Spain document photos online

In 2015 Spain made one of the most extraordinary citizenship offers in modern history: it invited the descendants of Sephardic Jews expelled in 1492 to reclaim a Spanish passport — more than five centuries after their ancestors were forced out. Applicants only had to prove their lineage, pass tests on Spanish culture and the constitution, and show competence in Spanish or the old Judeo-Spanish dialect of Ladino. They could keep their existing nationality, an exception in a country that normally bars dual citizenship. By the time the window closed, over 132,000 people had applied to undo an expulsion ordered half a millennium earlier.

• Passport power In 2025 the Spanish passport ranks 3rd worldwide on the Henley Passport Index, granting visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to 189 destinations, tied with five other EU states behind only Singapore, Japan and South Korea.
• Citizenship Citizens of Ibero-American countries, plus Portugal, Andorra, the Philippines and Equatorial Guinea, can naturalize as Spanish after only two years of residency instead of the standard ten — a legacy of Spain's former empire written into Article 22 of its Civil Code.
• Dual nationality Although Spain generally forbids holding two passports, it makes an exception for nationals of Latin American countries, Portugal, Andorra, the Philippines, Equatorial Guinea and France, who may keep their original citizenship when they become Spanish.
• Currency origin Before the euro, Spain used the peseta — a name borrowed from the Catalan 'peceta', meaning 'little weight' — introduced in 1868 and divided into 100 céntimos until it vanished from circulation in 2002.
• Lost money When the deadline to swap pesetas for euros finally expired in 2021, roughly 1.58 billion euros' worth of old peseta notes and coins had never been redeemed and became worthless overnight.
• EU milestone Spain joined the European Communities on 1 January 1986, a move seen as cementing its return to democracy after the Franco era, and it later went on to post the bloc's highest growth rate for five years running.
• World record Madrid's Casa Botín, founded in 1725, is certified by Guinness World Records as the oldest continuously operating restaurant on Earth — it kept its 18th-century wood oven burning through the Spanish Civil War and even the Covid-19 lockdowns.
• Silent anthem Spain's national anthem, the Marcha Real, is one of only a handful in the world with no official lyrics, leaving its diverse Castilian, Catalan and Basque citizens nothing to sing.
• Demographics On 1 January 2025 Spain's population reached a record 49.1 million, of whom 14.1% held foreign nationality, with Moroccans the single largest group at nearly 969,000 people.