118 CHA

According to the information published by the National Statistics Institute (INE), The number of foreign residents acquired by Spanish nationality increased 5.1% in 2024, until reaching 252,476 people.

44% of foreigners who acquired Spanish nationality last year were men and 56% women.

When analyzing statistics depending on age, People from 30 to 39 of years constituted the most numerous group As for acquisitions of Spanish nationality, followed by the group of citizens between 40 and 49 years.

As for the modes of acquisition of Spanish nationality, 215,734 cases, according to INE data, were by residence and 36,407 per option. This last modality occurred above all in children under 20 (94.2% of the total acquisitions per option were under 20 years). The three modes of acquisition of Spanish nationality as detailed by the statistical institute are nationality by residence, which requires the residence of the person in Spain for 10 years in a legally, continuously and immediately prior to the request.

The second is by option to which those who wish to nationalize in our country can resort to and it is a benefit that the legislation offers foreigners who are under certain conditions to acquire Spanish nationality.

As the one paid by law, They have the right to acquire Spanish nationality in this way. All those who are or have been in the past subject to the parental authority of a Spanish citizenor people whose father or mother would have been Spanish and had been born in Spain.

As a third possible option to achieve it, nationality by nature of nature is included (which has a graceful character and is not subject to the general norms of administrative procedure) and unknown (related to all those cases that come blank in the original file and decide not to impute).

In relation to the most frequent nationality among the people who acquired the Spanish in 2024 was that of Morocco, with 42,910 cases in total.

Next, those of South American countries and Central America and the Caribbean were placed, until completing the ten most frequent nationalities of origin: Morocco, Venezuela, Colombia, Honduras, Ecuador, Peru, Dominican Republic, Argentina, Bolivia and Cuba.

The most frequent country of birth in the acquisitions of Spanish nationality was Spain, with 51,547 cases. Among those born outside Spain, the most frequent birth country was Venezuela, with 34,343 nationality acquisitions, followed by Colombia, with 25,759; Morocco 17,579; Honduras 14,407; Peru 10,285; Ecuador 9,533; Argentina 9,090; Dominican Republic 8,754 and Cuba 8,051.

Of the 252,476 people residing in Spain who in 2024 acquired Spanish nationality a 19.6% had always resided in Spain.

The remaining 80.4% had previously resided abroad.

Since 2002, the most frequent arrival year for people who acquired Spanish nationality in 2024 was 2019. This means that it took about five years to acquire Spanish nationality.

Catalonia with 68,755 cases and Community of Madrid with 48,288) They concentrated 46.4% of the acquisitions of Spanish nationality in 2024, followed by the Valencian Community with 26,729 and Andalusia with 23,157, Basque Country 13,600, Canary Islands 10,307, Murcia 1,738, Balearic Islands 9,366, Aragon 8.340, Castilla-La Mancha 8.061, Castilla y León 6.682, Galicia 6.667 and Navarra 4,411.

For its part, Extremadura (1,459), La Rioja (1,729), Cantabria (1,789) and Asturias (2,550) were the autonomous communities with the lowest number of nationality acquisitions among its residents, according to the information provided by the INE.