What Vox means by being Spanish: nationality as a battleground

What Vox means by being Spanish: nationality as a battleground

The year 2024 closed with a record number of Spanish nationality grants, and the question of what it means to be Spanish is back on the front pages. At the centre of the storm is Vox, accused by some of reducing Spanishness to an ID card and by others of having no definition of its own. The conversation, as almost always in these cases, swings between the BOE (Spain's official state gazette) and blood.

The ID card as the only border

One line of analysis holds that Vox has embraced the legalistic criterion without nuance: Spanish is whoever holds the nationality, even if they don't speak the language or have never set foot in the country. Hence the accusation that the party is "pro-system": by accepting the constitutional framework, it gives up distinguishing between Spaniards by origin and naturalised citizens. The criticism is turned against it: if an ID card is enough, then anyone can be Spanish, and the identity discourse is left as wet paper. The figure of 10 million naturalised citizens is even mentioned as an extreme hypothesis feeding that antiestéticar.

Spaniards by origin, naturalised citizens and the shadow of revocation

On the opposite side, the distinction between "Spaniard by origin" and "Spaniard by naturalisation" becomes central. The rights of the latter, it is argued, would not be the same: nationality obtained through residence could be revoked in cases of fraud, and some go further, proposing to do so "in cascade" to also affect descendants. This is the denaturalisation thesis, which clashes with legal certainty and with European Union law. But there it stays, as a flag for discontent: if most grants were obtained irregularly, it is said, a single legal change would be enough to reverse them.

The shadow of cultural Hispanism

In the middle sits the cultural thesis: Spain is not a race but a culture accumulated over centuries, from the Phoenicians and Romans to the American epic. Under this reading, Hispanic immigrants assimilate easily, and the real border is not origin but language and traditions. A position that contradicts those who demand purity of blood — the purity statutes were abolished in 1835, curiously — and also those who trust only the ID card. The debate remains stuck, as always, on who has the authority to decide the requirements of belonging.

In the end, the question is not legal but political. And there Vox walks a tightrope: if it pushes identity, it is accused of xenophobia; if it softens it, it loses its reason for being. The debate remains open, and it does not look like it will be settled by a reform of the Civil Code.