I hope you all can help. I am a U.S. citizen married to a Canadian citizen. My husband's father's family immigrated to Canada from Spain before my husband was born. The consulate told my husband that he cannot get Spanish citizenship without revoking his Canadian.
So.. my husband has a job lined up in Madrid. His future employer has applied for "certification from the spanish labor authorities of an activity exempted from the need of work authorization" (solicitud de permiso de residencia y de excepcion de permiso de trabajo)
This will soon be filed with the ministry of labor (or whichever authority it gets filed with) and once we receive it, we will apply for a
"Residence visa exempt from the obligation of requesting work permit". The employer would like for my husband to start at the beginning of June. Is this feasible? What can be done to make the process faster?
Which documents need to be translated into Spanish and how do I go about getting that done quickly? I've seen on other threads talk about an Apostille on the marriage certificate. Will we need that and if so how do we go about getting it?
Has anyone had a similar experience? Any guidance or advice about this situation would be more than welcome.

Thanks for such a helpful message board.
Lynn

quote:

The consulate told my husband that he cannot get Spanish citizenship without revoking his Canadian.

Wow. I thought Spain permitted dual nationality. Does Canada approve of dual nationality? An Italian-American friend�s parents were able to obtain dual nationality (Italy/USA) by renouncing their Italian Citizenship upon applying for the American, and then years later re-applying for the Italian citizenship. Subsequently my friend has both citizenships since she was born in the States and could apply for her Italian citizenship through her parents. A kind of back door approach to having the dual citizenship. Perhaps the same can be done with your husband and his application for Spanish citizenship.

You might want to try and do some searches on this board or consult Strong Abogados who specialize in these areas. I have never used them personally but their services seem fairly complete.

When my husband (Spanish) and I (American) got married (in the States) we had to co-validate our marriage in Spain to be able to get the Libro de Familia so I could obtain residency in Spain. Doing so required me going to my state�s capital to have the apostille seal placed on the marriage license. Check with your county seat and if they can�t do it there...your state�s capital.

I get the feeling that the rules and regulations change from year-to-year as the European Union sets forth more rules and regulation creating more hurdles for non-EU citizens to jump.

Good luck!

Chica, thanks for your reply.
What the consulate told my husband is that he has 2 options. He can either renounce his Canadian citizenship and then apply for Spanish. (Canada does in fact allow dual but renunciation is not an option for him) OR If he can prove that his father was a citizen at the time that he was born, he could essentially "reclaim" his Spanish citizenship. Unfortunately we have no documents to prove his father's Spanish citizenship at that time.

I did see on another thread that apparently if a relative of a Spanish citizen lives legally in Spain for one year, they can apply for citizenship. This actually would work great for us since he has a job offer. Of course, the consulate did not mention this "easy" way to us. Since Canada allows dual citizenship, we would almost definitely apply for his citizenship after one year so that he could be dual.

I haven't seen the "libro de familia" anywhere on the consulate information for our application. What is it and do I need it!?

Thanks,
Lynn

Another thing that you can do is have unofficial dual citizenship as many others of us do.
You will be Canadian in Canada and Spanish in Spain.
No one in Spain need to know anything about a second Passport or such.
Just get the Spanish stuff in order as an independent and unrelated document forgetting all about Canada or dual or rennouncing anything.
Then once you have a Spanish DNI / Passport you can just use that here in Spain for all your needs.
If and when you travel from Spain to Canada leave Spain on the Spanish Passport and arrive in Canada with the Canadaian Passport.
Just keep it straight in your own head and use whichever one suits you best.

hi lynnseedoil, interesting predicament.

one question, why is your husband so interested in becoming a full-fledged spanish citizen if he will have residency without any problems due to his job situation???

does not really make sense to me for him to try and get the citizenship if he can be a resident without any problems.

saludos,
jer...

MadridInsider- Sounds like a good plan. We thought having dual might make travel back and forth much easier in the future.

Jer- You're right. I thought that my husband's ties to Spain might be good background information. We're applying for the residency right now. And if citizenship looks like a good option down the road, we'll do that.

Thanks, Lynn