The line the bill draws
Spain's Congress passed the bill by 168 votes to 31, with 145 abstentions, and the text must still clear the Senate. The route covers people born in Western Sahara before 29 September 1977 and their first-degree descendants, who could apply for Spanish nationality without meeting the usual residency requirement. For eligible applicants already living legally in Spain the wait falls from 10 years to two. The bill therefore ties eligibility in Madrid to a birth date, and a place of residence does not decide it.[1]
Spain ended its administration of Western Sahara in 1976, and the territory has been disputed ever since, with Morocco treating it as part of its sovereignty while the Polisario Front seeks independence. Supporters of the bill say people born in the territory under Spanish rule were left in a difficult legal position after the withdrawal. The eligibility line sits just past that withdrawal, which is why the argument in Madrid is about the unfinished account of a departure rather than about today's map.[1]
The instrument is already in hand
In 2015 Spain opened a similar procedure for Sephardic Jews who could establish their origin and a special connection to the country, a measure tied to the expulsion that began in 1492. The Sahrawi route repeats that design: a documented historical tie, a special procedure, and a legal status at the end of it. Converting history into nationality is something Madrid has done before, and it knows what the instrument does.[1]
The design works because it grants status without touching territory: the law would not change Western Sahara's status, would not recognise an independent Sahrawi state, and gives its holders no sovereignty over the territory. That is what lets it move where the territorial question stays unresolved. The split in the chamber points the other way: the Socialist Party and Sumar voted for it, the People's Party abstained and Vox voted against. So parliamentary arithmetic may explain the timing as much as any logic of the instrument.[1]
Where the rule turns around
In the 1 September column on the Falkland Islands I argued that an unwritten sovereignty question is what lets a capital reopen its position later. The disanalogy sits exactly there: Madrid's position is written, because in 2022 it backed Morocco's autonomy proposal as the most serious, realistic and credible basis for a settlement, and the bill does not formally change that. What stays unwritten is the rule for converting a historical tie into a legal status, and on that rule Rabat could ask why its own historical and geographical relationship should be treated as irrelevant when Ceuta and Melilla are the subject.[1], [2]
The measurable next step is narrow. If the Senate approves the text as the lower chamber passed it, eligibility will still turn on the 29 September 1977 birth date and first-degree descent, and time spent in Spain will not decide it. A law whose boundary is a calendar is easy for Madrid to administer and hard to contest on any ground except the date itself.[1]