Today, Spain’s Congress is not voting on a mere technical amendment to nationality law. The text before it creates, through an exceptional naturalisation procedure, a special path to Spanish nationality for people born in Moroccan Sahara before 29 September 1977, while opening the same route to their direct children, with a faster residence pathway in the future. The text introduced by the Sumar group has passed the Justice Committee and now has the support of the Socialists, while the People’s Party is moving toward abstention and Vox opposes it.
The question that deserves attention is not only how many people could benefit from this law, nor how many documents will be required to prove birth in Moroccan Sahara during the period of Spanish occupation. The question begins with something much simpler: why has Spain chosen this particular part of its colonial history to open a special route to Spanish nationality today?
The initiative did not emerge because of the recent events in occupied Ceuta. It was originally introduced in 2023, entered the parliamentary process in 2024, and the Congress agreed to consider it in February 2025 by 195 votes to 116, with 33 abstentions. It then remained in the legislative process for more than a year before accelerating in the summer of 2026, when it was pushed toward an urgent procedure and approved by the Justice Committee in July.
There is therefore no journalistic basis for claiming that Madrid created this law in response to the Ceuta crisis. That would be an inference unsupported by the facts. But the present timing is still part of the story, because the vote comes at a sensitive moment in Morocco-Spain relations, after months of Spanish political debate involving Morocco, Moroccan Sahara, migration and occupied Ceuta.
يجب التمييز بين منح الجنسية الإسبانية لمن يستوفون شروطا قانونية،وبين توظيف هذا الملف سياسياً لخدمة أطروحات انفصالية حول الصحراء المغربية
الجنسية حق قانوني،لكن تحويلها إلى أداة لإنتاج هوية سياسية أو تكريس رواية انفصالية أمر مختلف تماما
المشكلة ليست في الجنسية،بل في استخدامها سيا pic.twitter.com/VYQkC5TqF2
— Diplomatique.ma الدبلوماسية (@diplomatique_ma) September 10, 2026
More importantly, the bill does not grant nationality to everyone who has a historical connection with Spain. It selects a very specific category: people born in Moroccan Sahara before a defined date, and then extends the effect of the measure to their children.
Spain justifies the measure by referring to the status of the Sahara during the final period of Spanish occupation and to the legal relationship that existed at the time between the Spanish occupying authorities and the territory’s inhabitants. The initiative refers to Spanish records and documents that may establish birth: population registers, birth certificates, but also school certificates, pension records, driving licences, hospital files and medical documentation.
Then comes the point that makes the proposal larger than a simple administrative settlement of old cases.
The law does not stop with people born in Moroccan Sahara. The children of those who obtain nationality under the law would have five years to opt for Spanish nationality. The text also moves toward including Sahrawis among the categories for which two years of legal residence in Spain, rather than the general ten-year requirement, can be sufficient, alongside other groups to which Madrid attributes special historical ties.
This is therefore no longer only about people born more than half a century ago. The measure has a family dimension, and a specific historical connection can become a continuing legal connection across generations.
That is where the question becomes more uncomfortable for Madrid.
If the Spanish occupation of Morocco, or the legacy left by that occupation, can provide the basis for exceptional legal treatment decades later, why does Spain not apply the same logic to other Moroccan regions that experienced Spanish occupation or Spanish protectorate rule?
What about Tetouan? What about Asilah, Larache, Nador, Chefchaouen and other cities?
The Spanish answer could be that the legal status of Moroccan Sahara was different from that of the northern Moroccan protectorate zone, and that during the final phase of Spanish occupation, the Sahara was administratively treated as a Spanish “province,” whereas northern Morocco was governed under a different protectorate regime.
That legal distinction can be debated, and it has a historical basis in Spanish documentation.
But the new law itself reopens the political question, because it does not simply apply an old legal rule. It creates, today, an exceptional legislative arrangement for a category linked to the history of Spanish occupation in Moroccan Sahara.
The question is therefore no longer whether there are legal differences between Moroccan Sahara and Tetouan.
Of course there are.
The real question is: why has Madrid chosen to turn this particular legal distinction into a new privilege today, more than fifty years after the end of Spanish occupation in Moroccan Sahara?
Then there is France.
France occupied most of Morocco for more than four decades. Generations of Moroccans studied in French schools, read and wrote in French, and graduated from institutions in which the French language played a major role. A vast French colonial administration also left legal, cultural and social traces that remain visible in Morocco today.
Yet we do not see Paris presenting the French Parliament with a comparable proposal granting exceptional French nationality to the children of Moroccans born during the period of French occupation, and then extending that right to their own children and descendants on the grounds that France was the colonial power present in Morocco at the time.
The comparison does not mean that the two legal systems were identical, nor does the absence of a comparable French law automatically prove the existence of a Spanish conspiracy. But the comparison becomes necessary when Madrid itself invokes colonial history as the basis for a new legislative intervention in the present.
Why Spain now?
And why Moroccan Sahara specifically?
Why does the right extend to children?
Why is the same principle, or something close to it, not being considered for Moroccans who lived under Spanish occupation or the Spanish protectorate in northern Morocco?
These questions cannot be answered simply by invoking “humanitarian considerations.”
Even if we accept that some people were genuinely deprived of a previous opportunity to exercise a right to Spanish nationality because of the circumstances surrounding Spain’s withdrawal from Moroccan Sahara, the press is entitled to ask about the next stage: what does Spain intend to do with this relationship once it has been reactivated?
Because nationality is not a travel card.
It is a continuing legal bond between a state and an individual. When nationality is granted on the basis of a particular historical connection, and its effects extend to children, that connection can, over time, become a human network legally attached to the state granting the nationality.
This is precisely the point raised by international relations professor Khalid Chiat. In his view, the move cannot be separated from an intention to keep the Moroccan Sahara issue present within Spain’s political sphere. He argues that transforming this relationship into what he describes as a “human network” could eventually become a burden for Spain itself, particularly if the legal and political circumstances surrounding the issue change.
There is, so far, no document showing that the Spanish government has developed a secret plan to encircle Morocco through nationality. As journalists, it would be wrong to write what we cannot prove.
But a political conspiracy, when one exists, does not always begin with a document entitled “conspiracy plan.”
Sometimes it begins with a legal measure that appears limited, and whose scope expands over time.
Today, the discussion may concern nationality for someone born in Moroccan Sahara more than half a century ago. Tomorrow, it concerns their children. After that, the measure could become an established rule, treated by new generations as a natural right acquired through a historical relationship with Spain.
What appears today to involve fees, procedures, files and documents could tomorrow become a broader and less costly legal right, perhaps even an ordinary practice.
Today, the benefit comes at a price; tomorrow, it could be free.
This is not a legal conclusion. It expresses a political concern that Rabat cannot ignore: what begins as a limited exception can become, if it becomes embedded in legislation and expands through jurisprudence and family transmission, a normal reality for generations that never experienced Spanish occupation.
That is precisely why the comparison with France is more than a side question.
If the objective is purely humanitarian, why has France not treated the millions of relationships inherited from its occupation of Morocco in the same way?
If the objective is purely legal, why was Moroccan Sahara selected while other Moroccan regions that experienced Spanish occupation or the Spanish protectorate were left outside the framework?
And if the objective is simply to correct a historical injustice, why does that correction extend to children, and why are beneficiaries given a special position regarding residence requirements?
If, on the other hand, the move reflects a political calculation, time alone will reveal its scope.
There is no need to anticipate events and announce today what tomorrow’s documents may prove. It is enough to place before Madrid the questions that this law cannot avoid.
Spain has chosen, from the history of its occupation of Morocco, one particular page to reopen.
And the question that will remain before Madrid is simple: why this page in particular?
