TNAG-1148-FCO40-1428-Effect-on-Hong-Kong-of-the-Portuguese-and-Spanish-accession--1982 — Page 45

L

RESTRICTED

ECO 091/3/5

DS Broucher Esq ECD (E)

FCO

BRITISH EMBASSY MADRID-4

4 February 1982

HKK

022/1

18 1212

SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE ACCESSION : FREE MOVEMENT

3

You wrote to John Healey about this on 15 January He has also kindly sent us a copy of his letter of 25 January to Miss Nielsen at the Commission.

-NR.

2. No doubt the Commission will in due course produce an official response from the Spaniards. But meanwhile you may be interested to know the off-the-cuff answer which we have been given by the Director of Passports in the Spanish MFA when we asked him about this.

3. The Director said that Spain's agrements with Latin American countries do not provide for dual nationality. A Latin American citizen must reside in Spain for at least a year, and possess both a work permit and a residence permit before he or she may apply for Spanish nationality. If the application is granted, the individual is then obliged to renounce his or her other nationality. At that stage, he or she would of course have the same rights as any other Spanish citizen. But he or she would only have been able to acquire them by having a work permit in the first place.

copied to:

RESTRICTED

A St JH Figgis.

J M Healey, UKREP Brussels recipients of Mr Broucher's letter

C

Ral home

where

वीर

5

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