The Green Screen

Cubans line up to apply for Spanish citizenship
Mon Dec 29, 2008 5:14pm EST

HAVANA (Reuters) - Hundreds of Cubans lined up outside the Spanish Embassy in Havana on Monday on the first day Spain began taking applications for Spanish citizenship under the country's "historic memory" law.

The law makes grandchildren of Spanish immigrants eligible for citizenship, which officials estimate could result in as many as 200,000 Cubans seeking a Spanish passport.

Spain has said 1 million people around the world could qualify to become Spaniards.

There are special provisions for descendants of exiles who had to leave the country and renounce their citizenship due to the Spanish civil war.

A Spanish passport is prized by many Cubans who view it as a way to get off the island, from which at least a million people have left since Fidel Castro took power in a 1959 revolution and installed a communist government.

Spanish citizenship would eliminate some obstacles now in place for Cubans to travel but not the need to get permission from the Cuban government.

Some outside the embassy on Monday said they had camped out over the weekend so they could be at the front of the line. They gave different reasons for seeking to become Spaniards.

"I want to travel to Spain and see how it goes for me there," said Oralia Quevedo, 68. "You can't lose anything trying."

"I'm doing it for my 6-year-old son so that when he's older he can travel," said housewife Sylvia, 36, who did not give her full name.

(Reporting by Rosa Tania Valdes and Esteban Israel; editing by Jeff Franks and Cynthia Osterman)


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http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews...7I20081229

Hi Lillian. Do you have further information on this?

My grandparents on my father's side were Spaniards. My dad was first generation born in Cuba.

I would be interested in becoming "Spaniard". Traveling with that American passport is hazardous to your health. Yikes...

Some type of documentation from their arrival in Cuba or a birth certificate. I'm working on the same thing. What I did was had a cousin in Poland find my grandfather's baptismal record.

Either way go to the Spanish Counsulate in Miami.

I'd like to get an EU passport so I can work in Euroland.

Mercy, the consulate office in DC or UN NY Embassador's office.

I have 3 out of my 4 grandparents born in Spain...Canary Islands and Barcelona...but I am MOST happy being a US citizen :-0)

My oldest friend (fellow Cuban) married a Spaniard after graduating from the medical school in Madrid...their daughter has Spanish citizenship by filing through the UN Spanish Embassador's NY office. Which, BTW, when she went to la U of Habana for a semester with a Spanish passport..it did not stop the Cuban government from knowing who her maternal grandfather was in Cuba BC (they can't feed the people..but they have in their computer your entire family history)... She was comfronted with the facts..but they let her in..$$ was more important than the benign pre-BC position he held.

What is not being stressed much in the media reports is that this option is ONLY open to people whose Spanish grandparents left Spain during the Civil War and Franco dictatorship periods - i.e. you can only apply if your Cuban grandparent(s) emigrated betwen 1936 and 1956. I suspect the large majority of Cuban applicants won't qualify.

There is no requirement to prove refugee status, as far as I can make out (you don't for instance have to show any record of being registered as a refugee, or membership cards of leftist or anti-Franco groups or political parties) - but it is required to produce some sort of landing document proving when the antecedent arrived in their new country.

So any old Spanish emigrant won't do - if your ancestor didn't arrive in Cuba (or wherever) during that 1936-55 timeframe there is no chance.

I will have to ask my father what year they migrated in. My dad was born in 1939 so maybe......they were recent arrivals.

Lillian. I love being an American Citizen. But, travelling abroad with a USA or British Passport can be hazardous to your health.

Most don't read the "where were you born" part on the passport.

Just look what happened in India. And in Cairo, the private tour guide we hired before our tour actually started stressed to us not to say we were Americans when we reach the tourist sites. It was less hassle to say we were Spaniards.