rgb23 - I replied in another forum, i repost here
Your mother was a daughter of a spaniard, correct? If I read this correctly she was never registered at birth. I am supposing that your mother is undergoing the process because she opened a dossier with the Spanish consulate while the historical memory law was active, correct? I ask this because from my mother’s experience with the Spanish consulate in Miami this law is now closed unless you opened up a dossier before the law ended in December of 2011 - they no longer accept any new requests under this law. Since you are older than 18 (or as Spanish law says, up to two years after emancipation, which would place upper bound on 20 years of age if 18 is the age of emancipation), the only way that your mother would be able to make you Spanish without you setting foot in Spain is if you also opened up a dossier while the law of historical memory was active; and even then you would likely have done it under your grandparents since your mother at the time - and currently - was not Spanish. Otherwise, you are too old; the only way that Spanish law allows the child of a Spaniard to recuperate (the traditional “by option”) citizenship at ANY point in the life of the child without having to do residency in Spain is if the parent were a Spaniard by origin AND said parent was physically born in Spain - so this path to citizenship is closed for any child whose parent became/was/is a Spaniard of origin and born abroad (irrespective of the process used to become a Spaniard of origen - parent inscription of the birth in the consulate of the country of birth, or using the Memory law as many of us have). Moreover, this “by option” route does not confer the “by origen” qualifier to the citizenship. Effectively what the Memory Law did for those born abroad of Spanish parents who could have ALWAYS opted to be Spanish is give their citizenship the monicker “of origen”, which is the heritable citizenship.
Assuming the both of you have opened up a dossier (which are indefinite, there is no time frame for turning in the documents…for now) and she has been able to get her documents in order, then she will be able to obtain the Spanish citizenship of origen by option. This is important for you because, if she merely opts for it as the law currently stands she won’t likely get the “by origen,” which is necessary for you to recuperate yours, should you have opened a dossier - recall she wasn’t born in Spain so you can’t also opt the normal way. Once she obtains it, you might have a slight hurdle to obtain yours. Yours will be more complicated since presumably you may need another document aside from your mother’s newly minted Spanish birth certificate.
This is what we did with my grandmother, whose parents were Spanish and born in Spain - she could have even at 85 years old opted to be Spanish even without the Memory Law; but now that she is “of origen” thanks to the Memory Law I can benefit from her citizenship by residing in Spain on a Residency permit for one year (student visas don’t count - Spain considers these extended visas and not a residency permit per se) and then applying for my citizenship, which is precisely what I have done. Since my mother opened up a dossier prior to the closure of the Memory Law, my grandmother can now sign “a certificate of the recuperation of Spanish citizenship of origen” for my mother when she presents three documents: 1) my grandmother’s Spanish birth certificate; 2) her US birth certificate with the Apostille legalization; and 3) her Spanish grandfather’s proof of Cuban citizenship or lack thereof, and in the case he never became Cuban (which in our case he never did), a certificate from the foreigner registry office of the date of his inscription. The reason for document (3) is that my mother opened her dossier through her grandparents since at the time my grandmother was not yet a Spaniard (they both opened their dossiers up at the same meeting in the consulate). Thus, it seems, my mother applied under the grandparent clause and we presume that they want to know when my grandfather went to/registered in Cuba (did he go as an exile of the Civil war, or not). The problem is that the certificate of foreigner registration document for us no longer exists (we have the cuban document saying he never became a citizenship) since those papers in Cuba were destroyed during floods and hurricanes at the local municipal registries. We have recently solicited his death certificate and are now trying to see if, since the certificate states he died as a Spaniard, it will work for my mother as a substitute.
So as you see the process is daunting. The bureaucrats at the consulate have EVERY reason to instigate red tape to get you to not want to go through this process since they are handling tens of thousands of dossiers.
You asked about your father. IF you need your father’s birth certificate and IF your father had a NIF and was a Spanish citizen, then he would presumably have a Spanish birth certificate. So you will need to get this. Since he was born in Venezuela his Spanish birth certificate will be located in the Registro Civil Central de Madrid (this is where all birth certificates of foreign-born Spaniards are located). See my post above from a couple years ago for the link to solicite the birth certificate. Here the problem is it will take a while to find depending on what information you have. You state to have un libro familiar. HOPEFULLY you have the two important things: el tomo y la pagina of the certificate used to catalogue the document at the consulate where the birth was recorded. Using this they will find the certificate in their files using the correspondence lists they have to their Tomos and Paginas in the RCC (the cataloging is not the same and the fact that they have to match up the consulate records to their copy records means it takes time).
I hope this helps.
