Spain’s main association of career diplomats has accused the Government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of obscurantism over the Democratic Memory Law, the measure that has handed citizenship to hundreds of thousands of descendants of Spaniards living abroad.
The Asociación de Diplomáticos Españoles (ADE) said in a statement issued on July 14 that the lack of official explanation around the nationality process, and around the parallel regularisation of immigrants handled by consulates, was causing serious harm.
The gravest consequence, it said, was the shadow of doubt cast over the state administration and over the reliability of the electoral system itself.
That was a reference to the questioning of the overseas vote in recent weeks by figures in both the Partido Popular (PP) and Vox, the right-wing party, ahead of a general election due in 2027.
The measure, known in Spain as the ley de nietos, or grandchildren’s law, was passed in October 2022 and was written for the descendants of those driven out by political exile.
An instruction signed four days after it took effect by Sofía Puente, then a senior justice ministry official, widened its reach to children and grandchildren of Spaniards more generally. That instruction remains under challenge before the courts.
Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares has said 545,000 applications had been approved out of some 2.4 million lodged, with 306,500 entries made in consular civil registers.
The association said the ministry’s political leadership had managed the diplomatic service poorly and shown a lack of interest in its staff, whose workload had risen sharply.
It described the consular network as being in a critical state, with the number of Spaniards registered abroad climbing towards 3 million and demand for visas, nationality files and immigration paperwork rising alongside.
The ADE, chaired by Alberto Virella, defended the integrity and professionalism of Spain’s external service and said its officials applied the law as written.
It also rejected the Government’s use of public companies to clear the backlog. The foreign ministry has awarded contracts worth more than €1.3 million to Grupo Palco, a Cuban State firm, to supply staff to the embassy and consulate general in Havana, and has leaned on the Spanish engineering company Ineco in Argentina.
Outsourcing was not an adequate solution, the association said, warning of undesirable consequences unless it was carried out transparently and with precise information given to consular managers and to the political actors who asked for it.
It called on Sánchez and Albares to answer questions from the media and clear up the doubts raised in political debate, so as to dispel the shadows now hanging over the health of Spanish democracy.
