[Pollypocket]

We are moving to Spain hopefully before our baby is due end of May 2010, does anybody know will the baby get a UK or Spanish passport?

Thanks
Polly

 

[jojo]

I suspect your baby will get both providing you do all the necessary paperwork


Jo xxx

 

[morlandg]

I suspect your baby will get both providing you do all the necessary paperwork


Jo xxx

IMHO
First of all it depends what nationality you and the father are - but assuming you are both British citizens then you will be able to apply at the British Consulate here in Spain for a UK passport. It will depend on the UK government's rules as to whether you will be able to apply for a Spanish passport. This is how I understand it - for eg Denmark allows dual citizenship but Sweden does not - you have to revoke your Swedish citizenship in order to obtain a Spanish passport.
I'm sure more knowlegible (how the hell do you spell this word??) OPs will respond to your Q.
Graham

 

[jojo]

IMHO
First of all it depends what nationality you and the father are - but assuming you are both British citizens then you will be able to apply at the British Consulate here in Spain for a UK passport. It will depend on the UK government's rules as to whether you will be able to apply for a Spanish passport. This is how I understand it - for eg Denmark allows dual citizenship but Sweden does not - you have to revoke your Swedish citizenship in order to obtain a Spanish passport.
I'm sure more knowlegible (how the hell do you spell this word??) OPs will respond to your Q.
Graham

The poster is from the UK and the UK does allow dual citizenship. To my knowledge, the childs birth certificate would have to be in Spain if thats where he/she is born and therefore is entitled to be a Spanish citizen. The parents, if they are both uk passport holders (in fact I think if only one is) then that can be applied to the child via the British consulate. Thats how I understand it, but I´m not the sharpest tool in the box LOL


Jo xxx

 

[morlandg]

We are moving to Spain hopefully before our baby is due end of May 2010, does anybody know will the baby get a UK or Spanish passport?

Thanks
Polly

If you have a look at the following you might find all of your answers:
Can my child have more than one nationality?
Graham

 

[Fatbrit]

I suspect your baby will get both providing you do all the necessary paperwork


Jo xxx

I doubt it! Jus soli is fading fast except in the US where it sits almost inviolate in the XIVth. It left the UK in 1983 BTW.

My quick reading of it is that the child will not be a Spanish citizen at birth unless one of their parents was Spanish or neither parent possessed a nationality. But it was a very quick research.

 

[Bevdeforges]

I doubt it! Jus soli is fading fast except in the US where it sits almost inviolable in the XIVth. It left the UK in 1983 BTW.

My quick reading of it is that the child will not be a Spanish citizen at birth unless one of their parents was Spanish or neither parent possessed a nationality. But it was a very quick research.

I think you're right on this one. Someone I know looked into the situation, due to similar circumstances (different nationalities involved), but the end result is that a child born in Spain only gets Spanish nationality if one or both of the parents is Spanish or if neither parent has a nationality that can be transmitted to the child and thus the child would be stateless. (In the case I know of, the child was born in France, which has changed its laws recently and because the parents' nationality was not transmissible, the poor little kid literally is stateless. Parents then moved to Spain and were hoping maybe their kid can get Spanish nationality based on the Spanish "loophole.")

I know I was surprised a few years ago when researching this issue to find that jus sanguinis is by far the dominant system for acquiring nationality at birth. And as you mentioned, it is just getting more popular these days.
Cheers,
Bev

 

[Pollypocket]

Thank you everybody for your replies, we are both British.

 

[xabiaxica]

I think you're right on this one. Someone I know looked into the situation, due to similar circumstances (different nationalities involved), but the end result is that a child born in Spain only gets Spanish nationality if one or both of the parents is Spanish or if neither parent has a nationality that can be transmitted to the child and thus the child would be stateless. (In the case I know of, the child was born in France, which has changed its laws recently and because the parents' nationality was not transmissible, the poor little kid literally is stateless. Parents then moved to Spain and were hoping maybe their kid can get Spanish nationality based on the Spanish "loophole.")

I know I was surprised a few years ago when researching this issue to find that jus sanguinis is by far the dominant system for acquiring nationality at birth. And as you mentioned, it is just getting more popular these days.
Cheers,
Bev

so how come I 'know' someone on a different forum who is british, as is his wife - and they have 2 kids born here in spain who have spanish passports?

i'm pretty sure they also have british ones, too

 

[Joppa]

so how come I 'know' someone on a different forum who is british, as is his wife - and they have 2 kids born here in spain who have spanish passports?

i'm pretty sure they also have british ones, too

While I hate to give 100% credence to Wikipedia, this is what it says under Spanish nationaility law:

The Spanish nationality can also be acquired by residence in Spain. To apply for nationality by residence it is necessary for the individual to have lived in Spain for:[8]
ten years, or
five years if the individual is a refugee, or
two years if the individual is a national of a country of Iberoamerica, Andorra, Philippines, Equatorial Guinea, Portugal, or if the individual is Sephardic (i.e. a descendent of the Spanish Jews, expelled in 1492), or
one year for those individuals:
born in Spanish territory, whose parents are foreign and legally resident in Spain

So it looks as though children born in Spain of British parents will be British at birth, but can also acquire Spanish citizenship on application by their parents after one year. Their births will have to be registered locally of course, and application has to be made to the Civil Registry.
Someone else I'm sure can quote Spanish rules and regulations on it. Britain allows multiple nationality liberally, while at least Spain permits dual citizenship if it is automatically acquired through birth (e.g. one of the parents being Spanish or born in Spain).

 

[Fatbrit]

so how come I 'know' someone on a different forum who is british, as is his wife - and they have 2 kids born here in spain who have spanish passports?

i'm pretty sure they also have british ones, too

It would seem there are multiple options for obtaining Spanish citizenship: by origin, through residence, by consolidation, and by option.

But there seems to be no pure jus soli as there is in the US, and was in the UK before 1983.

More information would be needed to work out by what method they acquired Spanish citizenship.

 

[Bevdeforges]

so how come I 'know' someone on a different forum who is british, as is his wife - and they have 2 kids born here in spain who have spanish passports?

i'm pretty sure they also have british ones, too

Citizenship law has also been changing over the last 5 or 10 years just about everywhere in the EU. Depends, I suppose, on when the kids were born in Spain.

Up until a few years ago, anyone born in France got French nationality. It was actually quite a shock to those of us who knew this one couple when they said their baby could not get French nationality due to the fairly recent change in the law.
Cheers,
Bev

 

[MRVT]

so how come I 'know' someone on a different forum who is british, as is his wife - and they have 2 kids born here in spain who have spanish passports?

i'm pretty sure they also have british ones, too

Me? Lol
2 of mine were born in Spain and have Spanish birth certificates, DNI numbers and therefore Spanish passports. They will have the option of UK passports if they so wish through the Consulate in Madrid.
Supposedly, my eldest who was born in the UK should be in the Family book, but no one can say yes or no to that at the moment, even though we have been granted "Familiar Numerosa"!

 

[Fatbrit]

Me? Lol
2 of mine were born in Spain and have Spanish birth certificates, DNI numbers and therefore Spanish passports. They will have the option of UK passports if they so wish through the Consulate in Madrid.
Supposedly, my eldest who was born in the UK should be in the Family book, but no one can say yes or no to that at the moment, even though we have been granted "Familiar Numerosa"!

So were they Spanish from birth?

 

[xabiaxica]

Me? Lol
2 of mine were born in Spain and have Spanish birth certificates, DNI numbers and therefore Spanish passports. They will have the option of UK passports if they so wish through the Consulate in Madrid.
Supposedly, my eldest who was born in the UK should be in the Family book, but no one can say yes or no to that at the moment, even though we have been granted "Familiar Numerosa"!

If you are who I think you are


yeah, you :clap2:

 

[jojo]

Surely if a child is born in a country, it has to have the birth certificate/certification of that country - that is common sense isnt it?? The UK cant certify a birth if it didnt happen there!?? Working on that theory, to get the said child back to the UK or anywhere else it would need a passport and that passport must be related to the country of birth - or am I way off??

Jo xxx

 

[MRVT]

Surely if a child is born in a country, it has to have the birth certificate/certification of that country - that is common sense isnt it?? The UK cant certify a birth if it didnt happen there!?? Working on that theory, to get the said child back to the UK or anywhere else it would need a passport and that passport must be related to the country of birth - or am I way off??

Jo xxx

Correcto! The births can also be registered at the British consulate which gets them a UK birth certificate too though!

 

[MRVT]

If you are who I think you are


yeah, you :clap2:

Lol, the clue is in the user name!!

 

[Bevdeforges]

Surely if a child is born in a country, it has to have the birth certificate/certification of that country - that is common sense isnt it?? The UK cant certify a birth if it didnt happen there!?? Working on that theory, to get the said child back to the UK or anywhere else it would need a passport and that passport must be related to the country of birth - or am I way off??

Jo xxx

Not necessarily - it depends on the nationality of the parents and then what the laws are in the country in which the child is born. The case I know of involves Argentinian parents with a child born in France. The way the law has changed, the kid doesn't get French nationality - and apparently he can't get Argentinian nationality until and unless he lives in Argentina for some period of time.

To travel back to Argentina with his parents, the Argentinian embassy gave the parents a special travel document, but not a passport. Evidently he'll have to get one of these every time he wants to leave the EU. What I think is happening now is that his parents are going for Spanish nationality so that the kid will get that at least by naturalization.

The situation kind of freaked me out when I first heard about it - but it IS possible to be born without a nationality these days.
Cheers,
Bev

 

[Fatbrit]

Surely if a child is born in a country, it has to have the birth certificate/certification of that country - that is common sense isnt it?? The UK cant certify a birth if it didnt happen there!?? Working on that theory, to get the said child back to the UK or anywhere else it would need a passport and that passport must be related to the country of birth - or am I way off??

Jo xxx

The country where you were born will certainly issue a birth certificate. But if there is no jus soli (literally "right of the soil") then you will derive no citizenship benefits from it. For example, if a child was born to American citizen couple serving on a US military base before 1983, the child would have had both US and UK citizenship. However, after 1983 the child would have had only US citizenship since the UK repealed jus soli.

Consulates issue secondary birth certificates. (The UK embassy charges an unreasonable sum for this IMVHO!) In my example above, the US couple who gave birth to a child in the UK would have had to apply for both a consular record of birth for their child and a US passport in order to travel back to the US with him/her.

My cursory reading of the Spanish citizenship law for Brits living there is that if their child is born in Spain and the parents are resident, the child has a claim on Spanish citizenship after their first birthday. The child also has a claim on UK citizenship provided their parents are British "otherwise than by descent". However, the issue seems to come when the child reaches the age of majority. Spain does not appear to sit easily with the concept of dual citizenship, and since the child was not Spanish at birth (the one-year delay), then use of another citizenship will revoke their Spanish citizenship. But I could be totally wrong, of course!