The Spanish government granted in 2022 a total of 16,196 visas for Cuban citizensaccording to official data.
Of that amount, which includes tourist, study and airport transit visas, 12,969 people obtained short-term, 2,972 long-term and 255 transit visas, reported Marti News based on data provided by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation of Spain (MAEC).
The current migratory exodus -the worst in the history of Cuba- and the procedures of thousands of Cubans to benefit from the so-called Law of Grandchildren (Ley de Memoria Democrática), continue to saturate the consular services in Havana, while the authorization is still pending of the regime for the opening of a new diplomatic headquarters in Camagüey.
On this last issue, the MAEC refused to provide information to Marti News to avoid “damaging the ongoing negotiation”, which “could therefore be detrimental to foreign relations”.
“The opening of a Consulate General (…) selection of the location, the headquarters, the composition of the staff… will always be the result of numerous and detailed diplomatic negotiations between the sending State and the receiving State (…) subject to to the rules of confidentiality”, indicated the Spanish ministry in response to the query.
It recently transpired that some 4,780 Cubans residing in Spain they acquired the nationality of that country in 2022, ranking number 10.
The National Institute of Statistics (INE) published the data corresponding to the previous year and these reflect the tendency for Cubans residing in Spain to continue to be one of the groups that most request Spanish nationality.
Until last April, Cuba was the country where more people had obtained Spanish nationality under the Democratic Memory Law (also known as the Grandchildren Law) passed in October, which forced the embassy to consider increasing the number of staff working there, due to the increase in procedures.
Since the regulations came into force, the numbers of procedures have skyrocketed, which has led to the collapse of post offices that have run out of stamps, in part, due to the increase in requests within the framework of the new legislation.
The Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MINREX) came to recognize that the exponential increase in procedures has generated a delay in the legalization of documents. It is estimated that some five million Cubans could benefit from this process of the new law.
