Two routes and one evidence test
The Congress of Deputies approved on Thursday a law granting nationality by carta de naturaleza — a discretionary grant made by government decree — to Sahrawis born in Western Sahara under Spanish administration before 29 September 1977, and giving their first-degree descendants five years to apply as well. The text goes next to the Senate, which can approve it or return it to the Congress with amendments.[1]
A second route runs through the Civil Code. It puts Sahrawis on the same legal footing as nationals of Ibero-American countries, Andorra, the Philippines, Equatorial Guinea and Portugal and people of Sephardic origin, which drops the residence period required to apply for nationality to two years. Parliamentary sources calculated in July that 80,000 people could benefit from the law.[1]
The condition that decides how far either route reaches is evidentiary: an applicant must provide an official document proving their origin. That clause, rather than the estimate of 80,000, governs how many grants follow, because it asks people to document a birth under an administration that ended in 1977. A milder reading is available — the clause may be ordinary administrative practice for any naturalisation, and the registers of that period may turn out to be complete enough that almost every applicant clears it.[1]
Why Morocco is a party to a Spanish vote
Deciding who counts as Spanish among people born in the territory Morocco claims turns a bilateral question into a domestic vote, and the chamber split along that line. The PSOE, which had voted against when the law was taken into consideration, supported it; the PP abstained; Vox rejected it. Tesh Sidi, the Sumar deputy of Sahrawi origin who carried the bill through almost two years of delay, said that not supporting it meant standing alongside Morocco, while the PP deputy Pedro Muñoz answered that his party still does not know what Pedro Sánchez conceded when Spain shifted its position on Western Sahara in 2022.[1]
Morocco's own leverage does not run through that chamber. Declassified documents show the CNI, Spain's National Intelligence Centre, told Moroccan and Ceuta authorities on 29 July that WhatsApp and Facebook groups were urging migrants to cross the next day, and at least 72,000 people crossed into Ceuta on 30 and 31 July. Spain can change legal status through the Congress; Morocco can change the number of people at the Ceuta fence. The two instruments work on different clocks, and only one of them needs a second chamber.[1], [2]
Content now, the date later
The August column on the dispute that opened after Ceuta found Spain's counter-measure carrying a date and no content. This vote supplies the missing half: there are clauses, categories and a burden of proof. What the text does not carry is the day it starts to apply, and that now sits with the Senate.[3], [1]
If the Senate returns the text with amendments, the decisive vote moves back to the Congress, and the clauses most exposed are the ones the PP already tried to remove: the direct grant to people who have not resided in Spain, and the right of first-degree descendants. None of those amendments was adopted in the Congress. The signal to watch is a second Congress vote on the same text before the end of the year.[1]