Spain’s far-right Vox wants to freeze citizenship for Muslims

This week’s terrorist attack in Brussels has further inflamed the discourse of the Spanish far right.

Vox party has registered a proposal in Congress to suspend the granting of Spanish nationality and residence permits to people from Islamic countries.

Specifically, the party wants to “suspend the procedures for acquiring Spanish nationality and residence and stay permits”.

It also wants to “ban the entry into Spain of immigrants from countries with an Islamic culture if their correct and peaceful integration cannot be guaranteed”.

The party, led by Santiago Abascal, justified its decision by claiming that the attack in Brussels was a direct consequence of the “open-door policy pursued in a large part of Europe”.

“Yes, we must defeat them, yes, all the fiends who bring hatred, pain and death. And if possible, they must be defeated before they kill a single innocent person,” Abascal wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

The proposal includes figures published by the National Statistics Institute on the granting of nationality.

Last year, Spain recorded a 26% increase, with a third of new citizenships going to people of Moroccan origin.

Moroccans are the largest foreign group in Spain, with around 880,000 people.

Another of the party’s proposals is to strengthen the police’s anti-terrorist units.

The far-right party has been advocating for tougher immigration policies since it was founded in 2013. One of the arguments they use is that migrants are responsible for crime and insecurity on the streets.

This is not the first time that the party has presented a proposal in Congress to make it more difficult to obtain citizenship. Two years ago, it submitted another, which ultimately failed to get a parliamentary majority.