Your family has been in Spain for a year and a half, each of you with your own residence card, and the citizenship application is already on the calendar. The risk now is undermining, without realising it, the continuous residence the law requires. An example family helps to show what can break it and what cannot.
Every move goes on the padrón: the register the Ministry of Justice checks against your file
Let’s take, purely as an example, a Colombian family: father, mother and children aged 9 and 15, each with their own non-lucrative residence permit. In eighteen months they have moved home twice.
If you sign the authorisation for data checks when you apply for citizenship, the Directorate-General for Legal Certainty and Public Faith checks, on its own initiative, your registration with the municipal census (padrón) through the National Statistics Institute (INE) and, for adults, the Central Criminal Records Registry and the Instituto Cervantes exam results; residence data are always checked. Without that authorisation, you are the one who provides the certificates.
The padrón does not prove continuity on its own, but it is compared with your file: update it every time you move. And once the application has been filed, report any change of address for as long as the procedure lasts.
The renewal that falls before the two years: filed before expiry, it leaves no gaps
For nationals by origin of Ibero-American countries, Article 22.1 of the Civil Code sets two years of residence. In the example, the permits of all four family members expired before they reached that point.
For what Spanish law calls nacionalidad por residencia, citizenship by residency, the two years must be of legal, continuous residence immediately prior to the application, as Article 22.3 of the Civil Code requires; that is why renewing a permit that expires during that period, if the renewal is filed before expiry, leaves no gap: the previous permit is extended until the renewal is decided. The renewal window runs from two months before to three months after expiry, counted from date to date, and the extension is expressly provided for the non-lucrative residence permit and for residence and work permits for employed or self-employed workers, among others (Arts. 64.1, 80.1 and 86.1 of Royal Decree 1155/2024), but not in the article on family reunification. Renewing once the permit has already expired, even within those three months, is a minor offence; the example family filed all four renewals before their permits expired.
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Travelling home for Christmas or an emergency: what the law does not set
In December the family spent two weeks in Colombia; months later, the mother went back for just over a month because her father was ill. Do those trips break continuity?
Article 22.3 of the Civil Code requires continuous residence without putting a number on absences, and case law in the administrative courts accepts that brief, sporadic and justified absences do not break it. The figures for “safe” days that circulate do not appear in the Civil Code.
On that basis, the two weeks at Christmas look like what the case law describes; the mother’s trip of just over a month is the one most worth documenting. Keep the tickets, the passport stamps and the medical report or certificate that justifies the reason for the trip.
The passport that expires before the application: renew it at your consulate
The father’s passport expires shortly before the planned filing date. The official list requires a complete, valid passport, and all documents must be valid on the day of the application: an expired passport is no use even if the residence card is still valid. Only the current passport is submitted, so it is advisable to renew it in advance at your country’s consulate in Spain.
In addition, the passport must match, in terms of country, the one shown on the residence card; in the example, all four have Colombian passports and cards.
Birth certificates and criminal records ordered from Spain: the one that expires at six months goes last
The general documents for adults include the online form, the birth certificate and the criminal record certificate from the country of origin, the passport, proof of payment of the fee and, where applicable, the marriage certificate from the country where the marriage took place. Birth certificates and criminal record certificates must be legalised or apostilled, depending on the country, and translated when they are not in Spanish.
According to the annex to Order JUS/1625/2016, each document is valid for the period stated on it; criminal record certificates that state none are valid for six months from issue, and for the rest the Order sets no default period. That is why the family requests the birth certificates first and the parents leave the criminal records until last; the minor children do not submit them. The check of the Central Criminal Records Registry, which is Spanish, does not replace them.
The children who came with you: their own count, no exams and their own fee
Each child counts their two years on their own legal residence; the parents’ time is not passed on. If they obtained their permits at the same time, the counts may coincide, but each file is measured separately.
Minors under eighteen are exempt from the CCSE (the test of constitutional and sociocultural knowledge of Spain) and the DELE (the Spanish language diploma) and submit a certificate from the school where they are enrolled, which is mandatory at compulsory school age. Each application pays its own fee, the 790-026 (€104.05), including each child’s, and it is not refunded.
For the 9-year-old, prior authorisation from the officer in charge of the Civil Registry where the family lives is needed first, after a report from the public prosecutor; the 15-year-old files the application assisted by those who hold parental authority. And if a parent obtains citizenship first, the children under their parental authority will be able to opt for it (Article 20.1.a of the Civil Code), an option that, as a general rule, lapses at the age of twenty and that, if not exercised in time, leaves open the one-year residence route.
Continuity is protected with dates: padrón up to date, renewals before expiry, justified trips, a valid passport and recent criminal records. That way, the example family reaches the application with every piece in place.
