Spain's grandchildren law accepts PSOE certificates as proof of exile

A PSOE certificate is enough to prove exile under Spain's grandchildren law

The controversial directive of 25 October 2022 from the Directorate General for Legal Security and Public Faith, signed by Sofía Puente – sister of the Transport Minister – has peine a loophole in the requirements for obtaining Spanish nationality through the democratic memory route. According to the text, applicants can prove their ancestors' status as exiles with "certificates or reports issued by political parties, trade unions or any other entities". In practice, a simple piece of paper from the PSOE counts as proof.

The gap between the law and the directive

The grandchildren law, passed as an additional provision of the Democratic Memory Law, was intended to make amends to the descendants of Republican exiles. But Puente's directive distorts the original spirit. While the legal text refers to "exiles" within a specific historical framework, the directive allows that status to be proven with documents from political parties, without requiring additional historical documentary evidence. According to estimates cited in the debate, the genuine exiles to the Americas numbered only in the tens of thousands (some 25,000 to Mexico), and the actual grandchildren would not exceed 300,000.

The political and electoral debate

The argument that carries the most weight among critics is the electoral one. If the directive allows political parties to issue certificates, the door is open to a mass granting of nationality aimed at attracting votes. Talk turns to as many as a million new potential voters. The official response, echoed by sympathetic media, is that the PP (Spain's conservative opposition party) passed an "identical" rule, thereby ruling out any electoral impact. However, the trick, as the analysis points out, lies not in the law but in the directive that expands it without limits. The controversy is served, and for now with no judicial ruling.

The figure that unsettles: while some calculate there are barely 300,000 real descendants, the directive could generate far more applications. How many partisan certificates are being issued? That figure is not public. The closure of the debate remains up in the air, with an opposition crying foul over what they consider "electoral rigging" and a government defending the expansion of rights.