Spain has traditionally been regarded as a leading example of good practices in the prevention, identification, and protection of stateless people. It is a party to the main statelessness conventions, including the 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, as well as to the core international human rights treaties. Since 2001, Spain has operated a statelessness determination procedure and incorporated safeguards against childhood statelessness into her nationality laws.
Spanish legislation stems from a single article of the Immigration Act, which has been further developed through a development regulation establishing a statelessness determination procedure. Once recognised, stateless individuals are granted the right to reside in Spain permanently under conditions similar to those afforded to refugees. In addition, the regulation of the international protection reception system has, since 2022 and with certain limitations, ensured access to the national reception system for both applicants and recognised stateless people.
Spain has established safeguards to prevent statelessness among children born on its territory. These children are granted Spanish nationality at birth when both parents are stateless or when neither parent’s legislation automatically confers a nationality to the child—a guarantee that also extends to foundlings. The implementation of this provision is further strengthened by a 2007 Instruction that consolidates the Administration’s criteria for its practical application.
Nevertheless, several challenges cast a shadow over this otherwise positive framework for the protection of stateless people in Spain.
Ongoing challenges
To date, Spain has not introduced measures to facilitate the naturalisation of stateless individuals. Unlike refugees, stateless people are not provided with a reduced residence period under the Spanish Civil Code. They are therefore required to complete the general requirement of ten years of continuous and lawful residence before becoming eligible to apply for Spanish nationality. This has resulted in a steady increase in the stateless population in recent years. The situation stands in contrast with the legislation of other European countries that operate a statelessness determination procedure, such as Italy and France, where only five years of residence are required to apply.
Despite having a statelessness determination procedure, there is no reliable data on the number of stateless people residing in Spain or how many of them are minors. Existing statistics vary significantly depending on the source, ranging from 4,781 stateless people recorded by the National Statistics Institute (INE) as of January 2025 to 11,310 recorded by the Permanent Immigration Observatory (OPI) as of September 30, 2025. Those figures do not include applicants for the status, despite the high recognition rate, nor stateless people who have regularised their situation in Spain with other types of residence permits.
At the same time, the Asylum and Refugee Office does not determine the statelessness of asylum applicants who may meet this condition, despite the fact that the regulation governing the procedure requires the Office to initiate such determination ex officio. This practice should be reviewed with the entry into force of the New Pact on Migration and Asylum. In 2024, out of 167,366 asylum applications, only 3 were registered as stateless people, with authorities presuming nationalities or designating applicants as belonging to “non-recognized states” or “UN observer states,” even in cases with a high likelihood of statelessness.
Challenges in preventing childhood statelessness
Regarding guarantees to prevent childhood statelessness, several civil registries responsible for processing applications for Spanish nationality for stateless children born in Spain have recently been obstructing and denying such applications by imposing requirements not included in current legislation (e.g., requiring legal residence of the parents). Although these situations may be resolved through an administrative appeal of a highly technical nature, parents do not have access to free legal assistance for this purpose, which may deter many from filing an appeal. Moreover, although decisions on such appeals are generally favourable to the rights of the child, the process may take more than two years, during which time the child remains stateless and faces difficulties in fully accessing basic rights. The efforts of the General Subdirectorate for Nationality to correct these misguided practices are recognized, but the issue remains unresolved.
Additionally, regarding statelessness prevention measures, Spain lacks a specific procedure to register the births of children born in transit to Spain whose births were not registered in the country of birth or in the mother’s country of nationality, often due to the mother’s vulnerability. To strengthen the protection of these children and ensure their access to basic rights, including healthcare, education, and social services, safeguards should be implemented to facilitate their registration in Spain.
Challenges in statelessness determination
As stated, Spain has had a statelessness determination procedure for almost 25 years, yet its implementation is far from ideal. Resolution times often extend beyond two years, despite Spanish legislation requiring decisions within no more than three months. This far exceeds what could be considered reasonable and constitutes a violation of Spain’s human rights obligations, as it excessively delays protection for stateless people. These concerns have been raised before, including by the Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance in 2013 after visiting Spain.
At the same time, the situation of applicants during the procedure is highly precarious. Under the current regulation, they are not permitted to work at any point, and they are not even guaranteed an automatic right to remain in Spain while their case is being examined. Instead, both the provision of documentation and authorization to stay are left to the authorities’ discretion (Article 5). In practice, this means that applicants are placed in a form of tolerated stay, carrying only a receipt confirming that they have lodged their application but lacking any formal legal documentation as applicants. In most instances, the so-called green card is systematically denied. Unsurprisingly, this absence of documentation severely limits access to basic rights, such as healthcare or education.
Likewise, applicants are not formally entitled to legal assistance or an interpreter during the procedure. Finally, UNHCR has no specific role assigned by law in the procedure, and applicants do not have the right to an interview, which is granted only at the discretion of the caseworker and is, in practice, exceptional.
These deficiencies are exacerbated by the particular characteristics of the procedure in Spain, where more than 95% of applicants come from the same origin: Sahrawi individuals from refugee camps near Tindouf (Algeria). These applications are highly homogeneous, and decisions rely on very strict documentary requirements based on rulings from the Supreme Court and the Audiencia Nacional. As a result, cases falling outside these parameters are often rejected even when there are reasonable signs of statelessness, and authorities struggle to assess applications from people of a different origin. For instance, although jurisprudence suggests that the burden of proof should be shared, in practice it falls almost entirely on the applicant. Applicants are repeatedly required to submit an Algerian passport, even though Algeria issues such passports only for humanitarian reasons to Sahrawi refugees, or if they do not have one, to obtain it from the Algerian Consulate, even when the case file already includes sufficient evidence of statelessness.
Recommendations
In this context, the Spanish Coalition on Statelessness has been calling on authorities to implement improvements to dispel these clouds, which stem more from deficient practices or insufficient financial and material resources than from poor legislation.
Regarding legislation, although aware of the challenges posed by the current political climate, the most urgent reform is an amendment to the Spanish Civil Code to reduce the required residency period for stateless people to apply for Spanish nationality to a shorter period—no more than five years—especially for stateless children not born in Spain, in line with good practices in other European countries.
It is also necessary to conduct a comprehensive study of statelessness in Spain, identifying gaps and potential improvements in the implementation of existing safeguards for prevention and protection, particularly in areas such as prevention of statelessness at birth and effective protection of statelessness applicants during the procedure.
Finally, there should be improvements in the collection and publication of qualitative and quantitative data on statelessness in Spain, in line with international recommendations for generating statistics on statelessness.
