CascadaDuSel, you are absolutely right. The issue is far from getting cleared up.

Before I just glanced at Torrales' post and didn't read it very carefully, but after reading your post and going back over it, I see that you have a very valid question. Point number three does seem to say what I suggested in an earlier post: that the baby would be elegible.

We can keep searching and see what we can find. In any event, I would also try to contact the Spanish Consulate and see what they have to say. The U.S. embassy in Madrid would probably know too.

Jabch, that's true about my daughters. I guess if their kids stayed long enough in the States, they too would be elegible for citizenship. The requirement of residency sounds crazy but I guess it's a simple and logical way of keeping control over immigration.

I love the one about Argentina. Isn't it unbelievable? There has been a fairly serious influx of Argentines since the latest economic crisis, so they must be getting in somehow. In fact, I know an American girl from Connecticut whose mother is an Argentine of Italian descent, and she got her Italian passport and has used it live and work in Spain. Boy talking about working your way around the system!

You would think that for having such a low birth rate Spain would want anyone born there to be a citizen :-) Just kidding before I get yelled at ... I was reading an article the other day - I forget where - that talked about the low birth rate in Spain and in, I forget how many years, the population would be predominently older - they were comparing it to the strain the baby boomers are about to put on the US Social Security system

You'd think so, wouldn't you? In fact, Spain's population has grown "dramatically" in the past five years mainly thanks to the immigrant population. In a sense, by having your child here, you'd be doing the in thing!

I am not a lawyer expert in citizenship affaires, I just copied the rules from a site I considered reliable. Well, it isn't and I want to apologize for that. The translation was bad.

After a better research, this is the official page of the Spanish Justice Ministry (the one that deals with citizenship) that mentions the rules to obtain Spanish nationality.

There is no difference between the page and what I posted about rules #1, 2, and 4. The 5th one is not mentioned in the official page, but probably is true, although not relevant for the specific case that is discussed here.

The problem comes precisely in rule #3. The literal translation of the official page is:

"Those born in Spain of foreign parents if neither of them has any nationality (stateless persons) or if neither of the parents' legislations confer a nationality to their children"

As your friend and her husband are not stateless persons, and as I suppose that US' legislation does bring to the baby a valid nationality, (s)he is not elegible at the moment of birth for the Spanish citizenship.

But as the co-forumer jabch mentions (and the official Webpage, too), any person born in Spain can claim the Spanish citizenship after one year of legal residency in Spain. The year has to be 'solid', I mean, 365 consecutive days (or 366 in case of a leap year). 6 months from 2002 and another 6 from 2005 are not valid. Even a one-day gap is enough to invalidate the period.

So, if the baby is correctly registered as a legal resident in Spain, one year later can ask for the Spanish citizenship.