Spain Reopens a Door Closed Half a Century Ago as Sahrawi Citizenship Bill Clears Congress

A landmark vote could give tens of thousands of Sahrawis and their children a route to Spanish and European Union citizenship, but the measure still needs Senate approval and does not grant nationality automatically.

By David Soyer Follow

MADRID | Published at 12:04 a.m. EDT

Spain’s lower house of parliament has approved a bill that would create a special path to Spanish citizenship for Sahrawis born in Western Sahara during and immediately after the final period of Spanish administration, a vote supporters describe as a long-delayed correction of a historic injustice.

The proposal cleared the Congress of Deputies on Thursday with 168 votes in favor, 31 against and 145 abstentions, according to Reuters. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s Socialist Party and its junior coalition partner, Sumar, supported the measure. The conservative People’s Party abstained, while the far-right Vox party voted against it.

The passage is significant, but headlines declaring that Spain has already granted citizenship go too far. The bill must still pass the Senate before it can receive final approval, be published in Spain’s official gazette and take effect. It also would not make every Sahrawi a Spanish citizen automatically. Eligible people would have to apply, document their identity and connection to the former territory, and complete the process established by the law.

If enacted in its current form, the legislation could affect roughly 70,000 to 110,000 people, according to estimates cited in Spanish and international reporting. The eventual number could differ because eligibility depends on documentation, applications and administrative decisions, not simply ancestry or self-identification.

For those who qualify, the consequences would extend well beyond a passport. Spanish citizenship carries the right to live, work and study across the European Union, participate in Spanish elections, receive consular protection and move through legal systems that many Sahrawis have navigated for decades without a broadly recognized nationality.

What the bill actually provides

The legislation establishes that exceptional circumstances exist for granting Spanish nationality by naturalization decree, known in Spanish law as carta de naturaleza, to Sahrawis born in Western Sahara before September 29, 1977, even if they do not legally reside in Spain.

The date reaches beyond Spain’s formal departure from the territory in February 1976. It encompasses the period associated with a Spanish decree that gave certain native residents a limited opportunity to opt for Spanish nationality after Madrid ended its colonial administration.

Under the text approved by the lower house, an applicant could use several forms of evidence. These include an expired Spanish national identity card, a birth certificate, a family record, a Spanish driver’s license, records of schooling or medical treatment, documents showing employment by the former Spanish administration, or proof of inclusion in the United Nations census prepared for the Western Sahara referendum that was never held. The Congress-published legislative text details the proposed evidence and procedure.

Applications under the special route would be free. Eligible people would have three years from the law’s effective date to apply, with the possibility of a one-year extension. The government would be required to create a dedicated digital procedure within six months of publication. The measure would take effect four months after publication in the official state gazette, assuming it completes the remaining legislative steps.

First-degree descendants, meaning the children of people who acquire citizenship through the new process, would receive five years from a parent’s registration as a Spanish citizen to exercise their own option. The bill would also amend Spain’s Civil Code so that Sahrawis could qualify for citizenship after two years of legal residence, placing them on a shorter track than the general ten-year residence requirement.

These distinctions are essential. The proposal is broad enough to change thousands of lives, but it is neither universal nor immediate. Birthplace, date, Sahrawi identity and documentary proof all matter. Children have a derivative route tied to a parent who successfully acquires nationality. Applicants would still interact with Spain’s civil registry and justice administration.

A legal break with a difficult past

Spain controlled Western Sahara from the late nineteenth century until 1976. During the colonial period, Madrid issued Spanish identity documents and maintained schools, hospitals, public employment and administrative records in the territory. When Spain withdrew, many Sahrawis lost the practical protection those documents had appeared to provide.

The legal injury was compounded by the territory’s unresolved political status. Morocco controls most of Western Sahara and regards it as part of the kingdom. The Algeria-backed Polisario Front seeks an independent Sahrawi state and administers refugee camps near Tindouf, Algeria. The United Nations continues to list Western Sahara as a Non-Self-Governing Territory whose decolonization remains incomplete. The United Nations says Spain informed the secretary-general in 1976 that it had ended its presence and considered its administrative responsibility terminated.

That unresolved status has left many Sahrawis in a legal gray zone. Some hold Moroccan citizenship or documents from other countries. Others have been recognized as stateless or rely on travel papers with limited acceptance. Families are spread across Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara, refugee camps in Algeria, Mauritania, Spain and a wider diaspora.

Spain’s Supreme Court reinforced the obstacle to citizenship in 2020. The court ruled that Western Sahara could not be treated as Spain for the purpose of a Civil Code provision granting nationality by origin to certain people born on Spanish territory. The case involved a woman born in Western Sahara in 1973. Spain’s judiciary said the court rejected the argument that birth in the former colony was legally equivalent to birth in Spain.

The new bill does not overturn that judicial interpretation by declaring the former colony part of metropolitan Spain. Instead, lawmakers are using a different legal route. They are defining the colonial history and its aftermath as exceptional circumstances that justify naturalization. It is a legislative remedy designed around the court’s ruling, not a denial that the ruling exists.

The lawmaker who brought the issue inside parliament

The bill’s most visible advocate is Tesh Sidi, a Sumar legislator and the first Sahrawi woman to serve in Spain’s parliament. Born in a Sahrawi refugee camp, Sidi has argued that the measure restores rights to people whose relationship with Spain was severed during decolonization.

Her role gives the debate an unusual immediacy. The proposal is not only a foreign-policy statement about a distant territory. It is being advanced within the Spanish legislature by a representative whose own biography reflects displacement and the unresolved Sahrawi question.

Reuters reported that Sidi celebrated the vote as the recovery of rights and identity documents once held by Sahrawis under Spanish administration. Supporters applauded outside parliament after the vote. Their response reflected years of failed or stalled efforts to obtain a distinct nationality solution.

Consumerlite News did not interview Sidi for this article. Her position is drawn from her public parliamentary advocacy and the reporting cited here.

Why Morocco will watch the Senate closely

The citizenship measure arrives at a delicate point in relations between Madrid and Rabat. Morocco considers Western Sahara central to its national sovereignty and promotes an autonomy plan that would keep the territory under Moroccan control. Polisario rejects that plan and calls for self-determination with independence as an option.

Spain changed its posture in 2022 when Sánchez described Morocco’s autonomy proposal as the “most serious, credible and realistic” basis for resolving the dispute. Sánchez defended that position in a parliamentary address, while also saying a solution should be acceptable to both parties and conform to the United Nations framework.

That shift helped repair relations with Morocco after a major diplomatic rupture. It angered Polisario and Algeria, which supports the Sahrawi independence movement. The citizenship bill now forces Spain to manage two positions at once: support for Morocco’s autonomy framework and recognition that people connected to Spain’s former colony deserve a distinct remedy.

The legislation does not recognize Sahrawi sovereignty, establish an independent state or alter borders. Its formal subject is individual nationality. Yet citizenship law inevitably carries political meaning. By naming Sahrawis as a specific community and grounding eligibility in Spain’s former administration, parliament is acknowledging a continuing human consequence of decolonization.

Morocco had not announced a formal retaliatory response to the lower-house vote as of publication. The timing nevertheless increases the potential for friction. Spanish-Moroccan cooperation reaches across trade, counterterrorism, migration management and security around Ceuta and Melilla. A recent mass crossing into Ceuta has already renewed arguments about border cooperation and political pressure. Morocco has denied orchestrating that crisis, while Reuters reported Rabat’s insistence that no concrete evidence had been produced against it.

The Senate stage will therefore be watched for more than amendments. Any delay, dilution or acceleration may be interpreted as a signal about how much diplomatic pressure Madrid is willing to absorb.

The practical impact could be profound

For a successful applicant living in a refugee camp, Spanish nationality could provide a recognized passport, access to education and employment, and the ability to reunite with family. For Sahrawis already in Spain, it could replace years of temporary documentation or statelessness proceedings with a secure legal status. For their children, it could determine whether mobility and rights are inherited rather than renegotiated with every generation.

Implementation will decide whether those promises become real. Older applicants may have incomplete, damaged or inconsistent records. Names can be transliterated differently across Arabic, Spanish and French documents. Some Spanish colonial records may be difficult to locate. Applicants in refugee camps may face limited internet access, travel barriers and costly document authentication.

The bill anticipates some of those difficulties by recognizing a wide range of evidence and ordering a dedicated application system. Still, administrative capacity will matter. Tens of thousands of cases could overwhelm civil registries or consular posts unless Spain assigns staff, publishes clear guidance and establishes a fair process for resolving conflicting records.

Legal assistance will also be important. Applicants need to understand that eligibility is not approval, and that the process may involve identity checks, document translation and civil registration. Unscrupulous intermediaries could exploit demand by charging for forms that the law says should be processed without an application fee.

What happens next

The Senate can approve the text, amend it or delay it. If senators make changes, the bill would return to the Congress of Deputies for another decision. Only after the parliamentary process is complete, the measure is formally enacted and it appears in the Boletín Oficial del Estado can the countdown to implementation begin.

Three questions now deserve close attention.

First, will the Senate preserve the September 29, 1977 cutoff and the five-year option for children? Second, will the government provide enough money and staff to process applications efficiently? Third, will Morocco respond diplomatically, and could that response influence the bill’s final form?

The lower-house vote has already changed Spain’s political record. A majority of lawmakers has accepted the premise that the country’s withdrawal left a specific debt to Sahrawis who were born under its administration. Whether that recognition becomes a functioning citizenship program now depends on the Senate, the final legal text and the institutions assigned to carry it out.

For families who have kept expired Spanish identity cards, school certificates and birth records for half a century, the vote is more than symbolic. Those documents may soon become evidence in a legal process that reconnects them to the country that issued the papers and then departed.

That is why the most accurate description of this moment is both hopeful and restrained. Spain has opened the legislative door. It has not yet completed the law, and no applicant has received citizenship under it. The promise will be measured by who can enter, how long the process takes and whether the rights approved in Madrid can be reached from Laayoune, Tindouf and the diaspora.

Reporting and interview disclosure

David Soyer reports on politics, the economy and major developing stories for Consumerlite News. He can be reached at dsoyer@consumerlite.co.

This article is an original synthesis and analysis of the parliamentary text, official Spanish and United Nations records, and current reporting available as of publication.