The National Court has denied Spanish nationality to a Catalan-speaking immigrant who has lived in Mallorca for more than 20 years because she has not demonstrated a sufficient degree of integration into Spanish society by not knowing Spanish sufficiently. The Court has rejected an appeal that the woman had presented following a decision by the Civil Registry of Palma, according to Diario de Mallorca.
The Registry's decision was due to the fact that, according to the person in charge, the woman did not speak or understand Spanish. The foreign resident's lawyers decided to file an appeal before the National Court. The woman has lived for 20 years in the municipality of Santa Margalida, a town in the north of Mallorca with about 12,000 inhabitants, where relations between neighbors are still mostly in Catalan.
The woman arrived in this town in 1996 and the lawyer who presented the appeal to obtain nationality argued that the usual language with which she has always communicated with her neighbors in Santa Margalida, as well as with the authorities, was Catalan. However, the interview she had with the person in charge of the registry took place in Spanish, so the woman became nervous because she expected the interview to be held in Catalan.
The woman has resided in the Balearic Islands for all these years and has not been to any other autonomous community. Her usual communications are always in Catalan and that is why the woman's defense understood that she may have had some problem understanding the interview due to the moment of tension or nervousness. She argued that the woman had taken two Spanish courses for foreigners taught by the Santa Margalida City Council.
The ruling does not address whether it would be enough to know one of the official languages to achieve nationality and does specifically mention that Spanish must be known. He points out that knowledge of the Spanish language is a fact of "singular relevance" when assessing the sufficient degree of integration in Spanish society.
Remember that obtaining nationality requires certain duties since it is accompanied by certain rights, such as political participation, including the right of representation, which is why it goes beyond simply obtaining a residence or work permit because It also entails being a full citizen of the European Union, with all that that entails.
