long-form birth certificates for every generation between that relative and you, including your own.
• Marriage certificates for each couple in the line, which also show name changes.
• Proof of the Spanish relative’s nationality on the key dates, such as an old Spanish passport, a consular registration or the US naturalisation record that shows when they became American.
• Your passport, and for the residence route your residence card, your town hall registration and an FBI background check.
• An apostille on every US document and a sworn Spanish translation of anything not in Spanish. See our guides to the apostille and to a sworn translator in Spain.

Spanish civil registries keep records going back to 1871. For a relative born before that, a parish baptism record usually takes the place of the civil birth certificate.

How to apply: consulate, civil registry or online

Where you apply depends on the route, and there is no single application form for all of them. Consulates publish their own forms, such as a data sheet to register a birth or a declaration to opt.

Once Spain registers you, the Spanish passport is a separate appointment. Our page on the routes to Spanish citizenship explains the steps after nationality is granted.

How long a descent claim takes

For the residence route the law gives the Ministry one year from the day your file reaches it, and if there is no answer by then the application counts as refused, which you can appeal (Royal Decree 1004/2015, art. 11.3). In practice many files take longer, and you can track your nationality file online. After you are notified of the approval you have 180 days to take the oath at the Civil Registry (Civil Code, art. 21.4).

Consular routes have no published standard time. The wait depends on each consulate’s appointment queue, and several consulates in the US and Latin America are still working through files filed under the grandchildren law. Gathering old Spanish records adds weeks before you even book.

Do you have to give up your US passport?

It depends on the route. If you are Spanish by origin and only register your birth, Spain does not ask you to renounce anything. With an option or residence, the Civil Code asks you to declare that you renounce your previous nationality (art. 23), unless you are a national of an Ibero-American country, Andorra, the Philippines, Equatorial Guinea or Portugal. Our guide to dual citizenship in Spain explains what that declaration means for a US, UK or Canadian passport.

How our lawyers handle citizenship by descent claims

You do not need a lawyer by law, and a simple birth registration is something many people do alone. A lawyer helps when the line is not simple. This is what our team does in those files:

• We map your family tree against articles 17 to 26 and tell you which route works, or that none does, before you pay for a single certificate.
• We order the Spanish civil registry and parish records from Spain, which is far easier from here than from the US.
• If you need the year of residence, we handle the visa, the residence card and the nationality file as one plan, and our tax specialist covers your tax year.
• We follow the file with the consulate or the Ministry until the oath, and answer any request for more documents.

Spanish ancestry and citizenship: frequently asked questions

Sources

• Spanish Civil Code, articles 17 to 26, consolidated text (BOE, November 2026).
• Law 20/2022 on Democratic Memory, eighth additional provision, consolidated text (BOE, November 2026).
• Royal Decree 1004/2015 on nationality by residence, articles 6 and 11, consolidated text (BOE, November 2026).
• My Spain Visa enquiry records: messages that mention a Spanish parent, grandparent or great-grandparent (order only, no counts published, no client details).