Hello Everyone,

I am an Iranian at the age of 43, planning to obtain Panamanian or Guatemalan citizenship under the economic-donation category.
This means giving away certain amount of money to the government and obtains the permanent citizenship and passport for me and my family (spouse and two children below age of 18) immediately.
The law firm proceeding with my application informed me that on Latin American passport which we get we can easily get the Spain?s permanent residence visa (USD 15000 extra to be paid). Consequently, they claim after two years if we stay 8 months in Spain we are eligible to apply for Spain citizenship.  I have read the Spain?s constitution law and noticed that citizens of Latin America can apply for citizenship after two years. However, I am not certain about it since my origin is not from Latin America.
If I get the Panamanian or Guatemalan passport, would I be eligible for the same law? Or I should be citizen of Latin American country by origin?
If I can apply is it true that 8 months out of 24 months stay in Spain will make me eligible to apply for citizenship?
What other documents are required to make sure application will be accepted?

I appreciate anyones kind comment on above issues.

Hmm, I have to say this is a fascinating back door you’ve found. I honestly can’t say whether it will work or not or how they’ll treat your application given that you don’t have true Latin American ancestry.

I hope someone else comes along with more information, and if you find out more please do post back!

Thanx for your comment. Unfortunately no one has the answer yet. I even tried to contact couple of law firms on-ine with no luck. I will popst back if get any further info.

Please, please be careful. Economic donation citizenships have been removed in many countries (including Panama, if I recall correctly) due to significant political pressure from the United States (because of tax evasion). Many firms offerring to provide you with economic citizenship processing *are scams*. Yes, there are a few countries that still have such programs, but please verify that your legal firm is sound. These programs are increadibly costly, and are a great way for shady business to steal money from individuals. See https://www.henleyglobal.com/citizenship/countries/ for some information for specific countries.

That said, if you do manage to acquire citizenship from a Latin American country, this is not sufficient to reduce your requirement for Spanish nationality to two years. The law (http://civil.udg.edu/normacivil/estatal/CC/1T1.htm) states that only those of Iberoamerican nationality by origin (birth) along with nationals of some other countries may enjoy the reduced residency requirement. Sorry. In any case, paying an extra 15k for a Spanish visa seems pretty egregious to me. You are being ripped off. The process is not very difficult, and I would encourage you to speak with a law firm in Spain with experience in visas for help with your situation. They should provide options for you for much less than this. Specifically, if you are well?off (which you seem to be) you may try for a residency visa without the option of working, or else a self?employed work visa.

Cheers Mate, The information was really helpful. The company which I am in contact with seems to be a credible one. They have obtained Saint Kitts citizenship for couple of my friends. The central American citizenship is something which they claim they can proceed on case to case basis and is almost half of the cost for Kitts. By the way I am trying to make sure that I am not gonna lose my money and I really appreciate your concern and advise.
Regarding the webpage you have kindly referred for Spanish citizenship law, It was in Spanish so I used the browser translation tool and below is the article,

Article 22.1 the granting of nationality by residence requires that it has lasted ten years. They will be enough five years for those who have obtained refugee status and two years in the case of national origin of Ibero-American countries, Andorra, Philippines, Equatorial Guinea or Portugal or Sephardim.

I still have dubt about the interpretation of “national origin of Ibero-American countries” maybe it means nationals from these countries. Anyway the Panamanian passport is much more credible than the one I am holding now. Tanx again for your time and good information.

Behzad - 16 May 2012 02:15 PM

Anyway the Panamanian passport is much more credible than the one I am holding now. Tanx again for your time and good information.

So the Iranian passport isn’t very credible or useful these days?

Unfortunately, this the case. If you check the ranking of the passports on http://www.doyouneedvisa.com you can see the Iranian passports is at the bottom of the list.
Ofcourse it has nothing to do with our nation value. I am proud to be Iranian and consider Iranians as higly intelligent civilized people with a great history and back ground.

Google Translate might say “national origin”, but the Spanish used is really “nacionales de origen” which is better translated as “nationals by origin”. This is defined in the first section of that same site as someone who inherited a nationality through their parents or for some other reason at the moment of their birth.

Thank you for the explanation. Is there any online Immigration lawyer in Spain who I can consult? I tried http://www.spain-visas.com/Spanish-Citizenship-and-Spanish-Nationality-pag7.htm for legal advice but it seems their payment system is temporarily unavailable.

Sorry, don’t know what to tell you there. I’ve done all my applications/visas myself, so I have no experience with lawyers. A quick search came up with http://www.regularizacion.com/ but this is in Spanish.