Spain's Congress votes to restore citizenship to Sahrawis born under Spanish rule

Spain's Congress of Deputies voted on 10 September to grant Spanish nationality to Sahrawis born in Western Sahara while Madrid still ran the territory, and to their children. The tally was 168 in favour, 31 against and 145 abstentions. The bill now goes to the Senate.

The text treats 29 September 1977 as the effective end of Spanish administration. Anyone born in the territory before that date can seek nationality by naturalisation even if they have never lived in Spain. Direct descendants get a five-year window to apply once a parent is registered. Sahrawis who do live in Spain would need only two years of legal residence instead of the usual ten, the same fast track that already applies to most Latin American nationals, Filipinos, Equatorial Guineans, Portuguese citizens and Sephardic Jews.

Estimates of who would qualify run from about 70,000 to 120,000 people, with some campaigners putting the figure, descendants included, closer to 200,000. The numbers are soft because Spain left in 1975 under the Madrid Accords with Morocco and Mauritania and never ran a clean census of who held Spanish papers at the exit.

Tesh Sidi of the Sumar coalition, the first Sahrawi woman in the Spanish parliament, told the chamber the state was restoring identity cards it had taken away. The ruling Socialists and Sumar backed the bill. The conservative People's Party abstained. Vox voted no.

The timing is awkward for relations with Rabat. More than 70,000 people crossed into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in July, the latest strain in a migration file Morocco can open or close. Western Sahara remains on the United Nations list of non-self-governing territories. Morocco controls most of it. The Polisario Front, backed by Algeria, claims an independent Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic. Spain recognised Morocco's autonomy plan as the most serious basis for a settlement in 2022, a shift that already angered Algiers and Sahrawi groups.

A nationality law does not change that diplomatic line. It does create a Spanish legal status for a population Morocco regards as its own. Rabat can read the vote as a domestic left-wing gesture and still treat it as interference. Madrid can reply that it is cleaning up a colonial residue, not redrawing the map.

The Senate can amend, delay or pass the bill. Until it does, no new passports will be printed. If it passes, Spanish consulates and the civil registry will have to invent a proof standard for births that took place under a colonial administration that no longer exists. That paperwork fight will decide how many of the estimated tens of thousands actually become Spanish.

For applicants in the Tindouf camps in Algeria, or in the territory itself, a Spanish passport is a travel document and a claim on a state that once issued them cards and then withdrew. For Morocco it is a reminder that Madrid has not closed the Sahara file as cleanly as the 2022 alignment suggested. The vote in Congress made that tension visible. The Senate will decide whether it becomes law.