If you are checking the status of your nationality file through cómo va lo mío and you see the pending official reports status (“Pendinete de informes preceptivos oficiales”), keep on reading.
In this article we will analyze what is exactly happening in this phase, whether it is a good or a bad indicator, whether you need to do anything or not in order for your application to move forward, and most importantly: how long it will last.
What does pending receipt of the mandatory reports mean?
The phase of pending receipt of official mandatory reports (“pendiente de informes preceptivos oficiales”) is the one in which the Ministry of Justice is in charge of requesting documentation from different organizations and authorities in order to verify that you meet all the requirements to obtain Spanish nationality.
As you may already know, your citizenship application file goes through different phases once it is processed and registered at the Ministry of Justice.
As you already know, you can check the current status of your file through the “cómo va lo mió” platform, and while doing so many foreigners who see this phase of pending reports have doubts about whether something is wrong or whether they should take any extra action.
Although it is one of the most important phases of the whole process, it is totally normal for the file to enter this phase (it means that everything is working correctly).
The Government must verify that there is no reason that could invalidate your citizenship application (i.e. that the requirements to obtain nationality are all fulfilled), and for this purpose it contacts the:
- CNI
- Ministry of Interior
- Immigration Office
- General Directorate of Police
- Central Registry of Convicts and Rebels (of the Ministry of Justice)
- Social Security
As we will now see, each of these institutions requires a different report or documentation.
The pending phase of mandatory reports consists of the time necessary for all these parties to prepare such documentation and send it back to the Ministry of Justice so that it can be studied and analyzed.
But what documents are we talking about?
What information is requested during this phase?
Even if when you submitted your nationality application you had already included documents to prove the different requirements, the DGRN (Dirección General de Seguridad Jurídica y Fe Pública) must verify and check that everything is correct.
To do so, it will ask each of the institutions mentioned in the previous section for all the information they may have about the applicant.
We are talking about important and necessary data to finally issue a favorable or unfavorable resolution, such as:
- Information to see if there could be any cause that prevents granting nationality for reasons of national security, such as verifying that you have not participated or are not linked to any type of criminal or terrorist activity.
- Criminal record and police arrests. In the case of registering arrests, they will look at what type of arrests, as well as verify if there are convictions and of what duration.
- Type of residence card with which you have resided in Spain.
- Report that accredits the total time of legal residence in the Spanish territory (which must be 10 years as a general rule, 2 if you come from an Ibero-American country, or 1 year if you have married a Spanish citizen).
- If you have left the country for more than the allowed time (absences). As you know, you cannot register more than a total of 6 months for the required period of 10 years; or 3 if you have applied for citizenship after just 1 or 2 years in the country.
Do you have any questions? Read on for more information or ask our lawyers anything here:
Should I do anything during this phase?
By now we have seen that this is a completely normal and usual phase that your file must go through before finally being approved and that it does not represent any kind of negative indicator.
The next question we can ask ourselves is whether we should (or can) do anything, either to speed up the process or to keep the file moving forward.
However, the answer is no.
There is nothing we can do at this point, other than wait.
What is true is that, depending on the results of the reports received at this stage, we may have to take some particular action in the following ones, as we will now see.
But for now, if your file is in the phase of pending official mandatory reports, the only thing you can do is to be patient.
What is the next phase after “pendiente de informes”?
Once the Ministry receives all the information requested from the various agencies that have data and records from abroad, in the citizenship online platform you will be able to see one of the following two options:
- “Completo de informes”, simply informing that all the documentation has been received
- Or directly “en fase de estudio”, a phase in which all the information received will be analyzed and reviewed to finally issue a positive resolution
As we have said in the previous section, it is possible that once your file exits the pending reports phase, you will have to take some kind of action.
And that will be true in cases where the Ministry of Justicie finds that you have registered any kind of arrests or convictions.
Then, the first thing the Ministry will do is to request you to cancel your criminal or police records.
If you are not able to cancel them (as perhaps the judicial process has not yet been completed, for example) your application for nationality will be definitively rejected.
How long does the phase of pending receipt of official mandatory reports take?
Although it depends on several factors, generally your nationality file will be in this phase for a period of between 1 and 4 months in total.
This is one of the stages that will certainly most delay your citizenship resolution.
But, as we mentioned, this will depend entirely on the file and workload that each of the institutions from which information is requested has.
The fact that more than one center has to send documentation makes it more likely that one of them will be saturated, thus slowing down the total duration of this phase.
In addition, this could change even more with the current shock plan and especially once it ends, since all the extra resources destined to resolve the files faster are not directed to the institutions that must send the information, so it is common that they receive many requests in a very short time and cannot cope with all of them without delays.
Finally, your country of origin is also a factor that will make this phase faster or slower.
In general, citizenship applications from Latin American citizens tend to be processed much faster, while those of foreigners from African and Asian countries will experience longer processing times.
If you would like to start your application for Spanish nationality or have any doubts during the resolution, our team of immigration lawyers is at your complete disposal to advise you and guide you step by step.
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