42,000 foreigners in Catalonia acquired Spanish nationality in 2021
3.8% of residents became citizens, far higher than Spanish average
Over 42,000 foreigners residing in Catalonia acquired Spanish nationality in 2021, as data released by the Spanish Statistics Institute (INE) on Friday shows. Overall, they accounted for 3.8% of the total foreign population in the territory.
The figure places Catalonia as one of the territories with the highest number of naturalizations in 2021, far more than Madrid, with fewer than 26,000 new Spanish citizens. Catalonia’s southern neighboring region of Valencia, had 14,400 foreigners residing in the territory becoming Spanish nationals, while in Andalusia there were 13,300 who did.
Overall in Spain, 144,000 people became Spanish citizens, of which 42,371 (29.4%) reside in Catalonia.
Moroccan (42,000), Colombian (8,328), and Ecuadorian (8,325) are the highest origins acquiring the Spanish nationality.
Regarding the ways of acquisition, 121,760 were after residency in the country, while 21,712 was based on legislation relating to their origins.
Catalonia is also the territory with the third-highest percentage of foreigners who acquired Spanish nationality, after the Basque Country (4.7%) and Murcia (4%). Spain’s average is 2.7%.
How to become Spanish
Being born in Spain does not automatically make you a citizen.
The most common way of becoming a Spanish national is by having at least one Spanish parent, but for a while, people were also able to if their grandparents had left the country in exile, meaning that their parents would have otherwise been born in Spain if this hadn’t been the case.
Other people who have lived in Spain for the required period of time, which varies depending on their country of origin, and pass a Spanish language test as well as another on culture and society, can initiate the lengthy process of becoming a citizen.