- With a Spanish passport you are already a Spanish national, so this procedure is not for you.
- Two years of legal, continuous residence in Spain are enough. The general rule is ten.
- You need ten years of legal, continuous residence, unless one of the one-year cases applies to you (for example, being married to a Spanish national for a year) or you have refugee status, which brings it down to five.
- You do not have to sit the Spanish language exam (DELE A2). If you are an adult, you do have to pass the CCSE.
- If you are an adult, you have to pass the CCSE and the DELE A2. You can skip the DELE if you already hold a DELE or an official Spanish certificate at A2 level or above.
- You keep your nationality: you do not have to renounce it when you swear allegiance.
- When you swear or promise allegiance, you have to declare that you renounce your previous nationality. What that declaration means in your own country is decided by that country's law.
Spain’s Ministry of Justice grants citizenship by residence to people who have lived in Spain legally for the period the Civil Code sets, and who show good civic conduct and enough integration into Spanish society. The period depends mostly on your passport: two years for some nationalities, ten for everyone else. The selector above tells you how many years apply to you, whether you have to sit the Spanish language exam and whether you keep your nationality.
How many years of residence you need
Article 22 of the Civil Code sets these periods:
| Years | Who it applies to |
|---|---|
| 10 | General rule |
| 5 | People with refugee status |
| 2 | Nationals by origin of Ibero-American countries, Andorra, the Philippines, Equatorial Guinea or Portugal, and Sephardic Jews |
| 1 | People born in Spain; people married to a Spanish national for a year and not separated; widows and widowers of a Spanish national; people born outside Spain to a father, mother, grandfather or grandmother who was Spanish by origin; people who did not exercise their right to opt for Spanish nationality in time; and people who spent two consecutive years under the guardianship, custody or foster care of a Spanish citizen or institution |
The Code does not say which countries are Ibero-American. The Spanish Royal Academy’s dictionary defines Ibero-America as the countries of the Americas that were part of the kingdoms of Spain and Portugal, which covers the nineteen Spanish-speaking countries of the continent and Brazil.
In every case the residence has to be legal, continuous and immediately before the application.
The requirements
Besides the residence period, you have to show two things:
- good civic conduct, which the Ministry checks against criminal records from Spain and your country of origin and against the reports it requests on its own;
- enough integration, which adults prove by passing the CCSE, an exam on Spain’s Constitution and society, and the DELE A2 Spanish exam. Nationals of Spanish-speaking countries skip the DELE. Everything about the exams, with the 2026 and 2027 dates, is in the citizenship exam guide.
Children under 18 do not sit the exams: their integration is shown with certificates from their school.
The documents
Order JUS/1625/2016 lists what an adult has to file:
- the application form, which on the online portal is the web form itself;
- a birth certificate from your country of origin, legalised or apostilled, and translated if it is not in Spanish;
- your full, valid passport, the same one shown on your residence card;
- a criminal record certificate from your country of origin, legalised or apostilled and translated;
- proof that you paid the fee;
- if you are married, your marriage certificate.
The criminal record certificate has to cover the whole country. In federal states (Germany, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, the United States, India, Mexico, Russia and Venezuela, according to the Order), if there is no national certificate you have to file one from each state where you lived in the previous five years. When the certificate does not say how long it is valid, it is taken to be valid for six months from issue. A consular certificate of good conduct can replace it, as long as the consulate issues it after checking with the country’s authorities.
The one-year cases need their own papers: the full Spanish birth certificate of your Spanish spouse and the marriage certificate, plus proof that you are registered at the same address, or the birth certificate of your Spanish father, mother, grandfather or grandmother.
In the application you authorise the Ministry to check the Central Criminal Records Register, the municipal register, your Instituto Cervantes results and your residence data. If you do not authorise it, you have to file those certificates yourself.
Legalisation or apostille
The Ministry of Justice asks applicants to pay special attention to the legalisation of foreign documents, because without it the application ends in a request for more documents. Public documents from another EU country need neither legalisation nor an apostille. Documents from a country that is party to the Hague Convention carry an apostille, a stamp added by the authority of the country that issues them. All others need diplomatic legalisation: first by the foreign ministry of the issuing country, then by the Spanish consulate in that country, which charges a fee. The list of countries that use the apostille is in the Hague Conference’s status table.
How to apply and what it costs
You apply on the Ministry of Justice’s online portal (sede electrónica) with a digital certificate or Cl@ve, attaching scanned documents. A half-finished application is kept for two months; if you do not sign and submit it in that time, it is deleted.
The fee is paid with form 790, code 026. The simplest way is to pay online during the application. To pay at a bank you first have to download the form from the portal, because each one carries a unique number that is later linked to your file, so a photocopy will not work. The current amount appears when you generate the form. The fee is separate from the price of the Instituto Cervantes exams.
How long it takes
The Ministry has one year to decide and notify you from the day the application reaches the Directorate General for Legal Certainty and Public Faith. If that year passes without an answer, the application is deemed refused. You can appeal a refusal administratively (recurso de reposición) and then in the administrative courts.
Meanwhile you can check the status of your file on the online portal without a digital certificate. Notifications arrive through the government’s single electronic notification address (DEHú).
After approval: the oath
Approval does not make you Spanish yet. You have 180 days from the day after you are notified to go to the Civil Registry where you live and do three things: swear or promise allegiance to the King and obedience to the Constitution and the laws, declare that you renounce your previous nationality where that applies, and request registration. If you miss the deadline, the approval lapses. The Civil Registry may ask to see the originals of the documents you uploaded. After the oath, the registrar records the nationality within five days.
What happens to your current nationality
The Civil Code requires you to declare that you renounce your previous nationality, with two exceptions: natives of Ibero-American countries, Andorra, the Philippines, Equatorial Guinea and Portugal, and Sephardic Jews. French nationals do not renounce either, under the nationality convention between Spain and France in force since 1 April 2022. Everyone else makes the declaration at the oath. Whether your country accepts it, or still treats you as its national, is up to that country’s law.
Frequently asked questions
How many years does a Venezuelan, Colombian or Mexican need for Spanish citizenship? Two years of legal, continuous residence. They do not sit the Spanish language exam, only the CCSE.
And a Moroccan, Ukrainian or Chinese national? Ten years, unless a one-year case applies, such as being married to a Spanish national for a year, or they have refugee status, which brings it down to five. They have to pass the CCSE and the DELE A2.
Do Brazilians and Portuguese have to take the DELE? Yes. Two years of residence are enough for them, but they are not on the list of nationalities exempt from the Spanish language exam.
What happens if the Ministry does not answer within a year? The application is deemed refused, and from then on you can appeal.
Can I take the oath whenever I like? No. You have 180 days from the notice of approval. After that, the approval lapses.
Guide checked on 07/11/2026. Sources: Spanish Civil Code, articles 21 to 24 (BOE, consolidated text); Royal Decree 1004/2015, Regulation on the procedure for acquiring Spanish nationality by residence, articles 4 to 6 and 11 to 14 (BOE, consolidated text as of 10/09/2024); Order JUS/1625/2016 on the handling of nationality by residence procedures, articles 6 and 10 and annex (BOE, consolidated text as of 28/10/2022); Nationality Convention between the Kingdom of Spain and the French Republic, signed in Montauban on 15 March 2021 (BOE-A-2022-4916); Ministry of Justice online portal, “Nacionalidad española por residencia” procedure and the notices on document legalisation and on exemption requests for the Instituto Cervantes exams; Diccionario de la lengua española, entry “Iberoamérica”. Requirements can change: check them on the Ministry of Justice portal before you apply.