Due to increased immigration in our country since 1995, the General Directorate of Registries and Notaries received an overflow of nationality applications.
By December 2014, immigration officials were two years behind in processing nationality applications.
Due to this, the ¨plan intensivo¨ was launched, putting into effect two new developments that have sped up the application processing time.
First, more than 1,000 registrars throughout the country have committed to using their human and material resources to process nationality applications to put right this delay.
Second, it was agreed that applicants who had been granted Spanish nationality for residency could take their oath of citizenship before a notary. It is important to note that most of the notaries, such as property registrars, agreed to collaborate with the ¨plan intensivo¨ free of charge. Not only did they agree to help speed up the process by putting in their time and effort to review applications but they do so at no additional cost to the applicants.
Over the last year, more than 270,000 people have acquired Spanish nationality, which proves that the ¨plan intensivo¨ for processing nationality applications has been a success.
However, we must not repeat the same mistakes as last time, causing the system to collapse completely. Public Administration will continue to keep the system it has now to process future nationality requests.
So what was the goal? The goal was to process nationality applications in the least amount of time possible. In the near future we would like to resolve all requests in a maximum of one year.
Translated by: Katherine Pascal