The plenary session of Congress has admitted for processing this Tuesday, with the sole vote against of the PSOE, a bill from Sumar that requests granting Spanish nationality to those born in Western Sahara before 1976, under Spanish administration.
The initiative, from which between 180,000 and 200,000 people could benefit, according to Sumar's calculations, has passed thanks to the votes of all groups except the PSOE and the abstention of Vox.
The deputy of Sumar Tesh Sidi, born in a refugee camp in the Sahara, has defended the bill as an exercise in restorative memory and has denounced the "legal limbo" of the Saharawis.
She has narrated the journey she lived with her host family in Spain until she obtained Spanish nationality in 2022.
"My host mother lived alarmed if she had any illness, she could not take me out of the country, she could not enroll me in school, neither me nor my twin brother. This is not my case, it is the case of all Saharawi children who are hosted in the summer", she has related.
And in reference to the socialist deputies, she has asked what the Saharawis have done to them so that they "try to erase them from the democratic memory of this country".
The PSOE deputy Sergio Gutiérrez has pointed out that it is a "complex and sensitive" debate and has recognized the "comparative grievance" suffered by the Saharawis to access Spanish nationality compared to other similar processes, such as that of Equatorial Guinea, a Spanish province until 1968.
"We do not agree that the general process is the process of letter of naturalization, but we also have several doubts when granting private organizations the ability to automatically certify those certificates that would grant (...) Spanish nationality", he said in allusion to the Polisario Front.
Sumar's bill proposes several ways to prove this condition, including the presentation of a Spanish ID card even if it is expired, a certificate of registration in the Spanish census of 1974, or a birth certificate issued by the Saharawi authorities of the refugee camps in Tindouf (Algeria) and legalized by the Polisario Front in Spain.
Sumar's initiative, in the same line as another presented by Unidas Podemos in the previous legislature, also raises the possibility of granting Spanish nationality to the descendants of the Saharawis born before 1976, and gives a period of five years from when their parents obtain it.
In general, the groups that have supported the consideration of the initiative, including the PP, have defended granting nationality to the Saharawis as a matter of historical justice and have criticized the Government's "shift" regarding the Sahara, as well as its ties with Morocco.
"To the Palestinians yes, to the Ukrainians yes and to the Saharawis no. How is this situation understood? It does not obey any logic. In the three realities there is occupation by a foreign power, exile, aggression and repression", declared the PP deputy Carmelo Barrio.
Parliamentary partners of the Government such as ERC, Junts, PNV, EH Bildu, Coalición Canaria and BNG have denounced the Executive's "abandonment" of the Saharawi people and have asked it to leave the "lip service solidarity".
For his part, the Vox deputy José María Sánchez has justified his group's abstention in the face of suspicions that behind this initiative of Sumar there is an "alignment with the Polisario Front and with Algeria".