'In the dark': Frustration as Spanish Australians unknowingly losing their citizenship

Some Spanish Australians say they have been blindsided by the Spanish government and consulates into believing they hold dual citizenship only to find it has long ago lapsed.

Arantxa Muñoz and Jose Muñoz Cifuente on holiday in Spain. The couple hope to retire to the country.

Key Points

• Lobby group has identified many cases where Spanish-Australians are unaware that they have lost their Spanish citizenship.
• Children of Spanish migrants also do not realise their citizenship status has lapsed, it claims.
• Australia and Spain are urged to form a dual citizenship arrangement.

According to Nuria Fernández, president of the Council of Spanish Residents (CRE) in Sydney, many, especially older, Spanish-Australians are unaware that they forfeited their Spanish nationality once they became Australian citizens.

She says many of those who immigrated decades ago and became Australians thought they could maintain both nationalities, not knowing that Australia and Spain do not have a dual nationality agreement.

In addition to the migrants themselves, their children born in Australia are also discovering they are no longer Spanish citizens.

For Arantxa Muñoz, 54, and her Spanish-born husband, Jose Muñoz Cifuente, the news has thrown the couple's plans to retire to Spain to a house they had already bought into disarray.

Ms Fernández said the issue stemmed from migrant Spanish-Australians either not knowing or not being told that they could have secured dual citizenship by filing the required paperwork within three years of obtaining their Australian citizenship.

Often, people were only finding out that they were no longer Spanish citizens when they went to consulates to renew their passports, she said.

“Older people are very surprised because they were not told that they were losing their nationality, and all of a sudden they have found themselves in this mess, at an older age,” Ms Fernández told SBS Spanish.

She alleges that Spanish consulates in Australia have been "turning a blind eye" to the technical loss of Spanish identity and continuing to grant Spanish passports, registering births and marriages and processing other identity documents.

They have been renewing their passports, registering their children, their marriages even though they are no longer technically citizens. There is a significant sense of frustration.

Nuria Fernández

Ms Muñoz, who was born in Australia to Spanish parents in 1968, says that since 1996, she had been regularly renewing her Spanish passport and national identity card in order to travel to Spain.

However, this situation had recently changed, she says.

“To my surprise, they (the Spanish consulate) sent me an email asking if my father had become Australian. I explained to them that my father had a Spanish passport and received his pension from Spain. I didn't understand why they had to find out if my father had become Australian or not,” she said.

Arantxa Muñoz and her husband, in front of the house they bought for their retirement in Spain.

Now, Ms Muñoz says she has to prove that, at the time of her birth in Australia in 1968, her father had still been maintaining Spanish nationality, because if he had already lost it, she also loses hers.

She says her case is further complicated because her father died in 2009 without knowing that he had lost his Spanish citizenship and without ever having had a chance to follow the relatively simple procedures to recover it.

In addition, Ms Muñoz's nationality status is exclusively tied to her father's because she had been born at a time when Spanish law decreed that children's nationality status extended only from their father's.

This rule, later overturned in constitutional changes in 1978, was a hangover of the days of the Franco dictatorship, she said.

“That's an insult, because they're putting women in the background. I see it as absurd that we are in 2022 and they want to apply to me a law that existed in 1968 and that is discriminatory,” Ms Muñoz said.

They have no right to revoke my passport and dual nationality without good reason after 26 years

Arantxa Muñoz

SBS Spanish has contacted the Spanish Ambassador in Canberra, Alicia Moral, for comment in relation to this story but she declined the interview “...due to scheduling issues”.

SBS Spanish also sought comment from the Spain's Embassy in Canberra on this story but did not receive a response by the time of publication.

While there is no official data on how many Spanish-Australians have been affected by the loss of their citizenship, the CRE is calling on the Spanish government to approve a nationality law that includes, among other things, the regulation of dual citizenship.

Nuria Fernández, second from the right, at the Meeting of the General Council of Spanish Citizenship Abroad. Madrid, June 2022.

Meanwhile, Ms Fernández has launched a campaign to help those over 65 recover their lost citizenship with the support of the CRE.

“The process is simple,” Ms Fernández explained. “The most cumbersome thing is to ask for a birth certificate in Spain, but it can be done online. However, since older people don't have easy access to the Internet, we are helping them from the CRE in Sydney.”

Ms Muñoz, 54, says she is waiting to see if the consulate confirms her nationality or not, while worrying about what the future holds.

If her Spanish citizenship is withdrawn, the future becomes complicated, she says.

“I have a current (bank) account in Spain and I have a house and the problem I have is that if my passport and nationality are cancelled, my bank account will be closed and I can't withdraw the funds I have there,” she said.

I don't want to lose my nationality, I feel very proud to be Spanish, and all my roots are from Spain.

Arantxa Muñoz

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