Jason Moore13/07/2016 00:00
TW
2

Nice idea and I sincerely hope that the petition is successful, but can you see the Spanish government granting dual citizenship to 250,000 British citizens? True, Britain gives the right to Spaniards who have lived there for more than five years the right to take out British nationality, but the numbers are not big; there are an estimated 80,000 Spanish citizens living in Britain and I doubt that many have lived there for more than five years. It would be a very nice move by the Spanish government and it would mean that our situation would be settled and in fact we would have more rights: we could even vote in Spanish general elections. But does the Spanish government really want yet another massive influx of residents?250,000 is a lot of people.

How would the Spanish take to the idea? There is already a perception that the British don’t like fellow Europeans and that is the reason they voted to pullout. So in other words the Brits are not the most popular people in Europe at the moment. The easiest way would be for Britain to accept the free movement of labour when it sits down to negotiate with the European Union. This would mean that our status would remain the same and nothing would change. But let us remember that the referendum was fought over immigration and and Britain appears to want to close its borders.

Our status is going to remain unclear for some time to come.